How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.[Part].Section.Paragraph)
Quote #10
[…] his kinsman, his father almost, who had been born too late into the old time and too soon for the new, the two of them juxtaposed and alien now to each other against their ravaged patrimony, the dark and ravaged fatherland still prone and panting from its etherless operation. (5.4.160)
Isaac's referring to his older cousin McCaslin, born around 1850 and having grown up with slavery. He sees that this will always be an unbridgeable gap between them, even though they both have to deal with their destroyed country, still recovering twenty-five years after the Civil War that tore it apart. Whew—that "etherless operation" metaphor. Gets us every time we read it.
Quote #11
"And what have you got left?" the other said. "Half the people without jobs and half the factories closed by strikes. Half the people on public dole that wont work and half that couldn't work even if they would. Too much cotton and corn and hogs, and not enough for people to eat and wear. The country full of people to tell a man he cant raise his own cotton whether he will or wont […].(6.16)
We couldn't leave the topic of slavery without hearing Roth Edmonds's cynical take on the Civil War and Abolition. In his opinion, he can't see that anything good came from it, never mind that it was two generations before his time.