How we cite our quotes: (Part.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"You know the way they treat the housing projects we give them."
"You give them?"
"The city. […] They are taking over the city." (3.28-3.30)
McKee sees Newark as divided by race. He thinks poor black people have brought their poverty upon themselves. McKee doesn't take into account slavery or severe discrimination. Keep in mind that our tale is set around 1959, several years before the official beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.
Quote #5
"Aunt Gladys, they don't live over a store."
"I lived over a store and I wasn't ashamed. Thank God we always had a roof." (4.92-4.93)
In Quote #8, we talk about how businesses and residences are interspersed in Newark but not in Short Hills. Here not living where you work seems to indicate "higher" status, at least to Neil. Why?
Quote #6
She meant, I was sure, that I was somehow beginning to look the way she wanted me to. Like herself. (5. 123)
This is the first day of Brenda's exercise program for Neil. Humorously, Neil is allowing Brenda to physically mold him for upper-middle-class life as she knows it—grapefruit and all.