How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
I watched them walk away. A terrible loneliness came over me, making me shiver. When I looked up, the sky was almost silver. A beautiful, sad silver. All around me, kids were screaming and laughing and running. "Denver," I said to the this-place sky. "It's pretty there. We have the Rocky Mountains." (12.33)
This makes us wonder if the "this-place sky" is a little jealous, like, "Hey, is this girl saying I'm ugly?" Does Toswiah/Evie ever describe her new home as remotely beautiful? Is it really that ugly or does she just miss Denver so much?
Quote #8
Our bathroom here is tinier than the downstairs half-bathroom we had back in Denver and three times as small as the upstairs bathrooms. I'd never thought of us as rich when we lived there, but now I know we had it good. I closed the door, pressed my head against the cool mirror glass and sighed. (16.15)
This idea supports the truism that says you never know what you had until it's gone.
Quote #9
"Your sister up?" Mama asked. She was pouring pancake mix from a box into a white plastic bowl. In Denver, all her mixing bowls had been the good kind, made out of glass. Here, everything except Daddy's oatmeal bowl seemed plastic and cheap and temporary. (16.17)
This is an interesting observation because it's so specific and concrete. Up until now, Toswiah/Evie has mainly been dealing in abstract Denver = good, This-Place = bad language, but now she gets down to the point. Everything is cheap: Only Daddy gets a decent bowl. And now Daddy's about to break that bowl and try to kill himself with it, which doesn't say a lot for that bowl, symbolically speaking.