How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
When you're nuts, it hardly matters that you're a nutty Jew or a nutty Holy Roller. (23.47)
Deborah acknowledges that Jews have their own prejudices against Gentiles since they've been told that the Gentiles will betray them in the end. Deborah's been pretending that all the non-Jewish people she meets are Jewish in her mind so that she can be closer to them. Then she tells Dr. Fried that the hospital leveled the playing field for her: mental illness crosses identity boundaries.
Quote #5
But in the neighborhood the codes of long-established wealth still prevailed and the little-girl "dirty-Jew," who already accepted that she was dirty, made a good target for the bullies of the block[...] "Jew, Jew, dirty Jew; my grandmother hated your grandmother, my mother hates your mother and I hate you!" Three generations. It had a ring to it; even she should feel that." (6.58)
What effect does this type of deeply ingrained prejudice have on a person's sense of who he or she is? What about that person's self-esteem?
Quote #6
The instincts of these hating children were shared, for Deborah heard sometimes that a man named Hitler was in Germany and was killing Jews with the same kind of evil joy […]. In the camp a riding instructor mentioned acidly that Hitler was doing one good thing at least, and that was getting rid of the "garbage people." She wondered idly if they all had tumors. (6.60)
At the summer camp, Deborah's counselors (as well as a lot of the kids there) are openly anti-Semitic. Deborah's wondering whether the Jews being killed in Europe had tumors like her shows us that her identity is wrapped up in the idea that she deserves to be hated. She believes she's defective and broken in some way. This is how she feels "other"—like an outsider who isn't even part of Earth.