How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
I feel nothing but a need to get away from everyone. Instinct tells me to go to Hannah's, but she doesn't live there anymore and that's when I realize the major difference between my mother and Hannah. My mother deserted me at the 7-Eleven, hundreds of kilometers from home.
Hannah, however, did the unthinkable.
She deserted me in my own backyard. (12.78-80)
So even though we could argue that Tate had a good reason for abandoning Taylor, we can also probably agree that dumping your eleven year old at a gas station isn't a good move, regardless of whether someone's going to show up five minutes later and pick her up. What's interesting is how Taylor compares Hannah's disappearance to her mother's and comes out finding Hannah to be the greater offender.
Quote #8
I remember the tremble in my mother's body when the midwife first placed her in my arms. I remember the feeling of slipping between those fingers. It's like she never really managed to grab hold of me with a firmness that spoke of never letting go. It's like she never got it right. (15.2)
While the idea of a kid remembering her birth seems a little out there, we at Shmoop would like to remind you that Jellicoe Road is a work of fiction, and even if it wasn't, Taylor's particularly unusual. Regardless of whether the memory is real, it's powerful. It kind of makes us wonder if that hesitation Tate shows would have been present had Webb been alive for their daughter's birth.
Quote #9
If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate's beautiful, lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget […] That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect and fear and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life. (21.80)
Maybe, like Jonah Griggs, you're tempted to look at Tate and see a terrible mother. Knowing the whole story, though, makes us reconsider leveling that kind of judgment. Tate is ultimately a person who experienced so much loss in her life that she got pushed over the edge and disappeared into drugs and alcohol as a way to forget. That doesn't excuse the kind of neglect Taylor describes in this paragraph, but it at least helps us understand how Tate could get to that low point.