How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
He had seen her face, heard her voice so clearly that night he had lain by her grave on Copp's Hill. He thought of her with love and a tender understanding (an understanding he had been too young to give when she had died), but he left the haunted chambers, echoing halls, and went gladly to the kitchen where Cilla was. For the dead should not look at the living—nor the living too long upon the dead. (8.2.33)
Why not? What about Johnny's experiences so far supports the assertion in the final sentence? At what other points in the novel does Johnny "look upon the dead"? Does he ever get the sense that they're looking back? This passage gives us the shivers.
Quote #5
"Each shall give according to his own abilities, and some"—he turned directly to Rab—"some will give their lives. All the years of their maturity. All the children they never live to have. The serenity of old age. To die so young is more than merely dying; it is to lose so large a part of life." (8.5.60)
We think this is why the Observers are sick of James Otis. He tells the truth, no matter how tragic or uncomfortable that truth is. Here he's like, "Let me just add to the tragedy by reminding everyone of how much you're really giving up." Is there a difference between dying and losing one's life, as James Otis seems to suggest?
Quote #6
Johnny put his hands to his face. It was wet and his hands were shaking. He thought of that blue smock his mother had made him, now torn by bullets. Pumpkin had wanted so little out of life. A farm. Cows. True, Rab had got the musket he craved, but Pumpkin wasn't going to get his farm. Nothing more than a few feet by a few feet at the foot of Boston Common. That much Yankee land he'd hold to Judgment Day. (9.5.9)
Johnny witnesses Pumpkin's execution for desertion, but it happens behind him so that he can't actually see it. What is the effect on Johnny—and on the reader—of having to imagine what happens rather than being directly told?