How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
But things didn't get better. If they did, I didn't notice it. Gradually, I came to accept hunger as a constant companion. But this new hunger was different. It filled me with hatred, confusion, helplessness, hopelessness, anxiety, loneliness, selfishness and a cynical attitude toward people. It seemed to lurk everywhere about and inside me: in the things I touched, in the people I talked to, in the empty pots, in the black children I played with, in the nightmares I dreamt. It even pervaded the air I breathed. At times it was the silent destroyer, creeping in unseen, unrecognized, except when, like a powerful time bomb, it would explode inside my guts. At other times it took the form of a dark, fanged beast, and hovered constantly over my dizzy head, as if about to pounce on me and gouge my guts out with its monstrous talons. (10.58)
Mama keeps reassuring Mark that things will get better. Instead, however, the constant hunger turns into rage and anger.
Quote #5
Winter came, and turned out to be a very bad one. Our shack…had no heat, electricity or plumbing, and we had no stove, so my mother had to keep t he brazier indoors, as she had done all previous winters.
[…]
We went to sleep. Toward the middle of the night, I was awakened by something choking me, as if two steel claws had locked themselves around my throat.
[…]
Finally, my mother said, in a whisper, "That's what nearly killed you, children," pointing at the coals from the spilled brazier, from which puffs of smoke coiled upward as raindrops fell on them.
"What was in there, Mama?" I asked, thinking that maybe witches had been in the coal.
"Poison gas," my mother said ominously. (13.1, 3, 20-22).
Because they lack the money for electricity, the family suffers through the biting winter cold, and almost dies as a result.
Quote #6
My father had been arrested again. Hunger in the house was again acute. I was faced with two choices: starve or beg. (17.2)
Though the Mathabanes suffer all the time, their troubles are always worse when Papa is arrested due to some arbitrary law. There is thus a direct link between South African laws and Mark's personal suffering.