How we cite our quotes: (Name of Play, Act #)
Quote #4
MANNON: […] All right, then. I came home to surrender to you—what's inside me. I love you. I loved you then, and all the years between, and I love you now.
CHRISTINE: Ezra, Please!
MANNON: I want that said. Maybe you have forgotten it. I wouldn't blame you. I guess I haven't said it or showed it much—ever. Something queer in me keeps me mum about things I'd like most to say—keeps me hiding the things I'd like to show. Something keeps me sitting numb in my own heart—like a statue of a dead man in a town square. (Homecoming, Act 3)
This is a pretty shattering statement from the dead of this lifeless clan. He finally sees how dead he's been inside. More foreshadowing from poor, doomed Ezra.
Quote #5
MANNON: It was seeing death all the time in this war got me to thinking these things. Death was so common, it didn't mean anything. That freed me to think of life. Queer, isn't it? Death made me think of life. Before that life had only made me think of death!
CHRISTINE: Why are you talking of death?
MANNON: That's always been the Mannons' way of thinking. They went to the white meeting-house on Sabbaths and meditated on death. Life was a dying. Being born was starting to die. Death was being born. How in hell people ever got such notions! That white meeting-house. It stuck in my mind--clean-scrubbed and whitewashed--a temple of death! But in this war I've seen too many white walls splattered with blood that counted no more than dirty water. I've seen dead men scattered about, no more important than rubbish to be got rid of. That made the white meeting-house seem meaningless--making so much solemn fuss over death! (Homecoming, Act 3)
Ezra's real experience with death during the war has made him question all the religious ideas about death that were drummed into him as a kid—that death is rebirth, that it's a solemn and dignified affair, that this life is just an illusion, etc.
Quote #6
ORIN: Where's Mother? I thought she'd surely be waiting for me. God, how I've dreamed of coming home! I thought it would never end, that we'd go on murdering and being murdered until no one was left alive! Home at last! No, by God, I must be dreaming again! But the house looks strange. Or is it something in me? I was out of my head so long, everything has seemed queer since I came back to earth. Did the house always look so ghostly and dead?
PETER: That's only the moonlight, you chump.
We interrupt this morbid broadcast to give you a perspective from someone not totally steeped in death and misery. Peter's comment is like suddenly throwing open a window and letting in some sun. He's definitely not a Mannon.