How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Page)
Quote #4
Tears prickled his eyes. Maud reached across the saucer/and gripped his fingers. He knew she could see inside the wound in his head. His white nurse. His officer. (V.i.27)
Major Plunkett thinks back to his military service and begins to ask what it was all for. As he relives the past, he is overwhelmed with emotion. Both he and Maud refer to his trauma as the "wound in his head," and it very well could be a physical wound that gives him trouble. But in this passage and others, there are indications that Major Plunkett suffers from PTSD.
Quote #5
"Hell was built on those hills. In that country of coal/without fire, that inferno the same colour/as their skins and shadows, every labouring soul/climbed with her hundredweight basket, every load for/one copper penny, balanced erect on their necks/that were tight as the liner's hawsers from the weight." (XIII.ii.74)
The narrator's ghost-father shows him the women of the past who used to haul huge baskets of coal to feed the needs of those who exploited the island for their own financial gain. The work, as we can see here, is little better than slavery, requiring supreme strength and endurance for very little return. Warwick will tell the narrator that it is his duty to memorialize this struggle in his poetry… No pressure, son.
Quote #6
He saw how she wished/for a peace beyond her beauty, past the tireless/quarrel over a face that was not her own fault/any more than the full moon's grace sailing dark trees,/and for that moment Achille was angrily filled/with a pity beyond his own pain. (XXI.iii.115)
Achille steps away from his own emotions and perceives Helen as she truly is: suffering because of her own beauty. Though he has just insulted her for her behavior, this flash of insight allows him to see that she is, at least in part, not to blame (she didn't ask to be beautiful).