How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
The off-on flash of Zoo's gold tooth […] suggested to him a certain winking neon sign: R. R. Oliver's Funeral Estb. Darkness. R. R. Oliver's Funeral Estb. Darkness. "Downright tacky, but they don't charge too outlandish," that's what Ellen had said, standing before the plate window where a fan of gladiolas blushed livid under the electric letters publicizing a cheap but decent berth en route to the kingdom and the glory. (1.3.15)
Zoo's tooth isn't the only thing flashing in this passage; Joel, too, is having a flashback. His mother's death is always just waiting in the wings, ready to be triggered by any little thing. The reflective tooth whisks him back in time to the neon lights of the funeral parlor that buried his mother.
Quote #8
"All children are morbid: it's their one saving grace," said Randolph, and went right ahead. (1.4.19)
Randolph is about to tell Joel the story of Keg's attack on Zoo, and Miss Amy warns him not too, as the boy is too young. But Randolph's defense, that all children are "morbid," really caught our eye. Randolph means that all children are fascinated by death. Do you think he's right?
Quote #9
But then! one August afternoon, this was 1893, a child, a creole boy of Joel's years, having taken a dare to dive into the lake from a hundred-foot oak, crushed his head like a shell between two sunken logs. Soon afterwards there was a second tragedy when a crooked gambler, in much trouble with the law, swam out and never came back. [...] And then a honeymoon couple, out rowing on the lake, claimed that a hand [...] reached from the depths to capsize their boat. (1.5.27)
Death seems to come in morbid little packages in this novel. Rather than striking randomly, it hits the same spot several times. Joel, for example, loses his mother, and then ends up in Skully's Landing which is full of barely-living residents and the memories of dead people. Drownin Pond, too, seems to be the unlucky recipient of such a bundle of mortality.