How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
He didn't know why Grandma would want to leave a message for me, but the dream sounded like a warning. I would die alone, he predicted, in a very cold place.
I leaped from the couch and hammered him on the arm. We wrestled around the living-room floor in front of Mom, too buried in her grief to pay us any mind. Dad wasn't too buried in grief, though. Irked by our noisy tumbling, he burst in from the kitchen and with one of his shoes, crowned us both on the head. He pointed the shoe threateningly at everybody and said that we all better get the message quick about how to behave, or else. (5.58-59)
In the Hernandez family, we've been seeing a lot of violence from Dad, but now it's looking like he's not the only one with a violent streak. Sure, he's the one who hits his kiddos upside the head with his shoe, but he only does this because Nardo and Manny are already tussling on the floor, throwing punches like whoa.
Quote #5
The sound of the gun going off was like a huge mouth swallowing a noise, and Pedi was eaten by that mouth. Thoughts ran together inside my head and blurred, like currents of fast water flowing together. Loud shrieks inside my lungs were bursting to get out, but couldn't. Pedi was dead, I knew it. The way she fell back on the floor, she could only be dead. I was afraid to go up to her, thinking I'd see a gory gash where the bullet entered her head and I'd lose my mind. (6.56)
Remember when Manny thinks he's accidentally shot his sister? Yeah, that's a hard one to forget about. He might not have done it on purpose, but it's a seriously violent act all the same. Thankfully, she's totally fine physically, but the action still has some pretty huge ramifications, like making Manny feel like he might "lose my mind."
Quote #6
"Man, Lencho's gonna have it in for you!" he said finally, perking up in almost a gleeful way, like he wouldn't be too sorry if Lencho knocked in my teeth. […]
"No," I said. "He doesn't want to mess with Nardo."
"Oh, yeah."
He was glum again. He didn't have a brother, only a sister, and she'd as soon slap him in the face as smile. When you're like Albert, and you don't have protection, any day of the week, on any street corner, a guy like Lencho can kick in your rib cage and nobody would give a damn. (7.28, 31-33).
For the most part, the violent parts of this book haven't been the happiest—in fact, violence often seems like the worst thing that could happen—but now it sounds like Manny sees an upside to violence because he figures that Nardo's reputation provides him with some much-wanted protection. So when there's a bully like Lencho around, maybe having a big bro with a reputation for violence isn't the worst thing in the world.