How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
[Roxy] put the heir of the house in her own child's unpainted pine cradle and said, contemplating its slumbering form uneasily:
"I's sorry for you, honey; I's sorry, God knows I is,—but what kin I do, what could I do? Yo' pappy would sell him to somebody, some time, en den he'd go down de river, sho', en I couldn't stan' it." (3.16-17)
Sometimes doing the right thing means harming someone else, making this morality stuff a tricky business. Roxy does what she thinks is the right thing for her son by switching the kid's place with the heir of the house who, as a result, winds up becoming a slave.
Quote #5
Tom relished this tune less than any that had preceded it, for it began to wake up a sort of echo in his conscience; so he interrupted and said with decision, though without asperity, that he was not in a situation to help [Roxy], and wasn't going to do it. (8.49)
Breaking News: It's just been discovered that Tom Driscoll has a conscience! More at eleven.
Quote #6
A gigantic eruption, like that of Krakatoa a few years ago, with the accompanying earthquakes, tidal waves, and clouds of volcanic dust, changes the face of the surrounding landscape beyond recognition, bringing down the high lands, elevating the low, making fair lakes where deserts had been, and deserts where green prairies had smiled before. The tremendous catastrophe which had befallen Tom had changed his moral landscape in much the same way. (10.6)
As this apt metaphor suggests, Tom's world is completely rocked by Roxy's seismic revelation. How exactly does his "moral landscape" change as a result?