How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
The woman looks at me, inquisitive but not smiling, and the two men still in Elvis Presley haircuts, duck's ass at the back and greased pompadours curving out over their foreheads, stop talking and look at me too; they keep their elbows on the counter. (3.3)
These men who are "still" sporting Elvis hair give the scene a kind of retro feel, adding to the narrator's overall portrayal of the place as decaying and stuck in the past.
Quote #5
It was before I was born but I can remember it as clearly as if I saw it, and perhaps I did see it: I believe that an unborn baby has its eyes open and can look out through the walls of the mother's stomach, like a frog in a jar. (3.34)
Time is apparently so plastic in the narrator's universe that she can remember things that preceded her birth. While literally impossible, this image sets up a strange kind of continuity between the past and her present.
Quote #6
The cedar logs are upright instead of horizontal, upright logs are shorter and easier for one man to handle. Cedar isn't the best wood, it decays quickly. Once my father said "I didn't build it to last forever" and I thought then, Why not? Why didn't you? (4.7)
As we noted with respect to an earlier quote, the narrator seems to struggle with the fact that her parents have not remained frozen in time. This subject comes up again when the narrator is thinking about the construction of the cabin, which apparently wasn't made to last "forever."