How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
[Darla] got her ticket for being weird and obnoxious but she really did have problems, like burning herself with cigarettes and cutting little bits of skin off with a razor blade. When she was in ninth grade, the cops came to her house and she had dragged her seven-year-old brother, Logan, into the bathroom and threatened to blind him with Drano. (3.22)
The faculty members-turned-child psychologists who earmark kids for therapy sometimes get it right. Obviously, Darla is someone who really needs help. She talks to a stuffed bunny, mutilates her body, almost scarred her younger brother for life, and seems to have issues with behaving appropriately in matters, um, involving the opposite sex.
Quote #5
That was annoying. Us Madmen didn't associate with each other in public. We didn't need some dumbass football player or one of the jackoff smart kids to come up to us and make bibby-bibby noises with his finger and lip. Even though it was the seventies and like half the people you saw in movies were seeing a therapist, it was cool in the movies, but not in real life. (3.44)
Isn't this still a problem high school kids with issues like anxiety, depression, and social disorders have today? It's portrayed all the time on TV and in the movies, but in real life, there's a stigma against dealing with it or even talking about it. Clearly, this problem existed in the 1970s, too.
Quote #6
Bradshaw was being so nice he got me crying, and I told him how I felt sick as f*** about that rabbit, sometimes I had bad dreams about how its jaw had worked against my hand, the way it rubbed its nose on my palm wanting to be petted, the second when I could feel the pulse in its soft throat, and then the ripping feeling in my hand and the warm blood squirting all over my arm. Come to admit it, it was the first time I'd cried in months, and it was pretty hard to stop once I got going. (4.35)
We here at Shmoop would like to apologize for the sick feeling you just got in your gut as well as the nightmares about dead bunnies you'll have this evening. But, we really do feel this passage is important for showing the mental state Karl was in around the time his dad was dying. Obviously, there was serious anger and depression that needed to be released in a major way. It just happened that Squid's bunny was in the wrong place at the wrong time.