How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The day she died was December 3, 1954. The furnace had cooked the air so hot my mother had peeled off her sweater and stood in short sleeves, jerking at the window in her bedroom, wrestling with the stuck paint.
Finally she gave up and said, 'Well, fine, we'll just burn the hell up in here, I guess' (1.28-29).
The stuck window seems symbolic of some larger ways in which Deborah is trapped. She is trying to get her things together so she and Lily can leave T. Ray forever, but she is unable to get out before he returns. And of course, she doesn't exit that room alive.
Quote #2
'You can go,' I said.
But the bees remained there, like planes on a runway not knowing they'd been cleared for takeoff. They crawled on their stalk legs around the curved perimeters of the glass as if the world had shrunk to that jar. I tapped the glass, even laid the jar on its side, but those crazy bees stayed put (1.215).
Although the bees initially went crazy flying around the jar, presumably trying to get out, they seem to have gotten used to being trapped in there and are staying put even after Lily opens it. Hmm, we smell a metaphor . . .
Quote #3
The jail cells smelled with the breath of drunk people. He put us in the first cell on the first row, where somebody had scratched the words 'Shit Throne' across a bench attached to one wall. Nothing seemed quite real. We're in jail, I thought. We're in jail (2.19).
Lily is getting her first taste of jail after Rosaleen got into a fight with some men upon arriving in Sylvan. She seems relatively appalled.