Tortilla Flat Dissatisfaction Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #7

In the end he gave up to his longing. One night he ran away. He went into the pine woods and disappeared. (15.9)

Danny's dissatisfaction is characterized here as "longing," which suggests that what Danny is looking for is something like meaning. His dissatisfaction is based on an unquenchable desire to find something better and more meaningful than the humdrum life of a landowner. It seems ironic that Danny runs away from his life in order to find meaning in it, but the point may also be that the landowner's life, at least as Danny understands it, is actually kind of meaningless. Maybe Danny is trying too hard to find meaning outside of himself?

Quote #8

He began to live listlessly, arising from bed only to sit on the porch, under the rose of Castile; arising from the porch only to eat; arising from the table only to go to bed. The talk flowed around him and he listened, but he did not care. (16.1)

Talk about the depths of despair. The sentence flows from one activity to another, and none of these activities is very active. Danny is just going through the motions in his life, just as this sentence goes on and on with its repetitive "arising."

Quote #9

The despair that lay on their hearts was incalculable. They cursed their fate. (17.6)

Danny's friends are sad because they don't have any nice clothes to wear to his funeral, and they can't even borrow or steal any because everyone in town is already wearing their own best clothes. The "incalculable despair" they feel is probably close to what Danny was feeling before he died, as if he transferred his dissatisfaction onto them.