How we cite our quotes:
Quote #7
This is the way I used to feel in Barbados, Kit thought with surprise. Light as air somehow. Here I’ve been working like a slave, much harder than I’ve ever worked in the onion fields, but I feel as though nothing mattered except just to be alive right at this moment.
“The river is so blue today,” she said sleepily. “It could almost be the water in Carlisle Bay.”
“Homesick?” asked Nat casually, his eyes on the blue strip of water.
“Not here,” she answered. “Not when I’m in the meadow, or with Hannah.” (12.26-29)
Kit has been working hard with Nat on Hannah’s roof, yet she feels very much at home and at peace with the world. What is it about the Meadows – and Hannah – that creates this feeling for her? What does Nat have to do with Kit’s feelings about home?
Also, what do you make of Kit’s comparison of herself to a slave? As a child that grew up in a slave-owning family, how has she been able to change her thinking since leaving Barbados?
Quote #8
“A man is loyal to the place he loves” (12.50).
What does Nat mean by this comment he makes to Kit? To whom in the novel does this statement apply? Why does it apply?
Quote #9
How peaceful it is, thought Kit, lazily stretching her toes nearer to the blaze. Why is it that even the fire in Hannah’s hearth seems to have a special glow? Like the sunshine on the day that I sat on the new thatch with Nat. If only, right now, on that bench across the hearth—But what ridiculous daydream was this? Kit shook herself upright. (16.78)
If Kit feels at home in Hannah’s tiny house, why does she call her thoughts a “ridiculous daydream”?