How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
I waited for Leper; in this wintery outdoors he loved, to come to himself again. Just as I knew the field could never grow again, I knew that Leper could not be wild or bitter or psycho tramping across the hills of Vermont (10.55).
Gene repeatedly associates certain places and times with peace or sanity. And yet…he proves to be wrong, as Leper is just as crazy in the snow as he was in the dining room. This is consistent with what we've seen at Devon, too.
Quote #8
…levels of reality I had never suspected before, a kind of thronging and epic grandeur which my superficial eyes and cluttered mind had been blind to before. They unrolled away impervious to me as though I were a roaming ghost (12.30).
Gene has moved into the adult world, which means leaving his youth behind. That sense of emergence is reflected here as he considers his old self, his young self, dead.
Quote #9
There is no stage you comprehend better than the one you have just left, and as I watched the Jeeps almost asserting a wish to bounce up the side of Mount Washington at eighty miles an hour instead of rolling along this dull street, they reminded me, in a comical and a poignant way, of adolescents (13.3).
And there you have it. The transition from peace to war is much like the transition from youth to adulthood. (Just, you know, with fewer pimples.)