How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
YANKEL HAS WON AGAIN, he said. YANKEL HAS NAMED US TRACHIMBROD. (8.9)
Once again, a lottery (at least not one Shirley Jackson-style) decides the fate of the Shtetl. How would Brod's life have been different if the town had not been kind of named after her (or at least named after the river she was named after)? Would she have had a different role in the town?
Quote #5
Then why do you continue to do it? [Brod] asked. And why, she wondered, remembering the description of her rape, do we pursue it? (13.47)
Even though Brod has seen the future and it's grim, she goes forward with being the Float Queen. Perhaps she knows that if she tried to change the future, the results would be worse—or nonexistent. At least, that's how it always seems to go in time travel stories.
Quote #6
The Kolker was eating a cheese sandwich on a makeshift stool of stacked flour sacks, lost in thought about something Brod had said about something, oblivious to the chaos around him, when the blade hopped off an iron rod (left carelessly on the ground by a mill worker who was later struck by lightning) and embedded itself, perfectly vertical, in the middle of his skull. (16.65)
Talk about fate: the Kolker took the flour mill job in spite of "the curse," but the curse doesn't actually wipe him out. The person whose fault this whole thing was later dies, a secondhand victim of the curse. And this event will later shape many more, like the creation of the Dial. Honestly, if we lived in Trachimbrod, we might just sit around eating cheese sandwiches and waiting for things to happen to us, too.