How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
Finally he got hold of some bad green, as it’s called in the trade - green, uncured marijuana - quite by mistake, and smoked too much of it.
"The first day, he said, "I lay rigid as a board in bed and couldn’t move or say a word; I just looked straight up with my eyes open wide. I could hear buzzing in my head and saw all kinds of wonderful Technicolor visions and felt wonderful. The second day everything came to me, EVERYTHING I’d ever done or known or read or heard of or conjectured came to me and rearranged itself in my mind in a brand-new logical way and because I could think of nothing else in the interior concerns of holding and catering to the amazement and gratitude I felt, I kept saying, ’Yes, yes, yes, yes.’ Not loud. Yes,’ real quiet, and these green tea visions lasted until the third day. I had understood everything by then, my life was decided, I knew I loved Marylou, I knew I had to find my father wherever he is and save him, I knew you were buddy et cetera, I knew how great Carlo is. I knew a thousand things about everybody everywhere. Then the third day began having a terrible series of waking nightmares, and the were so absolutely horrible and grisly and green that I lay there doubled up with my hands around my knees, saying, ’Oh, oh, oh, ah, oh . . .’ The neighbors heard me and sent for a doctor. Camille was away with the baby, visiting hot folks. The whole neighborhood was concerned. They came in and found me lying on the bed with my arms stretched out forever. Sal, I ran to Marylou with some of that tea. And do you know that the same thing happened to that dumb little box? - the same visions, the same logic, the same final decision about everything, the view of all truths in one painful In leading to nightmares and pain - ack! Then I knew I loved her so much I wanted to kill her. I ran home and beat my head on the wall [...] came back in an hour, I barged in, she was alone - and gave her the gun and told her to kill me. She held the gun in her hand the longest time. I asked her for a sweet dead pact. She didn’t want. I said one of us had to die. She said no. I beat my head on the wall. Man, I was out of my mind. She’ll tell you, she talked me out of it." (III.2.5, III.2.6)
The intensity of Dean’s drug-induced vision is overwhelming but in fact matched by the intensity of his sober dreams. This suggests that Dean’s madness is innate, not the result of his lifestyle choices.
Quote #11
"We’re going to Italy," I said, I washed my hands of the whole matter. Then, too, there was a strange sense of maternal satisfaction in the air, for the girls were really looking at Dean the way a mother looks at the dearest and most errant child, and he with his sad thumb and all his revelations knew it well, and that was why he was able, in tick-tocking silence, to walk out of the apartment without a word, to wait for us downstairs as soon as we’d made up our minds about time. This was what we sensed about the ghost on the sidewalk. I looked out the window. He was alone in the doorway, digging the street. Bitterness, recriminations, advice, morality, sadness - everything was behind him, and ahead of him was the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being. (III.3.21)
Sal relates his visions of the ghost to Dean’s notions of time. The ghost on thee sidewalk is waiting, as Dean is, for the others to stop worrying about the details, and to abandon the strings of guilt and responsibility that still clinging to them.