How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Children died of mild colds or slight rashes. Children died on beds made from two kitchen chairs pushed together. They died on floors. Many people believed that filth and starvation and disease were what the immigrant got for his moral degeneracy. (3.5)
Now you see why the immigrants were terrified of losing their children all the time... it happened a lot. No wonder later in the novel Tateh keeps Little Girl on a leash. Bad things happened to kids back then.
Quote #2
The Esquimos, who had no system but merely lived here, suffered the terrors of their universe. Sometimes the Esquimo women would unaccountably tear off their clothes and run into the black storms howling and rolling on the ice. Their husbands had forcibly to restrain them from killing themselves. (10.1)
When we're left to our own devices and have to face the emptiness of life and the fact that one day we're all gonna die, look out... we might just lose it. But is it better, in fact, to live life in the stiff-upper-lip manner of turn of the century Americans, or is that just as insane as running out onto ice floes?
Quote #3
The consumption of food was a sacrament of success. A man who carried a great stomach before him was thought to be in his prime. Women went into hospitals to die of burst bladders, collapsed lungs, overtaxed hearts and meningitis of the spine. (11.1)
And you thought America had an obesity problem now? Even back then, obsesity led to many diseases, illness and death. They might have been starving to death in the tenements and slums, but in the wealthier parts of American society they were eating themselves to death.