"Let somebody else cash in," Bram said easily. "I got enough to buy what I want."
This quote is a good illustration of Bram Shipley's character. Bram is the sort of person who does enough work to get by, and no more. As a result of his laziness, Bram does not do well as a farmer. In the above quote, Bram is explaining why he does not want to get into a more potentially lucrative business. He's perfectly willing to leave the hard work and the risk-taking to others, as long as he survives. He doesn't have any regard for the well-being of the other people who depend on him, such as Hagar.
How it irks me to have to take her hand, allow her to pull my dress over my head, undo my corsets and strip them off me, and have her see my blue veined swollen flesh and the hairy triangle that still proclaims with lunatic insistence a non-existent womanhood.
Hagar is being helped into her night clothes by Doris and is thoroughly annoyed that she has to be seen naked by her daughter-in-law. Hagar finds her elderly body ugly and is ashamed to have anyone see it. Her body conflicts with her idealized image of herself, and for anybody to see her at less than her best is offensive to her pride. She also feels more vulnerable than usual after having been informed that she will be sent to the nursing home.
Bless me or not, Lord, just as You please, for I'll not beg.
This quote appears at the end of the novel when Hagar is in the hospital, facing her nearing death. Hagar equates prayer with begging, and, like Odysseus, she believes she can get by very well without divine intervention. Even though she's dying and she knows it, her pride resurfaces and she feels unable to connect with any higher power.
I can't say it. Now, at last, it becomes impossible for me to mouth the words—I'm fine. I won't say anything. It's about time I learned to keep my mouth shut. But I don't. I can hear myself saying something, and it astounds me.
On her deathbed, Hagar is talking with her son, who asks her how she's doing. She is frightened, but she doesn't want to admit it. Yet for a brief moment, she does. Immediately afterward, she feels relieved. Keeping her emotions inside has been hard work for her and a source of unnecessary stress, for Hagar is not truly emotionless.
Pride was my wilderness, and the demon that led me there was fear. I was alone, never anything else, and never free, for I carried my chains within me, and they spread out from me and shackled all I touched.
This is an important moment of realization for Hagar. She has just heard the powerful hymn of Mr. Troy, which speaks of rejoicing before God. This song brings up many feelings in Hagar, who finally acknowledges that she has never followed her heart's truth and has always been deprived of happiness. She can recognize this is the result of her pride, the source of which was fear: fear to really live freely.
Mother! The egg-woman's here!
This is spoken by Arlene, the daughter of Lottie Dreiser. In her early years, Hagar fancied herself superior to Lottie in school due to Hagar's family wealth. Yet after her marriage to Bram, Hagar is no longer of such a high status and has now resorted to selling the farm's eggs for a bit of extra money. Thus, Lottie's daughter thinks of her only as the woman who delivers eggs. This a very ironic moment in the book when we see how Hagar has fallen from riches to rags.
"You take after me," he said, as though that made everything clear.
Jason Currie says this to Hagar after he slaps her for embarrassing him in his shop. He is astonished that Hagar does not cry or show any sign of emotion as he hits her with a ruler. At this moment, he can sense how his daughter takes after his own cold and stern demeanor, and he regards this as something positive. However, it is this emotional rigidity that causes much trouble for Hagar later on in her life.
Nothing is ever changed at a single stroke, I know that full well, although a person sometimes wishes it could be otherwise.
Here, Hagar is discussing how after a rare moment of emotional intimacy between her and her husband, things went back to normal, meaning that the same distance that had always characterized their relationship returned. She understands that it is a false expectation to believe that a relationship can entirely change from just one incident.
For me, [the darkness] teemed with phantoms, soul-parasites with feathery fingers, the voices of trolls, and pale inconstant fires like the flicker of an eye.
Hagar reveals her fear of the dark and the strange things it might hold. Whereas her son John likes to sit in the dark and let his mind wander, Hagar finds this absence of light threatening. The reader can infer that Hagar is frightened by anything that is mysterious and can't be controlled by her domineering mind.
I could not speak for the salt that filled my throat, and for anger—not at anyone, at God, perhaps, for giving us eyes but almost never sight.
Hagar thinks this right after Bram—now wracked by dementia and not realizing who she is—says that he should have beaten Hagar. She is filled with anger at hearing this, although she realizes that the anger cannot truly be directed at anyone besides God Himself for making her family members, such as Bram, blind to reality—unable to see her for who she really is. She believes she is the only one who can see correctly and objectively, although the reader knows by this point in the novel that this is not actually true.
