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37 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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"He knew only that the child was his warrant.
He said if he is not the word of God God never spoke" |
The boy is all that keeps the man going and helps him retain hope.
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"Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire"
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There is nothing left, but each other.
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"Have you a neck by which to throttle you?
Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God." |
Seems to be talking to God.
And he is not a happy camper. |
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"And the dreams so rich in colour.
How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day." |
Only relief from the bleak world is within his dreams.
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"She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stocking through the thin stuff of her summer dress.
Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned." |
Similar to previous really, expresses the shock back into the waking world in a more harsh way maybe.
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"It's because I won't ever get to drink another one, isn't it?"
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The boy about the can of coke.
Might be handy for cultural context. |
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"Ever is a long time.
But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all." |
Boy has got his stuff figured out.
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"Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting.
The screams of the murdered. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road." |
Pretty powerful summary of what humanity resorted to so quickly.
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"The colour of it moved something in him long forgotten.
Make a list. Recite a litany. Remember. |
Huge fire nearby wakes him up.
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"They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you wont face it.
You'd rather wait for it to happen. But I can't. I can't." |
Mother with the description of the reality of their situation.
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"You can think of me as a faithless slut if you like.
I've taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot. -Death is not a lover. Oh yes he is." |
Can't see the Grim Reaper being very good in bed.
With the whole death-touch thing. |
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"You talk about taking a stand but there is no stand to take.
My heart was ripped out of me the night he was born so don't ask for sorrow now." |
Mother has no desire to continue fighting on.
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"As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart"
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Mother's lack of hope
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"Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant"
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Rare insight into the role of women in the novel.
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"Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands.
On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burned" |
The cellar of the house.
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"You put it in your mouth and point it up.
Do it quick and hard. Do you understand? Stop crying." |
Man showing the boy how to kill himself with a gun.
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"Can you do it? When the time comes?
When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die." |
Man debating whether or not he'll be able to end his son's life if he has to.
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"He lay there a long time, lifting up the water to his mouth a palmful at a time.
Nothing in his memory anywhere of anything so good." |
On the edge of dying of thirst by this point.
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"But when he bent to see into the boy's face under the hood of the blanket he very much feared that something was gone that could not be put right again."
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A short while after finding the cellar, the boy isn't in good shape.
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"Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien."
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In the bunker, contrast between the man's and the boy's world.
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"Even now some part of him wished they'd never found this refuge.
Some part of him always wished it to be over." |
In the bunker, man is almost regretting finding it.
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"Where men can't live, gods fare no better."
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Ely on God-1
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"Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave"
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Ely summing up the situation.
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"There is no God and we are his prophets."
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Ely on God-2
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"He looked down the road and he looked at the boy.
So strangely untroubled." |
Dead bodies lining the road.
The boy seems to think of this as normality now. |
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"What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit."
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Yeah... is no good...
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"There were few nights lying in the dark that he did not envy the dead."
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The man losing hope, being jealous of the dead.
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"When he lay down he knew that he could go no further and that this was the place where he would die."
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The Man realizing that this is the end of his journey.
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"I can't hold my son dead in my arms.
I thought I could but I can't." |
The man as he dies, about his son.
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"Are you carrying the fire?"
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Boy asks the man who arrives at the end.
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"You're not the one who has to worry about everything.
... Yes I am, he said. I am the one" |
Man and boy.
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"It might well bad as she had said.
That the boy was all that stood between him and death." |
The boy is all that gives the man hope to keep going.
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"The clocks stopped at 1:17.
A long shear of light and a series of low concussions." |
Only description of "the event"
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"She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift."
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About the woman when she leaves
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"Is it ok for us to take it?"
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The boy about the food they find in the bunker.
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"When I saw that boy I thought that I had died."
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Ely
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"Why did he do it?
...You wouldn't understand, he said. I'm not sure I do." |
Ely and the man about why the boy is so generous with their food.
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