How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. There once was a very large lake here, the largest lake in Texas. That was over a hundred years ago. Now it is just a dry, flat wasteland.
There used to be a town of Green Lake as well. The town shriveled and dried up along with the lake, and the people who lived there. (1.1-2)
Nature and humanity seem pretty connected in this book. From the very first line of the story, we see that when one changes, the other follows.
Quote #2
The digging got easier after a while. The ground was hardest at the surface, where the sun had baked a crust about eight inches deep. Beneath that, the earth was looser. (7.19)
Sure, this is just a simple description of the land. But let's dig deeper. (Yeah, we like that pun.) We can also read this as a hint of the "layered" quality of the natural world: what appears on the surface isn't always what's really underneath. Can you think of other instances of these kinds of "layers" in the world of the novel?
Quote #3
There was a change in the weather.
For the worse.
The air became unbearably humid. Stanley was drenched in sweat. Beads of moisture ran down the handle of his shovel. It was almost as if the temperature had gotten so hot that the air itself was sweating. (29.1-3)
This passage opens the second section of the book. Can you think of another approaching storm that's about to break out in the book's plot at this point?