April Morning Quotes Flashcards
Wasted steps are like wasted thoughts, just as empty and just as ignorant.
– Moses Cooper (The Evening (1) paragraph 8)
Importance: Moses Cooper hands his son some heavy-handed and strict advice on handling chores and errands. Moses’s advice to his son is well-intended, but comes out wrongly – helping Adam to believe that his father hates him.
Do you know other ways of being big?
– Moses Cooper (The Evening (1) paragraph 115)
Importance: Moses discusses manhood with his son. Adam insists that since he is big in both size and stature, he is more or less a man. Moses contends that there are things other than physique which dictate manhood.
The whole sky is red.
– Levi Cooper (The Night paragraph 8)
Importance: Levi dreams of a red sky the night before the British attack the militia in Lexington. Here, the red sky is ominous of a coming storm of war, and of the deaths of numerous men and boys that will follow.
I get to feeling that we’re all asleep still, and this is just a dream.
– Ruth Simmons (The Night paragraph 154)
Importance: With things changing so fast, everything happening seems surreal. This is certainly the case for Ruth, who explains that everything seems dreamlike, as if it can’t be real. Only the day before, the British military was meant to provide protection to the colonies; now, they are meant to take away the rights of the citizens of the colony.
Sometimes we don’t have time.
– Moses Cooper (The Night paragraph 166)
Importance: With the approach of the British, Adam is thrust into manhood. What he has wanted more than anything he now wonders if he is truly ready for. His mother echoes these sentiments, distraught that Adam will now leave behind childhood in an instant. Moses patiently explains that, sometimes, there isn’t time to grow, and it must happen all at once.
Grief should not be denied.
– Solomon Chandler (The Forenoon paragraph 32)
Importance: Adam, who cries after the death of his father, is comforted by Solomon Chandler. Grief is a manly thing, and should not be denied, Solomon contends. Losing one’s father is a terrible thing to experience, and Adam cannot be faulted for crying.
It’s the finishing, now.
– Unidentified American rebel (The Forenoon paragraph 108)
Importance: As American militiamen stream into the area around Concord, Lexington, and Boston, their words and conversations are overheard by Adam. They are all agreed that they did not choose this fight, and did not want the fight – but now that the British have started things, the American rebels will finish them, and that is what truly matters now.
It was my initiation to war and the insane symphony war plays.
– Adam Cooper (The Midday paragraph 74)
Importance: Adam, preparing for the British advance down the road, sees a British officer shot from his horse and dragged along by the stirrup. It is a terrifying sight, one which initiates Adam into the horrors of actual combat.
I’ll tell you when it will end – when we drive them back into their ships, and when their ships sail away from here and leave us in peace in our own lands. Not until then.
– Joseph Simmons (The Afternoon (2) paragraph 10)
Importance: Here, Joseph Simmons explains to Adam that a war has truly begun. It is not a war which they wanted, but a war which they must now see through to victory. It is a war that will end only when the British return home and leave the American colonies in peace.
It isn’t the same anymore. We aren’t the same. This morning, we knew that we wouldn’t fight. But now we know that was must fight, and we’re learning how.
– Adam Cooper (The Evening (2) paragraph 64)
Importance: Speaking to the theme of change, Adam explains that everything has changed since the morning. The American colonials are now at war with Great Britain. Prepared to avoid conflict in the morning, conflict has been thrust upon them. Yet now they must actually carry on a war, a war they had long hoped to avoid – but their cause is just.
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