Island Stories QUOTES

Question 1

In the darkness

Answer 1

“they had been so long in the darkness of the mine that their eyes did not know the light, and the darkness of their labour had become that of their lives.” (34)

Question 2

Underground water

Answer 2

“once you start it takes hold of you, once you drink underground water, you will always come back to drink some more. The water gets in your blood. we have been working in the mines here since 1873.” (35)

Question 3

Miners scars

Answer 3

“all summer we have watched our bodies change their colour and seen our hair grow bleached and ever lighter. only the scars that all of us bear fail to respond to the healing power of the suns heat. They seem to stand out even more vividly now, long running pink welts that course down our inner forearms or jagged saw-toothed ridges on the taut calves of our legs.” (183)

Question 4

Big men

Answer 4

“we are big men engaged in perhaps the most violent of occupations we have chosen as our adversary walls and faces of massive stone.”

Question 5

Sentenced

Answer 5

“we have sentenced ourselves to enclosures so that we might taste the giddy joy of breaking through.” (201)

Question 6

Opening paragraph

Answer 6

However, my father was not the only one to see my sadness. It was Neil who asked me to come outside to check the lean to the stall. He gestured to me to sit on the overturned pail and gently spoke of his own time; a younger time when he too was on the adult side of the world, but it wasn’t anything about Santa Claus; this was about his own future.