Small island key quotes Flashcards

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1
Q

Hostility towards Gilbert in the cinema Chapter 17

A

•‘You’re nothing but trouble’
• ‘even in RAF blue my coloured skin can permit anyone to treat me less than a man’
• ‘’Enunciating as if talking to an imbecile’

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2
Q

Chapter 14 Gilbert in US Army base

A

‘All these words had been used to characterise me in the last few minutes. Insults every one’

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3
Q

Chapter 30 Gilbert working in the post office insults

A

•‘When are you going back to the jungle?’
• ‘We can’t use your sort’
• ‘Speak English’
• ‘There’s decent Englishmen that should be doing your job’

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4
Q

Chapter 30 Gilbert feeling ashamed after dealing with racism

A

•‘What a forlorn desire to seek indifference’
• ‘aching shame stooped me double’

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5
Q

Mr Todd/ British attitudes towards immigrants

A

• ‘this country no longer feels like his own’
• ‘Hitler invading couldn’t have been any worse’
•’animal desires’
• ‘We’ll have a devil of a time getting rid of them now’

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6
Q

Hortense’s disillusionment chapter 2

A

• ‘You make me come here and live like an animal?’
• ‘her mouth gaping like a simpleton’s’

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7
Q

Hortense’s childish naïvety in chapter 1

A

‘ding a ling’ ‘But there was no answer’

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8
Q

Gilbert’s disillusionment about the Mother country chapter 12

A

‘how come England did not know me?’
‘Leave home, leave familiar, leave love’

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9
Q

Hortense gets rejected from teaching position chapter 50

A

Gilbert - ‘This is not the way that England work’
‘You’re not qualified to teach here in England’
‘Every organ I possessed screamed on this woman’

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10
Q

Chapter 51: Hortense’s realisation of the reality of England

A

‘Hortense reeling wounded after a sharp slap from the Mother Country’s hand’
‘I have found that this is a very cold country’

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11
Q

Hortense’s dialect, out with Queenie

A

•‘Tired of this silly dance of miscomprehension’
•‘At college my diction was admired by all’
•Wonders why the working clas speak so ‘coarse’

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12
Q

Chapter 59 confrontation between Gilbert and Bernard

A

(Gilbert about race) White. No better, no worse than me, just white

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13
Q

Anecdotes chapter 12

A

• Curtis was told ‘his skin was too dark to worship there’
• Eugene was ‘taken away’ wrongly for ‘attacking an old lady’
• Louis believed ‘bloodyforeigner’ to be all one word

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14
Q

Chapter 12 Gilbert’s disillusionment

A

‘All us pitiful West Indian dreamers who sailed with heads bursting with foolishness were a joke’ (to his cousin)

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15
Q

Gilbert about taking the baby chapter 59

A

‘Leave that little coloured baby alone in this country, full of people like Mr Bligh. What sort of life would that little man have?’

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16
Q

Chapter 59 Hortense having hope

A

•Told she would have a ‘golden future’ with her ‘golden skin’
• Hortense then says ‘I intend to’
Choosing to stay and fight for their life together in the UK

17
Q

Chapter 59 Celia Langley motif of disillusionment

A

‘Celia Langley’ would never have imagined something ‘so preposterous of this Mother Country’

18
Q

Gilbert feeling angry chapter 30 after facing racism

A

I could have whacked his nose until it cracked and bled’