The Golden Age Quotes (Section A)

Question 1

relationships

Answer 1

• “being apart from Meyer” were as if the “courage of her bones had been stripped from her”- Ida away from Meyer in Hungary
• “like a mother cat she had attended to every part of him” - frank about Ida (separation in the war)
• love was instantaneous like inspiration

Question 2

love

Answer 2

-“polio is like love.. years later when you think you have recovered, it comes back”
- they sighed with thankfulness to be together- frank and Elsa outside by the netting factory
- “she knew shed only kept breathing because of her mother. so that her mother wouldn’t die”- Elsa
“to remind us of the bliss of being loved”- Meyer thinks this is why humans go on having children

Question 3

growth

Answer 3

“once you get used to your condition he said, your imagination becomes free again”- Sullivan to frank
“this is the community we belong to now, Meyer thought”
- frank had developed “intuition, observation, experience”

Question 4

change

Answer 4

• ” to hear those pieces again was like a reunion”- Ida plays piano, franks response
• “on your feet lad! his father hisses, as if at the end of his patience”- Mr Poole to malcom poole
• “glamorous love of his life who had betrayed him”
• “wide hipped country girl”
• “left in the world with a child and no husband”
• “she felt a clutch of loss, of possessiveness” (Elsa when they went to the beach, shows what she has loss)

Question 5

recovery

Answer 5

• “they screamed and splashed and forgot their daily exertions on land”
  “we are as tough as cockroaches

Question 6

progress

Answer 6

• “the thankfulness she felt, the peace, at the end of the concert”- Idas concert

Question 7

isolation

Answer 7

• “natural quarantine”
• learning to be alone
• coffins you lived in
  “they felt exclusive like a family”
• they felt different
  olive penny; “another self alone in mystery”

“only little Albert Sutton cried because he didn’t want to come back –>
he decided he would “make a bolt for it”

“until they went home theyd forgotten they were in a tragedy” (christmas)

Question 8

vocation

Answer 8

“Polio had taken his legs, but given him his vocation; poet”

Question 9

Netting factory

Answer 9

“[seem] to be promising something … A future. “
“lit up all night like a theatre or dancehall”

light;
“the lights of the city” were “a promise of life to come”
“light had seen less bright to him, older, sadder”