The Grass is Singing Quotes Flashcards
Learn important quotes from The Grass is Singing
What important quote describes the “arid feminism” of Mary Turner?
“She had inherited from her mother an arid feminism, which had no meaning in her own life at all, for she was leading the comfortable carefree existence of a woman in South Africa, and she did not know how fortunate she was.”
What quote describes the naïveté of Mary Turner about the rest of the world?
“She understood nothing of conditions of other countries, had no measuring rod to assess herself with.”
What quote describes the often pathetic nature of Dick Turner?
“The planter had broken down, a water-cart had lost a wheel, the wagon had been driven up a hill with the brake on, in sheer lighthearted carelessness”
What is the excerpt that describes the beauty of the veld observed by Mary just before dawn?
“Slowly, across the sky, spread a marvellous pink flush, and the trees lifted to meet it, becoming tinged with pink…”
What excerpt describe the veld as being active in the death of Mary?
“And then the bush avenged itself: that was her last thought. The trees advanced in a rush, like beasts, and the thunder was the noise of their coming.”
What quote demonstrates Mary initial lack of understanding about black people?
“She had never come into contact with natives before … in the club she had been kind to the waiters… but she was afraid of them. Every woman in South Africa was brought up to be.”
What quote demonstrates how Mary has grown to hate Dick?
“Mary needed a man stronger than herself and when she saw him weak and goal-less, and pitiful, she hated him.”
What quote demonstrates Dick’s powers of self-delusion with regard to Mary?
“By now he had persuaded himself into believing she was a practical, adaptable, serene person, who would need only a few weeks on the farm to become what he wanted her to be.”
What quote describes Charlie Slatter’s desire for money?
“He came with one idea: to make money. He made it. He made plenty of it.”
What quote demonstrates Charlie Slatter’s (the representative of general white, rural Rhodesian society) attitude toward other whites?
“But was Slatter was a fair man in his own way, where his own race was concerned.”
What quote represents the “esprit de corps of white Southern African society?”, and the fundamental fear of white supremacy?
“He was obeying the dictate of the first law of white South Africa, which is:
“Thou shalt not let your fellow whites sink lower than a certain point; because if you do, the Nigger will see he is as good as you are.””
What quote demonstrates Dick Turner’s attitude toward the town?
“Dick Turner disliked the town. When he drove in through the veld he knew so well, through those ugly scattered suburbs that looked as if they had come out of housing catalogues, that had no relationship with the hard brown African soil and the arching blue sky…”
What quote demonstrates the fragility of the white supremacist system?
“…when a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a Native and sees the human being (which it is his chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.”
What quotes demonstrate the different reactions to the murder of mary, those of general rhodesia and the District?
The general population felt “a little spurt of anger mingled with what was almost satisfaction”, and about those in the district, “They did not discuss the murder; that was the most extraordinary thing about it… There was, it seemed, a tacit agreement that the Turner case should not be given undue publicity by gossip”
What quote demostrates the innate nature of the distortion of the Turner case to protect white supremacy?
“The steps he took (and he made not one mistake) were taken apparently instinctively and without conscious planning.”
