“I couldn’t bear to think I was wrong, that somehow everything I was going through didn’t actually have a meaning” (Grealy, 99).

The message Grealy was trying to send here is that in our lives we are going to come upon bumps in the road and we will feel as if we are not able to overcome them. We will ask ourselves, “How could something this awful happen to me on purpose?” We will question that higher power or fate and that is what Grealy was doing here. But everything we encounter or experience does have a meaning. It shapes who we are and what we will become. The only way we learn anything is through experiences, good or bad. And unfortunately we must have terrible experiences in order to know and be able to define what good ones are.

This quote shows that both the son and the father are the good guys and they are trying to keep society alive even if they themselves won’t live forever. It’s all a matter of what you believe in and in the book the father and son believed that they were doing the right thing by surviving. It also showed the last piece of humanity in the world. As far as they knew they were the last right thinking people in the world and they were doing the right thing by carrying the fire. Which the fire could have been anything but what I believe is that the fire is the hope that they have in the world and they can never let that die out because without hope there is no reason to continue believing

This passage really has good meaning to the story. It shows that even though the boy is scared his father is always there to help him get through everything. This relates to me because I know that no matter what happens my family is there to support me. It seem that McCarthy is showing us that the true character of the father is that he will be there to help his child no matter what physical trails he might have to endure to help his only son survive.

I like this quote for many reasons. The first reason is I love the word elicit, but I don’t know why. The second reason is the fact that I feel the same way about hospitals, so I completely understand what Lucy was writing about. As I child I spent most of my time the hospital, since my grandma worked there, my grandpa was sick a lot and so was my mom. And even though the thought of a hospital should upset me, it doesn’t. I feel most at home at the hospital, which is how Lucy felt, the times spent in the hospital may not have been the most pleasant, but her times in hospital is when she had attention, she was a special case and the best patients. Her time in the hospital for full of praise and attention, which is what any child wants. I also like the quote because of the way she personifies longing, she makes it seem like a leech. Not matter how hard you try to shake longing away, it’s attached to you.

This is written as though right at that moment, the children lost their childhoods, and there was no way to take back what they had seen. There was no way to go back in time, to when those children were innocent and curious. Now, they had fears and sadness, and they knew how the world could upset them, and that knowledge is enough to make anyone speechless. I like how this quote is laid out, it arranges a clear image in my head, while at the same time, it intrigues me. It’s as if we all know that time or familiar thing that could bring on a lost memory of a time of sadness and those kids knew that this would be one of those moments.

This quote makes Lucy seem a little more vulnerable, and little less like superwoman. It also points out the fact that up until that moment, her illness was made her special, and therefore glamorous. It was as though she thought that semi-passing out on the ground would make a nurse come and sweep Lucy up and carry her back to her bed. But now she realized that she was sick, nothing fabulous to fun about it. This simple quote marked a turning point in Lucy’s illness when she realized that, there may not be fabulousness in every aspect of life.

This quote sickened and saddened me at the same time, which is why the quote caught me off guard and really made me think. It’s amazing how a person’s world can be held together with the smallest things and since it’s gone their world falls apart. This quote also make me wonder why the mail was so depressing? Lucy’s book was not terribly depressing. In fact most of the time, she tried to be happy with her surroundings and did not complain about her cancer, except to point out the way her face looked. I find it amazing that Patchett’s quote is able to create so many questions in my mind simply by using inventive sentences.

After reading this book, it’s undeniable that Ann Patchett has a gift with words. She uses her words the way every author does. Painting a picture while simultaneously inspiring the reader’s imagination. Take this quote for example, it has the perfect definition of love. To Lucy, it was a dark, intangible object that she somehow believed was worth the risk to find. And even if Lucy has no idea of what she was getting herself into, she was willing to search the dark depths of the human soul to find love.