Salvage The Bones Quotes

Tremendous storms like hurricanes cause significant damage to the environment and to people's life in general. However, one can also use the concept of a hurricane to describe how their life is going. For example, they might argue that certain events in their lives are like a hurricane or a because they are experiencing bad things and it creates uncertainty. These feelings can be connected to the characters in Jesmyn Ward's book Salvage the Bones. Teenage girl Esch, who is trying to understand the reasons behind happenings in her life, is the book's narrator. The characters, specifically Esch, Skeetah, and Daddy, who live in rural Mississippi, must not only prepare for and survive Hurricane Katrina as a literal hurricane but also their own

After she finds out she's pregnant, she often describes how she is not feeling good and what she thinks of the pregnancy, Ward writes, “Every time I dozed, the truth that I was pregnant was there like a bully to kick me awake” ( Ward 37). This quote shows how she is feeling about the truth that is her pregnancy and how she can not even sleep with the information that will make her life more difficult in the future. This is a part of her emotional hurricane so to say which is also a byproduct of the psychical hurricane. She learns something shocking, and for the rest of the book, she wonders what will happen to the baby, how daddy and everyone else will react, and if she will be a good mother. There is also uncertainty about how she will give the baby proper nutrients because her family is poor and she does not have access to lots of

When the hurricane subsides, however, there is a sense of solidarity and coming together when everyone promises to help and support her. It was not just an emotional hurricane that Esch survived, so when it was over Esch describes how she viewed the hurricane to be like, Ward writes, “She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind as puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark gulf and salt-burned land. She left us to learn to crawl, she left us to salvage'' (255). This quote gives insight into how the physical hurricane affected Esch and the community, especially since they were poor, it was harder for them to recover from it. She says the hurricane was a murderous mother who barely left them alive and left them salvage for what they could. Both the uncertainty of caring for her baby and the uncertainty of surviving and rebuilding from the aftermath of the hurricane demonstrate how poor America is. When Esch is pushed into the water, Skeetah is forced to choose between her or