The quotation bank

Quotations

Short enough to memorise, rich enough to analyse. Each quotation below is grouped by focus, given a method and a reason it earns its place, so you carry evidence into the exam already half-analysed. References are by part and chapter, since editions vary and there are no reliable page numbers to give.

Nanda Kaul and solitude

Quotation	Method	Why it earns its place
‘to be left to the pines and cicadas alone’I, Ch. 1	Verbs of subtraction; nature imagery	Her longing is framed as a wish to be rid of people, not to gain anything; solitude as removal.
‘To be a tree, no more and no less’I, Ch. 1	Metaphor; self-erasure	A tree needs nothing and loves no one; the image sounds serene and hides a refusal of feeling.
‘What pleased and satisfied her so, here at Carignano, was its barrenness’I, Ch. 1	Paradox; setting as character	Emptiness offered as reward. The house is loved for its lacks, which mirror hers.
‘I want no more. I want nothing. Can I not be left with nothing?’I, Ch. 5	Repetition; rhetorical question	The central cry. The insistence on ‘nothing’ betrays how much is being suppressed.
‘Discharge me… I’ve discharged all my duties. Discharge.’I, Ch. 8	Repeated diction; military and medical register	Motherhood spoken of as a sentence served, so freedom means release rather than joy.

Raka the wild child

Quotation	Method	Why it earns its place
‘Raka - what an utter misnomer’II, Ch. 1	Irony; naming	Raka means the moon, yet the child is earthbound and burnt; the name sets up her strangeness.
‘There was a sound of bones colliding.’II, Ch. 1	Auditory image; metonymy	Their embrace is reduced to hard, loveless contact; kinship without warmth.
‘If Nanda Kaul was a recluse out of vengeance for a long life of duty and obligation, her great-granddaughter was a recluse by nature, by instinct.’II, Ch. 4	Balanced antithesis	The defining contrast: earned solitude against effortless solitude, which is why Raka unsettles her.
‘she was born to it, simply’II, Ch. 4	Adverb; plain syntax	The flat ‘simply’ makes Raka the true recluse, needing no vengeance and no reason.
‘the finished, perfected model of what Nanda Kaul herself was merely a brave, flawed experiment’II, Ch. 4	Metaphor of design; superlatives	Raka as ideal double. The old woman sees her own aim achieved, and it disturbs her.
‘The crazy one from Carignano.’II, Ch. 18	Reported epithet; external view	The caretaker names Raka from outside, confirming her strangeness through others’ eyes.

Fire and the landscape

Quotation	Method	Why it earns its place
‘Pine trees with charred trunks and contorted branches’II, Ch. 2	Visual imagery; adjectives of damage	The scenery is scarred, not scenic; the burnt land carries the novel’s buried violence.
‘a splendid bonfire that burned in the heart of the yellow clouds’II, Ch. 6	Fire imagery; oxymoronic beauty	A dust-storm turned to fire; ‘splendid’ makes destruction alluring and seeds the ending.
‘This is how forest fires do start.’II, Ch. 6	Foreshadowing; colloquial register	Ram Lal’s ordinary warning reads as prophecy once Raka strikes the match.
‘The scene of devastation and failure somehow drew her, inspired her.’II, Ch. 18	Abstract nouns; ironic ‘inspired’	Ruin attracts Raka where beauty cannot; her innocence is aligned with wreckage.
‘till she was alight, ablaze’II, Ch. 18	Fire metaphor; intensifying pair	Raka seems to merge with fire before she ever lights one, blurring child and element.
‘the ravaged, destroyed and barren spaces’II, Ch. 18	Accumulation of adjectives	What the child wants named in three words of emptiness, echoing Carignano’s ‘barrenness’.

Ila Das

Quotation	Method	Why it earns its place
‘I am always alone. I am never afraid.’III, Ch. 11	Parallel structure; dramatic irony	Brave bravado spoken just before the walk on which she is killed; the reader hears the danger she cannot.
‘she lay raped, broken, still and finished. Now it was dark.’III, Ch. 12	Blunt monosyllables; short final sentence	Desai states the murder plainly and stops; restraint makes the horror land without spectacle.
‘She has been strangled. The doctor is here. He claims she has been raped. She is dead.’III, Ch. 13	Clipped declaratives; official voice	The news arrives flat and procedural down the telephone, which is exactly why it devastates.

Care refused and women’s vulnerability

Quotation	Method	Why it earns its place
‘The care of others was a habit Nanda Kaul had mislaid.’I, Ch. 9	Metaphor; the understated ‘mislaid’	Care reduced to a misplaced object foreshadows the failure that will cost Ila her life.
‘She held the arm of her chair very tightly in an effort to speak, to say “Come and stay with me, Ila,”’III, Ch. 7	Physical detail; withheld speech	The unspoken invitation is the hinge of the plot; the grip on the chair is cowardice made visible.

The ending: self-deception and the fire

Quotation	Method	Why it earns its place
‘they were tranquillizers, pills’III, Ch. 13	Metaphor; clinical diction	Nanda Kaul names her own stories as sedatives, admitting a lifetime of self-medication with lies.
‘She did not live here alone by choice - she lived here alone because that was what she was forced to do, reduced to doing.’III, Ch. 13	Antithesis; corrective repetition	The proud recluse collapses in a sentence; ‘forced’ and ‘reduced’ rewrite everything before it.
‘Look, Nani, I have set the forest on fire.’III, Ch. 13	Childlike register; climax	The quiet, proud address turns metaphor to fact; the suppressed fire finally erupts.
‘black smoke spiralled up over the mountain’III, Ch. 13	Closing image; upward movement	The novel ends on rising smoke, leaving destruction unresolved and the title fulfilled.

Learning and deploying quotations for a closed-book exam

You cannot take the text in, so learn fewer quotations and learn them well. Aim for the short ones, six words rather than a whole sentence, because a fragment is easier to recall under pressure and easier to quote accurately. Learn each one attached to a method and an effect, not on its own; the ones you have written with in a practice paragraph are the ones you will keep, and the ones you only recited will slip in the hall.

In the answer, pick the quotation for the exact word you want to analyse and build the point around that word. One well-chosen fragment, taken apart from method to effect, earns more than a line quoted whole and left to speak for itself; naming a device is labelling, not analysis. Practise turning these into paragraphs on the exam skills page.