We remember, even if no one remembers us, because we have not yet reconciled ourselves to not being. Death is still new to us, and we are not indifferent to the things that concern the living.
-- The Town ("Shoes")

Importance: This quote is an unsettling reminder of the reality of death during war and the impact of time. Here the newly dead speak. The entire episode is told in a choral We. No single person narrates the events of Tyll’s visit. The two have happily been spared the war. And the town speaks of the excitement and the thrill of the traveling show. But ultimately the war reaches the village. The suspension of realism creates the emotional impact of war. How quickly, the townsfolk now understand, people can be forgotten. In a novel that interrogates the role of memory and how is and was often define the same reality, this quote is an...