‘The Cone Gatherers’ – Key Quotes

This is NOT an exhaustive list of quotes for this novel - there are LOADS. However it does provide a starting point and quote a few of them are suitable for more than one type of question.

Quote / Good For
“It was a good tree by the sea loch, with many cones and much sunshine; it was homely too, with rests among its topmost branches as comfortable as chairs.” / Key character
Nature Q
Good V’s Evil
Conflict/confrontation
Setting
Re Calum - “For Calum the tree-top was interest enough; in it he was as indigenous as squirrel or bird. / Key character
Nature Q
Good V’s Evil
Conflict/confrontation
Setting
Re Calum - “His face was chuckling to them and his sunburnt face was alert and beautiful with trust” p1 / Conflict/confrontation
Key Character
Good V’s Evil
Neil - “We’re human beings just like them. We need space to live and breathe in.”p3 / Conflict/confrontation
Class Structure
“Calum shivered: he knew and feared death” p4 / Conflict/confrontation
Key Character
“Calum, demoralised as always by hatred, had cowered against the hut, hiding his face.” P 5 / Conflict/confrontation
Key Character
“Calum represented, pity so meek as to be paralysed by the suffering that provoked it, ought to be regretted but never despised.” P7 / Conflict/confrontation
Key Character
“in an icy sweat of hatred, with his gun aimed all the time at the feeble minded hunchback grovelling over the rabbit. To pull the trigger, requiring far less force than to break the rabbit’s neck, and then to hear simultaneously the clean report of the gun and the last obscene squeal of the killed dwarf would have been for him, he thought, release too, from the noose of disgust and despair drawn, these past few days, so much tighter.” P 9 / Lots!
Key character
Symbolism
Conflict/confrontation
(BREAK THIS QUOTE DOWN IF USING)
“He could have named, item by item, leaf and fruit and branch, the overspreading tree of revulsion in him; but he could not tell the force which made it grow.” P 9 / Symbolism
Good V’s Evil
Key Character
“Since childhood Duror had been repelled by anything living that had an imperfection or deformity or lack: a cat with three legs had roused pity in other, in him an ungovernable disgust.” P 10/11 / Key Character
“what Duror heard was a roaring within him, as if that tree of hatred and revulsion was being tossed by a gale.” P 11 / Symbolism
Key Character
Good V’s Evil
“those two sub-humans” p13 / Good V’s Evil
“To look after his brother, he had never got married, though once he had come very near it: that memory often revived to turn his heart melancholy.” P 4 / Responsibility
“without seeing them…had issued an order…that they were to be treated with sympathy” p 10 (LRC) / Responsibility
Class structure
“in a hut as small as a rabbit hutch” / Responsibility
Class structure
“Do you really, he thought, see this tree growing and spreading in my mind? And its fruit madness?” / Symbolism
Key Character
Good V’s Evil
“It astonished Duror that she, so genuinely good, should be helping him in his evil plan.”P49 / Good V’s Evil
Key character
“they seemed to be plucking nuts of sunshine” P52 / Setting
Good V’s Evil
Confrontation/conflict
“The constant sight of the mansion house chimneys, reminding him of their hut, which to him remained a symbol of humiliation.” P52 / Class structure
“he still whimpered and cowered…” P55 (Calum as Duror comes to tree) / Good V’s Evil
“Maybe he’ll shoot at us” P56 / Presentiment/Foreshadowing
Good V’s Evil
“He was like a tree, still showing green leaves; but underground death was creeping along the roots.” P59 / Symbolism
Key Character
Good V’s Evil
“Calum no longer was one of the beaters; he too was a dear hunted by remorseless men. Moaning and gasping, he fled after them, with no hope of saving them from slaughter.” P69 / Key scene
Conflict/confrontation
Key character
“Screaming in sympathy, heedless of the danger of being shot, Calum flung himself upon the deer, clasped it round the neck, and tried to comfort it.” P70 / Key scene
Conflict/confrontation
Key character
Good V’s Evil
“rushing upon the stricken deer and the frantic hunchback, he threw the latter off with furious force, and then, seizing the former’s head with one hand cut its throat savagely with the other. Blood spouted.” P70 / Key scene
Conflict/confrontation
Key character/development
Good V’s Evil
“…there by the dead deer he understood…why he hated the hunchback so profoundly and yet was so fascinated by him. For many years his life had been stunted, mishappen, obscene, and hideous; and this misbegotten creature was its personification. P73 / Conflict/confrontation
Key character/development
Good V’s Evil
“But the hunchback in some dreadful way had become necessary to him…His going therefore had to become a destruction, an agony, a crucifixion.” P78 / Conflict/confrontation
Key character/development
Good V’s Evil
Symbolism
“We didn’t treat them fairly” P85 / Class Structure
Conflict/confrontation (Roderick/LRC)
“this is no time for playing Sir Galahad” P 93 / Class Structure
Conflict/confrontation (Roderick/LRC)
“Human beings are more important than dogs” P 93 / Class Structure
Conflict/confrontation (Roderick/LRC)
“You see, I know that the little one is an evil person” P 94 (LRC repeating D lies) / Class Structure
Conflict/confrontation (Roderick/LRC)
“The result was a revulsion against the Dr’s reiterated philosophy of endurance…he felt in a mood for murder, rape, or suicide’ P104 / Key Character
Good V’s Evil
conflict
“the most evil presence of all”
“Duror was a barrier he could not pass”
P118 / Good V’s Evil
“Roderick knew that the struggle between good and evil never rested: in the world, and in every human being, it went on. The war was an enormous example. Good did not always win.” P119 / Key Character/development
Good V’s Evil
“Black cloud were now overhead. Thunder snarled. Colour faded from the wood.” / Setting
Symbolism (pathetic fallacy)
“Haven’t we got the right to keep ourselves alive? Is the Lady like the rain, and the thunder and lightning…” / Class structure
“What is the meaning of this?” her voice was “far more appalling to the two men than any thunder.” P129 / Class structure
Conflict/confrontation (LRC/Roderick)
“A lifetime of frightened submissiveness held it down.” P129 / Class structure
“this sinister transformation in Duror, itself an episode from a macabre fairy tale, suddenly in the wood the straight stalwart immaculate ash tree turning into a squat warty bush swarming with worms. P 146 / Symbolism
Good V’s Evil
Key character development
“…the gamekeeper was unkempt, with the neck of his shirt grubby. His tie askew with the knot low, as if, choking, he had wrenched it loose.” P156 / Key character development
“Duror and Calum were human; and at that very moment, in different parts of the earth, men were blowing one another to pieces without personal bias or hatred.” P160 / Good V’s Evil
Conflict/confrontation (wider context)
“We could have perished in the storm for all she cared. Was that not murder? P173 / Class
“His arms were loose and dangled in macabre gestures of supplication. Though he smiled, he was dead.” P180 / Symbolism
Good V’s Evil
Key character
“From his bag dropped a cone, and then another…other drops, also singly, but faster, distracted her: these were of blood” P180/181 / Symbolism
Good V’s Evil
“she knew that somewhere, on her beloved promontory, Duror, with his face shattered and bloody, lay dead.” P181 / Setting
Good V’s Evil
Character development (LRC)
Class
“as she wept pity, and purified hope, and joy, welled up in my heart.” P181 / Good V’s Evil
Character development (LRC)
Class