How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
It was a time when the past had lost its sweetness and its sap. You'd go a good long road before you'd find a man, and he very old, who wished to bring back a golden past. Men were notched and comfortable in the present, hard and unfruitful as it was, but only as a doorstep into a fantastic future. (15.1.7)
So now we've got the opposite of the crotchety old man, and that's the man who sees the way things are going to be. Steinbeck uses the example of roads, and the people who think, Won't it be great when the roads are all paved and it takes less time to travel? We hear this kind of rhetoric all the time and in every era: Won't it be great when we have all have hover cars? Won't it be great when we all have robot-servants doing everything for us? It's optimism about the future, and as this passage shows, it affects how people look at the present around them; people see their present as notched and comfortable even if things aren't all that easy.
Quote #5
Do you remember hearing that, old men? And do you remember how an easterly breeze brought odors in from Chinatown, roasting pork and punk and black tobacco and yen shi? And do you remember the deep blatting stroke of the great gong in the Joss House, and how its tone hung in the air so long? (19.1.9)
Do you remember, dear reader? Because Steinbeck is talking to you. And you are both the reader and the old men. How is that possible? No, there is not an actual group of old men to whom Steinbeck is referring; instead he is asking the reader to go along with him for a little bit and pretend. Pretend what exactly? That you grew up in Salinas at the same time as Steinbeck and that you share all of these memories of Chinese food. Who doesn't want to remember the smells of their childhood?
Quote #6
She got up from her bed and threw her robe around her and walked barefooted through the house crowded with Hamiltons. In the hall they were gone to the bedrooms. In the bedrooms, with the beds neat-made, they were all in the kitchen, and in the kitchen—they dispersed and were gone. Sadness and death. (32.2.75)
Part of the sadness of the past is that once it's gone, it's gone—there's no getting it back. Dessie here is lamenting the times when all the Hamiltons were together, but it's not like she can rustle them all up and recreate these memories. Another reason why people feel drawn to the past is because they know that they can never get it again. Dang, time is harsh.