Quotes (3) - Into the Mist

“The belowdecks cabin wasn’t very big. There was a small kitchen, a bathroom, and a place to sleep with three hammocks. The three hammocks hung in a row with Roland’s first, then mine, then the little one Yipes slept in. It was a good arrangement, since this was the order in which we usually arose in the morning, and it was darkest in the very corner of the room where Yipes hung still and quiet. I yelled the news once more but he didn’t move. I hated waking him this way, but we’d been at sea for twenty-five long days with nothing more than twenty-five nods and twenty-five winks. Now there was news to be had, and I was sure he’d want me to wake him for it. I nudged his hammock and let it swing back and forth. Getting no response, I grabbed hold of Yipes’s mustache on one side and began to pull. I pulled until his lip was hanging in the air. Then I wiggled his lip all around, but still he wouldn’t stir.

I took hold of the hammock from the bottom and flipped it over, dropping Yipes onto the floor of the Warwick Beacon with a loud thud. For a moment there was nothing, only the sound of his squashed nose breathing against the wood floor.

‘Is that you, Alexa?’ came his muffled little voice.

‘Yes, it’s me! Wake up!’

Yipes slowly sat up, dazed and only half awake.

‘How did I find my way to the floor?’ He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and twitched his nose. ‘I was having the strangest dream. It was those two cats from the library – do you remember those wicked cats? They were pulling on my mustache with their sharp teeth. It was awful!’

I was about to tell him who’d really been pulling on his mustache. ‘Yipes – listen to me,’ I said.

-pg. 5-6, Into the Mist

The quote above show how ambitious Alexa is to get Yipes to wake up so they can hear what Roland Warvold is about to tell them. It is humorous to me how Yipes - such a small man - would require so much time and energy (from the person who's trying to wake him up) to finally wake up and not even to realize that someone had been pulling his mustache and flipping him over the hammock. Also, the way Carman writes shows that Alexa is annoyed of Yipes waking up slowly since she had bigger news to deliver to him.

“ As we approached the last turn on the path of smashed debris leading up to the House on the Hill, Thomas set our plan in motion. He was at the very back of the line with only Finch and the dogs trailing a ways behind. Finch was absentmindedly kicking at the garbage at his feet when Thomas tapped me twice on the shoulder. I shuddered to think what would come next. I tapped the girl in front of me twice, and on it went up the line to the very front, until the very last boy – Jonezy – was tapped, and he ran screaming off the path into a sea of trash before him.

‘Get back here!’ yelled Finch from somewhere behind us, suddenly aware that one of the children in his charge had bolted from the line. The bell finally stopped at thirty-eight (I had counted every one) as Madame Vickers watched the boy race off yelling and pointing.

-pg. 47-48, Into the Mist

I find those two paragraphs very interesting as it presents a difficultly for Finch (whom I find very obnoxious) to catch the kid, Jonezy. Also, Patrick Carman writes meaningful sentences that secretly veils other purposes of its existence. For instance, the sentence, "I shuddered to think what would come next.", shows to me that Roland Warvold is not the same as Thomas Warvold. Although they are brothers, Thomas is more carefree when Roland is more cautious.

“The Mooch was growling and digging around my foot, and then to my horror he seemed to have gotten ahold of the sole of my old shoe. He was yanking hard, pulling back on his haunches in violent jerks.‘Mooooooooch?’ Finch’s voice cracked through the air like a long whip as he searched for the dog. The Mooch gave one last ferocious pull on the shoe, and it came off in his mouth. Something about the idea of having this murderous dog’s teeth wrapped around my bare foot made me fight with everything I had in me to get my foot down inside the hole where it would safe. I felt the sharp rock scrape hard against bone and the gnarly roots grab at my bare skin as my leg came free.

‘Mooch!’ Finch cried again, this time with more anger in his voice, as though he were planning to kick the dog the moment he saw him. I clenched my teeth against the pain in my leg and listened as the Mooch tore off toward his master, my shoe wedged firmly in its mouth.

‘You come when I call you and not a second later!’ Finch was lecturing the dog as though it could understand him, and to my astonishment it sounded as though he and the Mooch were moving off in the other direction.

‘And stop picking up junk! I’m not throwing any shoes for you to fetch until we find those boys.’

We could hear the Mooch whimpering as they drifted down a different path toward the bottom of the hill. The dust settled in the hole and our eyes had grown used to the light. For the moment, we were safe.

‘Better your shoe than one of your toes,’ said my brother. ‘He would have chewed that big one right off without thinking twice.’

-pg. 54-55, Into the Mist

Patrick Carman first creates suspense, then leads it to humor in the paragraphs above. Truthfully, I was worried that Thomas and Roland Warvold would be discovered by the Mooch (the big dog), and their plans to go to the Western Kingdom would be destroyed.