"Midnight Soldiers"

Key Quotes

“Tony could never repay his debts; in the end it always fell on Matilda. He did not even give her money for rice. He told her he was returning the money his father had borrowed from another moneylender, not Salim. The year of her marriage, his net had been destroyed by a trawler at sea and she had given him her gold bangle to buy another. Now they no longer spoke about their debts. His drunken brawls with moneylenders had become a daily storm that she had learned to live with.” 161-162

- To me, this seems like the type of situation that many women sometimes find themselves in, when they are trapped into a relationship with an unreliable mooch.

- As an outsider, it is easy to look at the situation and criticize the woman for putting up with someone who doesn’t deserve her and takes advantage of her reliability, but being in that situation would probably give one an entirely different perspective.

“The fumes of arrack were as thick as a while distillery smashed to smithereens on one man’s soul.” 164

- This description of the odor that bombards Matilda when she returns to her home and finds her husband passed out further illustrates how unreliable Tony really is. Not surprisingly, they begin fighting shortly after this. Personally, this is not the way I would want to be greeted by my husband after working all day to support him.

“When at last he was able to stand up they stared at each other with the sharp white electric flare of ritualized hatred.” 165

- Their relationship is based off of their fights that they constantly have. It is so troubled that the onset of fights between them is referred to as ritualized because it happens so frequently.

“The long line of midnight soldiers stood transfixed. Where would they burn this fire that always burnt them?” 172

- The women were all alone in the night and all they had was each other. They had to continue on with their lives despite how horrible and terrible things would get and they needed to remember that no matter what happened, they would be there for one another. That was their support system – they were all soldiers who endured rough times together, but it just brought them closer.