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João Goulão
“Hannah” is the pseudonym that Hari uses for a drug addict and sex worker who lived at Liz Evans’s Portland Hotel housing center in Downtown Eastside for many years. Like thousands of other indigenous Canadians, she was taken from her family as a young girl and forced to live with a series of abusive white foster families. One locked her in a room alone for four years. As an adult, Hannah spent all of her time, energy, and money procuring alcohol and heroin to help deal with her pain. She frequently ended up with abusive men who beat her. One night, she came back to the Portland Hotel bleeding profusely after a man raped and attacked her. Liz Evans carried her back to her room, and for the first time, Evans fully understood why people like Hannah often turn to drugs to deal with trauma.
Hannah Quotes in Chasing the Scream
The Chasing the Scream quotes below are all either spoken by Hannah or refer to Hannah . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 12
Quotes
One night, Hannah came back to the Portland shaking, with blood seeping from a blow to her head. “I remember picking her up and holding her in my arms like a little child” and carrying her to her room, Liz told me. Hannah stammered that she had been beaten and raped. “And I remember just listening to her say to me, over and over again, ‘It’s my fault. I deserve this. It’s my fault. I’m a bad person.’” And on the little table beside Hannah, there was her alcohol, and her heroin, and a needle. And Liz—who has never wanted to use drugs—looked at them and looked at Hannah and thought:
“Which of these things on your bedside table can I give you to take your pain away?”
“And that was the moment I understood what addiction did for people,” she tells me.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Chasing the Scream LitChart as a printable PDF.
Hannah Quotes in Chasing the Scream
The Chasing the Scream quotes below are all either spoken by Hannah or refer to Hannah . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 12
Quotes
One night, Hannah came back to the Portland shaking, with blood seeping from a blow to her head. “I remember picking her up and holding her in my arms like a little child” and carrying her to her room, Liz told me. Hannah stammered that she had been beaten and raped. “And I remember just listening to her say to me, over and over again, ‘It’s my fault. I deserve this. It’s my fault. I’m a bad person.’” And on the little table beside Hannah, there was her alcohol, and her heroin, and a needle. And Liz—who has never wanted to use drugs—looked at them and looked at Hannah and thought:
“Which of these things on your bedside table can I give you to take your pain away?”
“And that was the moment I understood what addiction did for people,” she tells me.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
