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Angeline Moffit
Mr. Willie Moffit is Angeline Moffit’s husband and Honey’s father. Like his wife, he doesn’t have any kin: he was an illegitimate child unrecognized by his father and abandoned by his mother. His life is so hard that he resorts to stealing chickens and is shot for his theft. He tolerates Cussy Mary’s presence in his home because she can read articles to him that are still too complicated for Angeline’s literacy level (he himself is completely illiterate), but he is visibly uncomfortable because of her skin color. When she tries to help Angeline nurse him after his gunshot wound, he fears that she will somehow contaminate or infect him with her blueness. Yet, it’s eventually revealed that Mr. Moffit himself carries the recessive gene for blue skin, as his daughter Honey is born with blue skin. Mr. Moffit hangs himself upon discovering this.
Mr. Moffit (Willie) Quotes in The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
The The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Moffit (Willie) or refer to Mr. Moffit (Willie) . 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 4
Quotes
“Sorry Bluet. It got busted some when Willie had hisself a fit and threw it outside. I’m glad you’re back ’cause he lit at me good for not being able to read him his own loan. Said a colored shouldn’t be able to read better than me. Real sorry…” She latched on to my hand and laid the apology with a firm grip. I looked down at us bound together like that, tried to draw back, but Angeline squeezed tighter and whispered, “Hain’t no harm. Our hands don’t care they’re different colors. Feels nice jus’ the same, huh?”
It did. But Mr. Moffit didn’t like folks who weren’t his color. He used to demand that I stay put in the yard.
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Chapter 37
Quotes
I touched the baby’s hand, my own eyes filling, my mind grappling with losses, the unbearable pain of loneliness. Nary a townsfolk, not one God-fearing soul, had welcomed me or mine into town, their churches, or homes in all my nineteen years on this earth. Instead, every hard Kentucky second they’d filled us with an emptiness from their hate and scorn. It was as if the Blues weren’t allowed to breathe the very same air their loving God had given them, not worthy of the tiniest spoonful He’d given to the smallest forest critter. I was nothing in their world. A nothingness to them. And I looked into Angeline’s dying eyes and saw my truths, and the truths that would be her daughter’s. Know’d that without love, in the end, her babe would have no one, nothing, and would be fated to die alone in her own aching embrace.
Chapter 43
Quotes
“Let me tell you, Cussy, a miner’s life is a short one.”
“Oh, Pa,” I fanned his words away.
“Daughter, they buried eight of ’em last January after the collapse. Sealed that pit with them eight poor souls trapped inside it.”
I had heard the horror of it all. How the men and young boys were trapped so far down in the midnight dust and crumbling rock, no one could reach them. Then a leak of poisonous gas put them to sleep. There weren’t anything left to do, no way to rescue them except to cover the tomb and have a preacher hold a burial service at the face of the mine.
Get the entire The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek LitChart as a printable PDF.
Mr. Moffit (Willie) Quotes in The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
The The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Moffit (Willie) or refer to Mr. Moffit (Willie) . 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 4
Quotes
“Sorry Bluet. It got busted some when Willie had hisself a fit and threw it outside. I’m glad you’re back ’cause he lit at me good for not being able to read him his own loan. Said a colored shouldn’t be able to read better than me. Real sorry…” She latched on to my hand and laid the apology with a firm grip. I looked down at us bound together like that, tried to draw back, but Angeline squeezed tighter and whispered, “Hain’t no harm. Our hands don’t care they’re different colors. Feels nice jus’ the same, huh?”
It did. But Mr. Moffit didn’t like folks who weren’t his color. He used to demand that I stay put in the yard.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37
Quotes
I touched the baby’s hand, my own eyes filling, my mind grappling with losses, the unbearable pain of loneliness. Nary a townsfolk, not one God-fearing soul, had welcomed me or mine into town, their churches, or homes in all my nineteen years on this earth. Instead, every hard Kentucky second they’d filled us with an emptiness from their hate and scorn. It was as if the Blues weren’t allowed to breathe the very same air their loving God had given them, not worthy of the tiniest spoonful He’d given to the smallest forest critter. I was nothing in their world. A nothingness to them. And I looked into Angeline’s dying eyes and saw my truths, and the truths that would be her daughter’s. Know’d that without love, in the end, her babe would have no one, nothing, and would be fated to die alone in her own aching embrace.
Chapter 43
Quotes
“Let me tell you, Cussy, a miner’s life is a short one.”
“Oh, Pa,” I fanned his words away.
“Daughter, they buried eight of ’em last January after the collapse. Sealed that pit with them eight poor souls trapped inside it.”
I had heard the horror of it all. How the men and young boys were trapped so far down in the midnight dust and crumbling rock, no one could reach them. Then a leak of poisonous gas put them to sleep. There weren’t anything left to do, no way to rescue them except to cover the tomb and have a preacher hold a burial service at the face of the mine.
