Previous
Grandpa
Grandma is Grandpa’s wife, Cate’s mother, and the narrator’s grandmother; she is also Dad’s mother-in-law, though she is skeptical of Dad’s catastrophism. As a longtime public-school teacher, Grandma feels passionately that individuals owe more to each other than they do to any state or administrative whole. Grandma spends most of her life in the countryside, growing her own vegetables, making pancakes, and wearing her favorite wool dress. In old age, however, Grandma develops severe dementia, and she is unable to communicate with any of her family members; though the family assumes Grandma has stopped understanding them, she in fact remains aware of the personal and political change happening around her (like the institution of the Barricades). Grandma loves and mentors the narrator, though in a rare moment of lucidity, she also wants to use him for his criminal expertise. Like Grandpa, Grandma dies by taking all of her various pills at once.
Grandma Quotes in Things We Didn’t See Coming
The Things We Didn’t See Coming quotes below are all either spoken by Grandma or refer to Grandma. 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:
).
The Theft That Got Me Here
Quotes
“I worked for the state, back when the state took care of its own. Like you, I had grand and noble responsibilities to all, but I still had to deal with individuals. I'm sure you know the difficulty. Sometimes those two things can be at cross purposes, say, when one child is a bit behind, maybe keeping the others from moving on. What should you do? Ignore the child? I found that I had no choice in the matter as soon as I started seeing the class as more important than the student, the children were lost, I was lost. Nothing was grand, nothing was noble. Do you understand what I'm saying? […] Anything named Central doesn't even know what you look like. I do, and I'm watching you to see that you make the right decision here.”
He waved us through.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Things We Didn’t See Coming LitChart as a printable PDF.
Grandma Quotes in Things We Didn’t See Coming
The Things We Didn’t See Coming quotes below are all either spoken by Grandma or refer to Grandma. 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:
).
The Theft That Got Me Here
Quotes
“I worked for the state, back when the state took care of its own. Like you, I had grand and noble responsibilities to all, but I still had to deal with individuals. I'm sure you know the difficulty. Sometimes those two things can be at cross purposes, say, when one child is a bit behind, maybe keeping the others from moving on. What should you do? Ignore the child? I found that I had no choice in the matter as soon as I started seeing the class as more important than the student, the children were lost, I was lost. Nothing was grand, nothing was noble. Do you understand what I'm saying? […] Anything named Central doesn't even know what you look like. I do, and I'm watching you to see that you make the right decision here.”
He waved us through.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
