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The Barricades, which in the timeline of the novel originate in the mid-2000s, silo urban areas away from rural ones. The Barricades, and the guarded checkpoints that maintain them, make travel and trade between the two areas impossible—and given that most of the country’s farms and factories are in rural areas, this divide poses great problems for urbanites like the narrator, Grandma, and Grandpa. The checkpoints are maintained by Central (the national government). Though it is never explicitly named, the Barricades seem to stem from a cultural divide: the rural areas adopt a Christian band of conservatism, while the urban areas emphasize liberalism and tolerance. The Barricades appear to come down about 15 years after they are erected, a shift that politician Juliet is instrumental in.
Barricades Quotes in Things We Didn’t See Coming
The Things We Didn’t See Coming quotes below are all either spoken by Barricades or refer to Barricades. For each quote, you can also see the other terms 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.
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Barricades Term Timeline in Things We Didn’t See Coming
The timeline below shows where the term Barricades appears in Things We Didn’t See Coming. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Theft That Got Me Here
...with full-color pictures of greenery. Though there are peaches and other delicious plants beyond the Barricades, the only green in the narrator’s area are tiny (and illegal) scraps of lawn.
(full context)
...to drive out to the country, even though the narrator explains that there is a Barricade. When Grandma reveals that she knows all about the Barricade (and the checkpoints that maintain...
(full context)
The Profit Motive
...and who is dead. She admits that she lost her two children in the first Barricade, to asthma attacks; devastated, she and her husband split soon after. The narrator does his...
(full context)
Best Medicine
The narrator flashes back: just before the Barricades started, Dad got the family reclassified, and they moved to the country. There was clean...
(full context)
