“But others who knew the meaning of her colors asked no questions. The answers, in times like these, could only be troubling and thus were better left unknown.”

The messenger’s colors indicate that she comes directly from Yaweh. Those who knew this understood that nothing good can come from his direct involvement and that ignorance is therefore bliss.

“WHAT HAVE WE DONE, THAT MAN SHOULD TREAT US THUS?”

The first message Yaweh sends to Dr. Noyes contains this ominous message. Indicating God’s outrage at his treatment, it is the first sign that the almighty might be vulnerable to harm at the hands of humans, if only emotionally. Noah is disturbed by the question, wondering why God would bother to ask such a thing. This begs the question, if God is not infallible, is he still God?

“Imagination was a curse and she wished devoutly she had not been ‘blessed’ with it. Blessed. Who did the blessing, she wondered.”

Try as she might, Mrs. Noyes can find no respite from the recent events and her duties. Even if she closed her eyes and ears to them, and her calls to action, her imagination would force her to experience everything just the same. This, she believes, is more curse than gift. It is certainly demonstrated that Shem, devoid of such things, has comparatively little to give him stress.

“But enemies were a part of nature and a person had to accommodate their existence.”

Mottyl the cat accepts that no life is without its tribulations and enemies, a fact that holds true for every life in the book, often in unexpected ways.

“The Lord God Yaweh makes equals of us all, [Emma] thought, just by putting in a personal appearance…”

Even Dr. Noyes, who rules his family through threats and cruelty as it suits him, bows before God just as the rest of them do. Young Emma can see the fundamental truth in the action: that all creatures are equal before God (and in death).

“Like enemies everywhere and always, in their hatred there was devotion. Even love.”

Lucy misses her brother, Michael, who understands her as the humans cannot and with whom she feels the familiar passion of their enmity. To truly hate someone, there must surely be passion and commitment, or else the rivalry would fade and the parties would no longer be enemies.

“It was the great cry of life: of all that lived. Feed me.”

All things that live must try to sustain themselves, whether through literal food or for safety. The theme of survival underlies the entire narrative.

“Isn’t it monstrous that even the wisest of the wise would try to usurp their God? That they should ask of God why and how?”

Yaweh’s elucidation of the story of the orchard also explains the judgment of Lucifer’s fall—that the very questioning of God is to proclaim oneself his equal, a blasphemy worthy of damnation. 

“They would drown—and with them, their opinions.”

Dr. Noyes is considering the opinions of the laborers building the ark at the end of summer. Surely, they must think him to be insane for building such a massive vessel, but he takes a callous satisfaction in knowing that they will be proven wrong and die with that knowledge. This moment speaks to Dr. Noyes’ unyielding perspective—that the opinions of others do not matter, but if others’ opinions differ from his own, harsh reprisals are warranted.

“It wasn’t fair. Japeth would hate Ham and Lucy–secretly at first, then openly–for the rest of time…only his life was fraught with difficulties–only his life was hell.”

Troubled with a childish perception of the world, in which the happiness of others is somehow dependent upon the lack of his own, Japeth projects his own issues onto everyone around him. He genuinely believes, as shown through this excerpt, that no one suffers the way that he does; as such, everyone deserves his malice for enjoying the happiness that he feels entitled to, but has been denied—especially in regard to sex.

“No. She would not be glad. And she would not forgive him. Ever. Very slowly, it began to rain.”

After Mrs. Noyes returns to the ark, her husband insists that leaving her beloved cat, Mottyl, to die was the right action. He tells her that they are following God’s orders and that they shall be glad they have done their duty. She does not reply, but the narrator conveys these statements, showing her determination not to accept her husband’s word as law and shape her emotions to his convenience. In true dramatic fashion, this internal resolution is accompanied by the rains that will soon become the flood.

“She would bleed–but if she did not look, she would not faint.”

Mrs. Noyes climbs over the wall to the orchard, cutting herself on the glass. She decides not to look at her wounds in order to stay conscious and focused on her goal—the apples and survival. However simple, this statement shows her tenacity as a survivor and reminds the reader that while some pains cannot be avoided, they can be managed well, and that other, potentially debilitating responses can be avoided through sheer willpower. 

“The oppression of time—the daily ritual of violence—all that prayer and blood and wine—and the dreariness of protocol: having to ask permission to speak and touch and move. And the lies…and the empty smiles…and the hidden jars of gin.”

Mrs. Noyes, having fled the ark, is reveling in her newfound freedom from the confines of her patriarchal society. Once free, she perceives civilization to be a burden and is gratified by its absence. She details the horrors of decorum, ending with this list, which indicates the routine abuse she has suffered and hints at her self-medication with alcohol.

“Sometimes, if you did not kill it yourself, other people came and killed it for you.”

In speaking of her own Lotte-child, Adam, Mrs. Noyes explains that she had been party to his murder simply because it’s what was done. Society would not accept the child, so it was viewed as kinder to give him a quick death, rather than subject him to a more painful—and public—one. She viewed such behavior as necessary at the time, but found that waiting to carry out the expected rule had been painful since she had truly loved her child. She regretted not raising him the way Lotte’s parents raised her in secret, but also seems to reflect that such a thing was not possible, at least not with the husband she has. This statement is her justification that she had done the best she could at the time, protecting her son from others who would not end his life gently.

“But I will not pray: not to You, gone mad up there with Your vengeance. I will never pray to You again. I will pray to anyone—to anything—I will pray…”

Apparently unaware of Yaweh’s death (as evidenced by “up there”), Mrs. Noyes is filled with fury that God would allow such misery and death to his creations. With this indignation in mind, Mrs. Noyes declares that she will never pray to Yaweh again as she considers a God who would do such things unworthy of prayer.

“Who the hell do you pray to, I wonder, when you want to live and there isn’t any God?”

Mrs. Noyes, having lost all faith in a God that would allow the atrocities she has seen, wonders how to accept the changes and continue to go on. She suggests that survivors ought to perhaps pray to each other.

“Kindness is wasteful in the best of times, but in times like these—it is criminal.”

In keeping with his self-obsession, Dr. Noyes does not approve of his wife’s predisposition towards kindness, as it may result in her resources, time, and even affections being directed to someone other than him. In his self-aggrandizing manner, he declares that such things are criminal with the authority of stating a fact simply because they do not please him.

“I always did prefer the depths.”

This telling phrase is the result of half the family’s banishment to the lower decks of the ark. Though the others are disquieted, Lucy is familiar with exile and initially finds little displeasure in the indignity, pointing out to the others that their decks are warmer than those above, and that they have better company.

“Many of the animals thought that this—and not what had been left behind—was death.”

The surviving animals have been “saved” but remain imprisoned in their cages, unable to return to their natural habitats and, in some cases, killed without notice for the purposes of food or sacrifice. The waiting, uncertainty, and fundamental lack of freedom is profoundly damaging to the spirit and could be considered a truer death of self, rather than drowning, which would be merely the death of the body.

“Cruelty was fear in disguise and nothing more. And hadn’t one of Japeth’s holy strangers said that fear itself was nothing more than a failure of the imagination?”

In considering the cruelty of her husband and youngest son, Japeth, Mrs. Noyes recognizes the true root of the behavior as fear. She goes on to apply it to her own situation, in which she had previously been afraid of bears simply because “she had not been able to imagine consoling them” (252).

“I only wish that I believed in prayer.”

Mrs. Noyes longs for the comfort of the familiar and the life she once knew, where she had faith in something, even a God that no longer lives. The death of her faith correlates with the end of life as she knows it.

“All we have to do is remember it alive. If we can forget its death—it will live. Not forever: not beyond the moment of its death—but before its death, where life is constant.”

Lucy is able to resurrect the unicorn for a moment after urging the onlookers to keep the animal alive in their memories, where it can never truly die.

“Why should there not be life for everyone, in the midst of storms—or hiding, as we are here, in this dark? Why not?”

Lucy reveals the source of her fall from heaven—the question of why. She laments the loss of her ability to revive the dead due to the limitations of earth and implies that she thinks it is unfair that God would deny life to the creatures he created in the darkness (earth), when he so readily allows it for those who live in the light (heaven).

“A knife wound is a knife wound. Your brother’s blood is no less your brother’s blood just because you happen to have drawn it with a smaller blade, Ham.”

When Ham expresses that he does not want to harm his brother and had chosen a lesser knife accordingly, Lucy accuses him of “intellectual cowardice.” This is a concept by which Ham knows he is going to harm his brother, but superficially negotiates the level of harm involved in order to assuage his own conscience. By quibbling over the details, rather than accepting the consequences of the action without compunction, she argues he is behaving in a cowardly way. It is better, in her opinion, to do what needs to be done and call it what it is from the start.