Burial Rites

by

Hannah Kent

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Burial Rites makes teaching easy.

Agnes Magnúsdottir Character Analysis

Agnes is a prisoner who has been condemned to death for the murders of Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson. She is the daughter of Ingveldur, the sister of Jóas, and Natan’s former lover. For most of the novel, Agnes is held captive at Kornsá, a farm occupied by Margrét, Jón, and their daughters until her execution date. In the meantime, Reverend Tóti makes spiritual visits to Agnes per her request to help Agnes prepare for her death. Agnes, who is in her thirties, is known to be intelligent. She is also very superstitious and places a lot of importance on signs like ravens and dreams. Agnes suffered from a difficult childhood, during which her mother abandoned her and she experienced the traumatic death of her foster mother, Inga. As an adult, Agnes was seduced by and fell in love with Natan Ketilsson, who brought Agnes back to his farm to work for him. Their relationship turned toxic because of Natan’s manipulative personality. When Fridrik killed Pétur and fatally wounded Natan (because Natan was sleeping with Sigga), Agnes helped stabbed Natan with a knife to save him from drawn out suffering. Then Agnes helped Fridrik burn the farm. At the end of Burial Rites, Agnes is executed for her role in these murders.

Agnes Magnúsdottir Quotes in Burial Rites

The Burial Rites quotes below are all either spoken by Agnes Magnúsdottir or refer to Agnes Magnúsdottir. 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:
Truth and Liberation Theme Icon
).
Prologue Quotes

I imagine, then, that we are all candle flames…fluttering in the darkness and the howl of the wind, and in the stillness of the room I hear footsteps, awful coming footsteps, coming to blow me out and send my life up away from me…I will vanish into the air and the night. They will blow us all out, one by one, until it is only their own light by which they see themselves. Where will I be then?

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker)
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 1 Quotes

As he traveled over the north peninsula with its thin lip of ocean on the horizon, the clouds began to clear and the soft red light of the late June sun flooded the pass…The dread that Tóti had felt so firmly lining his stomach dissipated as he fell into a quiet appreciation of the countryside before him.
We are all God’s children, he thought to himself. This woman is my sister in Jesus, and I, as her spiritual brother, must guide her home… “I will save her,” he whispered.

Related Characters: Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti) (speaker), Agnes Magnúsdottir
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

How can I say what it was like to breathe again? I felt newborn. I staggered in the light of the world and took deep gulps of fresh sea air. It was late in the day: the wet mouth of the afternoon was full on my face. My soul blossomed in that brief moment as they led me out-of-doors. I fell, my skirts in the mud, and I turned my face upwards as if in prayer. I could have wept from the relief of light.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker)
Page Number: 35-36
Explanation and Analysis:

Cruel Birds, ravens, but wise. And creatures should be loved for their wisdom if they cannot be loved for kindness.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker)
Related Symbols: Ravens
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis:

What sort of woman kills men?
The only murderesses Margrét had known were the women in the sagas, and even then, it was with words that they had killed men; orders given to servants to slay lovers or avenge the death of kin. Those women murdered from a distance and kept their fingers clean. But these times are not saga times…This woman is not a saga woman.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir, Margrét
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

I prefer a story to a prayer. They whipped me for that at this farm, Kornsá, once, when I was young and fostered out to watch over the home field. The farmer Björn did not like that I knew the sagas better than him. You’re better off keeping company with the sheep, Agnes. Books written by man, not God, are faithless friends and not for your kind.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Björn
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things…It’s not fair. People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself. No matter how much you try to live a godly life, if you make a mistake in this valley, it’s never forgotten…Who was she really?…she made mistakes and others made up their minds about her. People around here don’t let you forget your misdeeds. They think them the only things worth writing down.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti), Ingveldur Rafnsdóttir
Page Number: 103-104
Explanation and Analysis:

“No such thing as truth,” Agnes said, standing up. Tóti stood up also…“There is truth in God,” he said, earnestly, recognizing an opportunity to do his spiritual duty. “John, chapter eight, verse thirty-two: ‘And ye…’”
“‘Shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ Yes, I know. I know,” Agnes said. She bundled her knitting things together… “Not in my case, Reverend Thorvardur,” she called to him. “I’ve told the truth and you can see for yourself how it has served me.”

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti) (speaker)
Page Number: 105-106
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

He built his church from wives’ tales and the secret language of weather; saw the blinking eye of God in the habits of the sea, the swooping merlin, the gnashing teeth of his ewes. When he caught me knitting on the doorstep he accused me of lengthening the winter. “Do not think nature is not watchful of us,” he warned me. “She is as awake as you and I.” He smiled at me. Passed the smooth breadth of his palm over my forehead. “And as secretive.”

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson (speaker)
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:

I’ll tell you something, Reverend Tóti. All my life people have thought I was too clever…That’s exactly why they don’t pity me. Because they think I’m too smart… to get caught up in this by accident. But Sigga is dumb and pretty and young, and that is why they don’t want to see her die…They see I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and believe a thinking woman cannot be trusted. Believe there’s no room for innocence. And like it or not, Reverend, that is the truth of it.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti), Sigrídur Gudmundsdóttir (Sigga)
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

I explained that I had begun to dig a grave for Mamma. Uncle Ragnar frowned and told me I shouldn’t call her Mamma, and wasn’t I ashamed of myself, thinking to bury her near the doorstep where everyone would tread on her, and not in the holy ground of a churchyard.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Inga, Uncle Ragnar
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“Why not Sigga?” Tóti asked in a small voice.
Blöndal shook his head. “The maid of sixteen who burst into tears as soon as I summoned her? Sigga didn’t even attempt to lie—she is too simple-minded, too young to know how. She told me everything. How Agnes hated Natan, how Agnes was jealous of his attentions to her. Sigga is not bright, but she saw that much.”

Related Characters: Björn Blöndal (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti) (speaker), Agnes Magnúsdottir, Natan Ketilsson, Sigrídur Gudmundsdóttir (Sigga)
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:

Tóti nodded, and slowly picked up the swan feather… “You mean to make an example of her,” he said quietly.
“I mean to deliver God’s justice here on earth,” Blöndal said, frowning. “I mean to honor the authorities who have appointed me by fulfilling my duty as a lawkeeper.”
…“I hear that you have appointed Gudmundur Ketilsson as executioner.”
…“I do not have to explain my decisions to you, Reverend. I am not accountable to parish priests. I am accountable to Denmark. To the King…We are not her to discuss my performance. We are here to discuss yours.”

Related Characters: Björn Blöndal (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti) (speaker), Agnes Magnúsdottir, Gudmundur Ketilsson
Page Number: 164-165
Explanation and Analysis:

When I was sixteen years old I dreamt that I was walking barefoot in a lava field…In every direction there was nothing but rock and snow, and great chasms and crack in the ground…Just when I thought I would die from fear, a young man appeared …and even though I was still terrified, I had his hand in mine, and it was a comfort. Then suddenly, in my dream, I felt the ground give way beneath my feet…and I fell into a chasm…I was dropped into the earth, buried in silence, and it was unbearable, and then I woke.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti)
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:

She said Natan had started giving himself some airs, calling himself Lyngdal, not Ketilsson, though neither of us could work out why—it was a strange sort of name to have, not Icelandic in the slightest. María thought it was probably to make himself out to be a Dane, and I wondered that he was allowed to change his name at all. María told me that men might do as they please, and that they are all Adams, naming everything under the sun.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson, María Jónsdóttir
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“What’s the name for the space between stars?”
“No such name.”
“Make one up.”
I thought about it. “The soul asylum.”
“That’s another way of saying heaven, Agnes.”
“No, Natan. It’s not.”

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson (speaker)
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Agnes Jónsdóttir. I never thought it could be that easy to name yourself…Let everyone know whose bastard I truly am. Agnes Jónsdóttir. She sounds like the woman I should have been…She could even be the sister of Sigurlaug and Steinvör Jónsdóttir. Margrét’s daughter. Born blessed under a marriage. Born into a family that would not be ripped apart by poverty. Agnes Jónsdóttir would not have been so foolish as to love a man who spent his life opening veins, mouths, legs…She would have been assured of a place in heaven. She would have believed in heaven.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Jón of Brekkukot
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:

“What do you do with the kit after you kill its parents?”
“Some hunters leave it there to die. They are no use for market— the skins are too small.”
“What do you do?”
“I stove their heads in with a rock.”
“That is the only decent thing to do.”
“Yes. To leave them is cruelty.”

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson (speaker)
Page Number: 221-222
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

What else is God good for other than a distraction from the mire we’re all stranded in? We’re all shipwrecked. All beached in a peat bog of poverty. When was the last time I even attended church? Not while I was at Illugastadir…Perhaps things would have been different if Natan had let me go to church at Tjörn. I might have made friends there. I might have met a family to turn to when it all became twisted…But he didn’t let me go, and there was no other friend, no light to head towards in that wintered landscape.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson
Page Number: 236
Explanation and Analysis:

Where would I have gone? I knew only the valley of Vatnsdalur; knew where it was scabbed with rock, knew the white-headed mountains and the lake alive with swans, and the wrinkled skins of turf by the river. And the ravens, the constant, circling ravens. But Illugastadir was different. I had no friends. I didn’t understand the landscape. Only the outlying tongues of rock scarred the perfect kiss of sea and sky— there was no one and nothing else. There was nowhere else to go.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson
Related Symbols: Ravens
Page Number: 252
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

“Thórbjörg had an inkling of what Fridrik planned. She knew about some sheep Fridrik stole. She lied to the courtroom…Thórbjörg saved my life,” Agnes added after a moment’s pause. “She found me on her doorstep after Natan threw me out. I would have died had she not brought me inside and let me stay there.”
Margrét nodded. “No one is all bad.”

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Margrét (speaker), Fridrik Sigurdsson, Thórbjörg
Page Number: 259
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

“Admit it. You want this too, Agnes.”
At that point…I saw what Fridrik held in his hands. It was a hammer and a knife.
What do I remember? I didn’t believe him. I went back to my bed on the floor of the cowshed, suddenly weary. I wanted nothing to do with him. What happened?

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Fridrik Sigurdsson (speaker), Natan Ketilsson
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

I am crying and my mouth is open and filled with something, it is choking me and I spit it out. On the ground is a stone, and I look back at Margrét, and see that she did not notice. “The stone was in my mouth,” I say.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Margrét, Ingveldur Rafnsdóttir
Related Symbols: Agnes’s Mother’s Stone
Page Number: 307
Explanation and Analysis:

“Will they drown me?” I ask, and someone shakes her head. It is Lauga. “Agnes,” she says, and I say, “That is the first time you have called me by my name,” and that is it, she collapses as though I have stabbed her in the stomach.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Lauga Jónsdóttir (speaker)
Page Number: 307-308
Explanation and Analysis:
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Agnes Magnúsdottir Quotes in Burial Rites

The Burial Rites quotes below are all either spoken by Agnes Magnúsdottir or refer to Agnes Magnúsdottir. 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:
Truth and Liberation Theme Icon
).
Prologue Quotes

I imagine, then, that we are all candle flames…fluttering in the darkness and the howl of the wind, and in the stillness of the room I hear footsteps, awful coming footsteps, coming to blow me out and send my life up away from me…I will vanish into the air and the night. They will blow us all out, one by one, until it is only their own light by which they see themselves. Where will I be then?

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker)
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 1 Quotes

As he traveled over the north peninsula with its thin lip of ocean on the horizon, the clouds began to clear and the soft red light of the late June sun flooded the pass…The dread that Tóti had felt so firmly lining his stomach dissipated as he fell into a quiet appreciation of the countryside before him.
We are all God’s children, he thought to himself. This woman is my sister in Jesus, and I, as her spiritual brother, must guide her home… “I will save her,” he whispered.

Related Characters: Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti) (speaker), Agnes Magnúsdottir
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

How can I say what it was like to breathe again? I felt newborn. I staggered in the light of the world and took deep gulps of fresh sea air. It was late in the day: the wet mouth of the afternoon was full on my face. My soul blossomed in that brief moment as they led me out-of-doors. I fell, my skirts in the mud, and I turned my face upwards as if in prayer. I could have wept from the relief of light.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker)
Page Number: 35-36
Explanation and Analysis:

Cruel Birds, ravens, but wise. And creatures should be loved for their wisdom if they cannot be loved for kindness.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker)
Related Symbols: Ravens
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis:

What sort of woman kills men?
The only murderesses Margrét had known were the women in the sagas, and even then, it was with words that they had killed men; orders given to servants to slay lovers or avenge the death of kin. Those women murdered from a distance and kept their fingers clean. But these times are not saga times…This woman is not a saga woman.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir, Margrét
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

I prefer a story to a prayer. They whipped me for that at this farm, Kornsá, once, when I was young and fostered out to watch over the home field. The farmer Björn did not like that I knew the sagas better than him. You’re better off keeping company with the sheep, Agnes. Books written by man, not God, are faithless friends and not for your kind.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Björn
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things…It’s not fair. People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself. No matter how much you try to live a godly life, if you make a mistake in this valley, it’s never forgotten…Who was she really?…she made mistakes and others made up their minds about her. People around here don’t let you forget your misdeeds. They think them the only things worth writing down.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti), Ingveldur Rafnsdóttir
Page Number: 103-104
Explanation and Analysis:

“No such thing as truth,” Agnes said, standing up. Tóti stood up also…“There is truth in God,” he said, earnestly, recognizing an opportunity to do his spiritual duty. “John, chapter eight, verse thirty-two: ‘And ye…’”
“‘Shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ Yes, I know. I know,” Agnes said. She bundled her knitting things together… “Not in my case, Reverend Thorvardur,” she called to him. “I’ve told the truth and you can see for yourself how it has served me.”

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti) (speaker)
Page Number: 105-106
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

He built his church from wives’ tales and the secret language of weather; saw the blinking eye of God in the habits of the sea, the swooping merlin, the gnashing teeth of his ewes. When he caught me knitting on the doorstep he accused me of lengthening the winter. “Do not think nature is not watchful of us,” he warned me. “She is as awake as you and I.” He smiled at me. Passed the smooth breadth of his palm over my forehead. “And as secretive.”

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson (speaker)
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:

I’ll tell you something, Reverend Tóti. All my life people have thought I was too clever…That’s exactly why they don’t pity me. Because they think I’m too smart… to get caught up in this by accident. But Sigga is dumb and pretty and young, and that is why they don’t want to see her die…They see I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and believe a thinking woman cannot be trusted. Believe there’s no room for innocence. And like it or not, Reverend, that is the truth of it.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti), Sigrídur Gudmundsdóttir (Sigga)
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

I explained that I had begun to dig a grave for Mamma. Uncle Ragnar frowned and told me I shouldn’t call her Mamma, and wasn’t I ashamed of myself, thinking to bury her near the doorstep where everyone would tread on her, and not in the holy ground of a churchyard.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Inga, Uncle Ragnar
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“Why not Sigga?” Tóti asked in a small voice.
Blöndal shook his head. “The maid of sixteen who burst into tears as soon as I summoned her? Sigga didn’t even attempt to lie—she is too simple-minded, too young to know how. She told me everything. How Agnes hated Natan, how Agnes was jealous of his attentions to her. Sigga is not bright, but she saw that much.”

Related Characters: Björn Blöndal (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti) (speaker), Agnes Magnúsdottir, Natan Ketilsson, Sigrídur Gudmundsdóttir (Sigga)
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:

Tóti nodded, and slowly picked up the swan feather… “You mean to make an example of her,” he said quietly.
“I mean to deliver God’s justice here on earth,” Blöndal said, frowning. “I mean to honor the authorities who have appointed me by fulfilling my duty as a lawkeeper.”
…“I hear that you have appointed Gudmundur Ketilsson as executioner.”
…“I do not have to explain my decisions to you, Reverend. I am not accountable to parish priests. I am accountable to Denmark. To the King…We are not her to discuss my performance. We are here to discuss yours.”

Related Characters: Björn Blöndal (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti) (speaker), Agnes Magnúsdottir, Gudmundur Ketilsson
Page Number: 164-165
Explanation and Analysis:

When I was sixteen years old I dreamt that I was walking barefoot in a lava field…In every direction there was nothing but rock and snow, and great chasms and crack in the ground…Just when I thought I would die from fear, a young man appeared …and even though I was still terrified, I had his hand in mine, and it was a comfort. Then suddenly, in my dream, I felt the ground give way beneath my feet…and I fell into a chasm…I was dropped into the earth, buried in silence, and it was unbearable, and then I woke.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti)
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:

She said Natan had started giving himself some airs, calling himself Lyngdal, not Ketilsson, though neither of us could work out why—it was a strange sort of name to have, not Icelandic in the slightest. María thought it was probably to make himself out to be a Dane, and I wondered that he was allowed to change his name at all. María told me that men might do as they please, and that they are all Adams, naming everything under the sun.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson, María Jónsdóttir
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“What’s the name for the space between stars?”
“No such name.”
“Make one up.”
I thought about it. “The soul asylum.”
“That’s another way of saying heaven, Agnes.”
“No, Natan. It’s not.”

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson (speaker)
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Agnes Jónsdóttir. I never thought it could be that easy to name yourself…Let everyone know whose bastard I truly am. Agnes Jónsdóttir. She sounds like the woman I should have been…She could even be the sister of Sigurlaug and Steinvör Jónsdóttir. Margrét’s daughter. Born blessed under a marriage. Born into a family that would not be ripped apart by poverty. Agnes Jónsdóttir would not have been so foolish as to love a man who spent his life opening veins, mouths, legs…She would have been assured of a place in heaven. She would have believed in heaven.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Jón of Brekkukot
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:

“What do you do with the kit after you kill its parents?”
“Some hunters leave it there to die. They are no use for market— the skins are too small.”
“What do you do?”
“I stove their heads in with a rock.”
“That is the only decent thing to do.”
“Yes. To leave them is cruelty.”

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson (speaker)
Page Number: 221-222
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

What else is God good for other than a distraction from the mire we’re all stranded in? We’re all shipwrecked. All beached in a peat bog of poverty. When was the last time I even attended church? Not while I was at Illugastadir…Perhaps things would have been different if Natan had let me go to church at Tjörn. I might have made friends there. I might have met a family to turn to when it all became twisted…But he didn’t let me go, and there was no other friend, no light to head towards in that wintered landscape.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson
Page Number: 236
Explanation and Analysis:

Where would I have gone? I knew only the valley of Vatnsdalur; knew where it was scabbed with rock, knew the white-headed mountains and the lake alive with swans, and the wrinkled skins of turf by the river. And the ravens, the constant, circling ravens. But Illugastadir was different. I had no friends. I didn’t understand the landscape. Only the outlying tongues of rock scarred the perfect kiss of sea and sky— there was no one and nothing else. There was nowhere else to go.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Natan Ketilsson
Related Symbols: Ravens
Page Number: 252
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

“Thórbjörg had an inkling of what Fridrik planned. She knew about some sheep Fridrik stole. She lied to the courtroom…Thórbjörg saved my life,” Agnes added after a moment’s pause. “She found me on her doorstep after Natan threw me out. I would have died had she not brought me inside and let me stay there.”
Margrét nodded. “No one is all bad.”

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Margrét (speaker), Fridrik Sigurdsson, Thórbjörg
Page Number: 259
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

“Admit it. You want this too, Agnes.”
At that point…I saw what Fridrik held in his hands. It was a hammer and a knife.
What do I remember? I didn’t believe him. I went back to my bed on the floor of the cowshed, suddenly weary. I wanted nothing to do with him. What happened?

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Fridrik Sigurdsson (speaker), Natan Ketilsson
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

I am crying and my mouth is open and filled with something, it is choking me and I spit it out. On the ground is a stone, and I look back at Margrét, and see that she did not notice. “The stone was in my mouth,” I say.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Margrét, Ingveldur Rafnsdóttir
Related Symbols: Agnes’s Mother’s Stone
Page Number: 307
Explanation and Analysis:

“Will they drown me?” I ask, and someone shakes her head. It is Lauga. “Agnes,” she says, and I say, “That is the first time you have called me by my name,” and that is it, she collapses as though I have stabbed her in the stomach.

Related Characters: Agnes Magnúsdottir (speaker), Lauga Jónsdóttir (speaker)
Page Number: 307-308
Explanation and Analysis: