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Marsha’s son and Kevin’s brother. Kyle is a student at Little Dog’s school when Little Dog first moves to America, and Kyle bullies Little Dog and pushes him around because he is different. “Speak English,” Kyle demands of Little Dog, slapping his face. Like his brother Kevin, Kyle overdoses on drugs and dies later in the novel. Kyle’s character draws attention the effects of drug use and abuse in American society, and his actions also illustrate the discrimination faced by people of color; Kyle exerts power over Little Dog and makes him miserable simply because Little Dog is Vietnamese.
Kyle Quotes in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
The On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous quotes below are all either spoken by Kyle or refer to Kyle. 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:
).
Part 3 Quotes
One afternoon, while watching TV with Lan, we saw a herd of buffalo run, single file, off a cliff, a whole steaming row of them thundering off the mountain in Technicolor. "Why they die themselves like that?" she asked, mouth open. Like usual, I made something up on the spot: "They don’t mean to, Grandma. They’re just following their family. That's all. They don’t know it's a cliff,"
"Maybe they should have a stop sign then."
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This quote occurs near the end of the book, when Little Dog and Lan are watching television together, and it is significant because it introduces Little Dog’s buffalo analogy, which serves as a metaphor for the drug epidemic that grips American society in the 21st century. Little Dog juxtaposes the image of hundreds of buffalo running full-bore off the edge of a cliff to certain death with the image of thousands of American succumbing to drug addiction after watching others, in some cases their parents and siblings, die from the very same addiction. In Little Dog’s view, addicts are drawn Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dig
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Kyle Character Timeline in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
The timeline below shows where the character Kyle appears in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 1
...a hard time and shoved him into the window glass. “Speak English,” a boy named Kyle said. He slapped Little Dog and made him say his name, and when Little Dog...
(full context)
Part 3
...Marsha’s older son, Kevin, died of an overdose not long after, and her younger son, Kyle, died five years later the very same way.
(full context)
