"'She started shaking her head again after that, though not as bad as before, and she say: 'But why should you be any different? The students who leave here, they never find out much. Why should you be any different?''" (pg 109).
The rhetorical questions posed by Miss Lucy to Tommy clearly show the purpose of herself asking herself and not Tommy. Miss Lucy is the guardian who really seems to love her students and want them to know about how they are different, but feels like she is not worthy or allowed to be the one the break the news. These questions symbolize herself realizing that she is not cut out for her job of teaching the students if she cannot teach them what they actually need to know. This seemed to foreshadow her upcoming retirement from Hailsham.
Her departure seems ironic to me, but I really am trying to decide if it is irony at all. In one sense, she seems to have been in a mental slump since she told Tommy to not worry about his art, but at the same time she seemed to pride herself on being the only guardian who would help the students in learning about their future adventures. Miss Lucy's leaving came only a few weeks before the students at Hailsham would be leaving the school for good which seems like an odd time for her to leave. Wouldn't Tommy's leaving have been a good way for Miss Lucy to forget? I had assumed for awhile that Miss Emily would fire Miss Lucy had she ever found out about what she had told her students, but it baffles me that Miss Lucy would succumb to so much guilt that she would choose to leave.
I really hope that part two does not further confuse me, but I think we all know how confused I will get.
P.S. How do you punctuate someone quoting someone else when you quote them?
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