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Doctor Cordelia Lochren (“C.”)
Ted Bursap is Cordelia Lochren’s husband and a local contractor in Pluto, loathed by many for his eagerness to tear down historic old buildings and replace them with cheap new construction. Ted is portrayed as greedy and obtuse, failing to notice his wife’s affair with Judge Coutts even though nearly everyone else in Pluto is aware of it. When Ted buys Coutts’s family home and tears it down, he is attacked by the bees in the walls. As Ted writhes on the ground, Coutts fails to show much concern, instead just calmly sampling the honeycombs on Ted’s bulldozer. Though Ted survives that initial bee attack, he is killed a year later by a single bee sting.
Ted Bursap Quotes in The Plague of Doves
The The Plague of Doves quotes below are all either spoken by Ted Bursap or refer to Ted Bursap. 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:
).
20. Demolition
Quotes
The house was so real around me that I could smell the musty linen in the cedar closet, the gas from the leaky burner on the stove, the sharp tang of geraniums that I had planted in clay pots. I lay down on the exact place where the living room couch had been pushed tight under the leaded-glass windows. I closed my eyes and it was all around me again. The stuffed bookshelves, the paneling, the soft slap of my mother’s cards on the table. […]
I turned over and made myself comfortable in the crush of wild burdock. A bee or two hummed in the drowsy air. The swarm had left the rubble and built their houses beneath the earth. They were busy in the graveyard right now, filling the skulls with white combs and the coffins with sweet black honey.
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Ted Bursap Quotes in The Plague of Doves
The The Plague of Doves quotes below are all either spoken by Ted Bursap or refer to Ted Bursap. 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:
).
20. Demolition
Quotes
The house was so real around me that I could smell the musty linen in the cedar closet, the gas from the leaky burner on the stove, the sharp tang of geraniums that I had planted in clay pots. I lay down on the exact place where the living room couch had been pushed tight under the leaded-glass windows. I closed my eyes and it was all around me again. The stuffed bookshelves, the paneling, the soft slap of my mother’s cards on the table. […]
I turned over and made myself comfortable in the crush of wild burdock. A bee or two hummed in the drowsy air. The swarm had left the rubble and built their houses beneath the earth. They were busy in the graveyard right now, filling the skulls with white combs and the coffins with sweet black honey.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
