Damned (2011) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Madison "Maddy" Spencer: The protagonist of the story, a smart, overweight, thirteen-year-old girl who died from a marijuana overdose.
• Babette: A pretty, popular teenager girl who shares the cell next to Madison's in hell, the stereotypical cheerleader, prom queen-type. Damned to Hell for wearing white shoes after Labor Day.
• Leonard: A demon-obsessed geek
• Goran: One of Madison's adoptive Third World siblings.
• Patterson: A stereotypical jock, a football player, who claims to have died during a football game and sent to Hell for being offsides.
• Archer: A stereotypical punk with a blue Mohawk, miscellaneous piercings, and motorcycle attire
• Emily: Add a description of this character.
• Hitler: Leader of the Nazi party, whom Madison meets in Hell

Quotes edit see section history

• “No, it's not fair, but one man's god is another man's devil.”

• “Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison.”

  Madison

• “And no, I've never enjoyed an orgasm of my own, but I have read The Bridges of Madison County and The Color Purple, and if I learned nothing else from Alice Walker I learned that if you can help a woman discover the curative power of manipulating her own clitoris she'll serve as your loyal devotee and best friend forever.”

  Madison

• “According to Babette, 98.3 percent of lawyers end up in Hell. That's in contrast to the 23 percent of farmers who are eternally damned. Some 45 percent of retail business owners are Hellbound, and 85 percent of computer software writers. Perhaps a trace number of politicians ascend to Heaven, but statistically speaking, 100 percent of them are cast into the fiery pit. As are essentially 100 percent of journalists and redheads. For whatever reason, people standing shorter than five-foot-one are more likely to be condemned. Also, people with a body mass index greater than 0.0012.”

  Madison

• “Death, like life, is what you make of it.”

  Madison

• “Being dead is the very essence of traveling light.”

  Madison

• “Being dead-dead means nonstop, twenty-four/seven, three hundred sixty-five days a year...forever.”

  Madison

• “Death is the One Big Mistake that none of us EVER plans to make.”

  Madison

• “No, it's not fair, but what makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead.”

  Madison

• “We look for Satan with the same intensity that my mom and dad looked for God.”

  Madison

• “If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.”

  Madison

• “No, it's not fair, but what makes life feel like Hell is our expectation that it should last forever. Life is short. Dead is forever.”

  Madison

• “That, I think, is the function of Hell: It's a place of remembering. Beyond that, the purpose of Hell is not so much to forget the details of our lives as it is to forgive them.”

  Madison

• “In Hell, it's our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us.”

  Madison

• “Really, your physical body dying is the easy part. Beyond that, your memories must die. And your ego. Your pride and shame and ambition and hope, all that Personal Identity Crap can take centuries to expire.”

  Madison

• “The truth is, Archer tells me, you stay in hell until you forgive yourself.”

  Madison

• “It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities.”

  Madison

• “I am no single narrative. As neither Rebecca de Winter nor Jane Eyre, I am free to revise my own story, to reinvent myself, my world, at any given moment.”

  Madison

• “I hope. I hope therefore, I am. Thank God for hope.”

  Madison

• “It's my experience that girls tend to be terrifically smart until they grow breasts.”

  Madison

• “Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It's an addiction to break.”

  Madison

• “In such a situation the people who whine and moan might imagine they're making a contribution but really they're just another petty annoyance.”

  Madison

• “The only thing that makes earth feel like Hell, or Hell feel like Hell, is our expectation that it ought to feel like heaven.”

  Madison

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Hell's Headquarters: Madison works for a phone bank located in Hell's HQ, which can be located by going past the Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm and then hanging a left at the River of Steaming-hot Vomit.

First Sentence edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Chuck Palahniuk (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PZ7 P1754 Dam 2011
• Dewey: 813

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Contains strong sexual content, adult language, and disturbing images

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history