How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"I try with him. I say, 'Be careful, son. Watch you don't slip down and crack your skull open or fracture a arm.'" Mrs. Reilly sucked at the ice cubes a bit. "Ignatius learned safety at my knee. He's always been grateful for that." (8.216)
Mrs. Reilly and Ignatius don't have much in common, but as she says, the neurotic worrying about safety does in fact seem to be one trait that Mrs. Reilly passed on. Of course, this obsession with personal comfort is something that Ignatius would repudiate if he were a loyal follower of Boethius (more in the "Symbols" section about this). But sometimes blood is thicker than books.
Quote #5
"They'd make him listen. They'd beat him in the head, they'd lock him up in a straitjacket, they'd pump some water on him," Santa said a little too eagerly.
"You gotta think about yourself, Irene," Mr. Robichaux said. "That son of yours is gonna put you in your grave." (11.70-71)
If there's any Oedipal struggle in the book, it's not Ignatius's effort to break away from his mother—it's his mother's efforts to break away from him. Santa and Claude are eager to help her out. Instead of the son killing the father to sleep with the mother, Santa appears to want the mother to kill the son to sleep with (or at least marry) the (step) father. Also, Santa probably just likes the idea of someone, particularly Ignatius, being tortured. Too bad she couldn't have seen Boethius getting spikes hammered into his head.
Quote #6
"May I ask where the money comes from to support this decadent whimsy of yours?"
"From my dear family out there in the wheat," Dorian sighed. "They send me large checks every month. In return I simply guarantee them that I'll stay out of Nebraska. I left there under something of a cloud you see." (12.81-82)
A Confederacy of Dunces was written in the 1960s, and attitudes toward gay people were much less tolerant at that time. To some extent, Toole portrays Dorian and his friends in stereotypical ways; they're melodramatic and effeminate and sexualized. Toole also shows some sympathy for them, though. This passage seems to do a little of both.
The novel is certainly making fun of Greene's campiness. But it also agrees with Dorian that Nebraska is fairly awful, and it's mocking his parents for their parochial horror at their son's probably quite standard indiscretions.