How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
My empathy toward his suffering was acute, for he and I were fellow sojourners in the forbidding kingdom wherein all roads led to that singular nullity of fathomless grief and immeasurable guilt. We were no strangers to that barren clime, that merciless landscape in which no oasis existed to slake our ravening thirst. What meritorious draft, what magical elixir offered by the art of men or gods had the power to relieve our agony? A year had passed since I had lost my parents; still, the memory and its attendant lords of anguish and rage reigned in the desert sovereignty of my soul, as if no time had expired since that night our house burned to its foundations. (11.288)
Sometimes the old adage "time heals all wounds" just doesn't do justice to how mourning really goes. Getting over something like the tragic death of your parents isn't easily done, so Will Henry can acutely empathize with what Malachi is going through, even though his loss is less fresh.
Quote #8
I must confess my feelings were mixed. I had witnessed firsthand the savagery of these monsters, had seen the destruction of which they were capable, had even come close to losing my own life to their ravenous rage. And yet… and yet. Suffering is suffering still, no matter what manner of organism suffers, and this particular one suffered greatly, that was clear. Part of me was repulsed. And part was possessed by profound pity for its plight—a much smaller part, to be sure, but a portion nevertheless. (12.188)
It takes quite the compassionate person to feel pity for something so grotesque. I doubt anyone would've blamed Will Henry for not feeling pity for the juvenile Anthropophagus, so this moment is pretty illuminating as to what a special person he is.
Quote #9
"Warthrop," replied Starr in a condescending tone. "Really. These… " He waved his mottled claw in the air, searching for the word. "Patients, so-called, they are the dregs of society. They come here because there is literally no place else for them to go. No family, or none that would claim them. All are insane—most criminally so, and those who are not have the intellectual capacity of a turnip root. They are human garbage, discarded by men, toxic to the general populace and to themselves, forgotten, unwanted, cruel, comical mockeries of all things that make us human. They could rot here or they could be sacrificed to the higher good." (13.102)
Dr. Starr has such a profound lack of empathy for his fellow human beings it makes us wonder why, exactly, he decided to go into psychiatry. This sociopathic disregard for suffering people is what's allowed him to sacrifice them to the captive Anthropophagi for over twenty years. Ugh.