How we cite our quotes: (Volume.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
In the end I planted myself between him and the food, and told him of my determination to begin a discipline. (2.4.2)
While we might think of rules and order as something to do with large amounts of people – the nation or the city – let's spare a moment for this tiny setting of rules and order. The curate wants to eat and the narrator wants to start rationing food. As with most of the rules/order in this book, it doesn't quite work out. According to the narrator, the curate can't be reasoned with, so a situation that should be about rules becomes more about power. Or is power always at the heart of rules and order?
Quote #8
"Those who stop obey orders. […] We can't have any weak or silly. Life is real again… (2.7.72)
This is the artilleryman making clear that the new sort of society he wants to start is one based on rules and order. In fact, to the artilleryman, the Martian invasion seems to represent an opportunity to put some new rules and order into place. Hmm. Remember how it didn't work out so well when the narrator tried to run a house with the curate founded on rules? Here, you would think the narrator would be satisfied (finally, rules!), but the artilleryman turns out to be a weak and "undisciplined" dreamer (2.7.96). (Again, that word "discipline.")
Quote #9
The torment was over. Even that day the healing would begin. The survivors of the people scattered over the country – leaderless, lawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd – the thousands who had fled by sea, would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the vacant squares. (2.8.30)
When the narrator imagines the recovery, he envisions the return of "the pulse of life." That's a very natural image, but also something very ordered. Pulses tend to be regular, following a certain rule. So, the narrator imagines the Martian invasion as letting the sheep run wild (who knows what sort of hijinks they'll get into) and imagines the recovery as the return of order.