How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Part.Paragraph)
Quote #16
Looking down through the window in the floor, the Savage could see Lenina's upturned face, pale in the bluish light of the lamps. The mouth was open, she was calling. Her foreshortened figure rushed away from him; the diminishing square of the roof seemed to be falling through the darkness. (11.114)
The new world is such a painful experience for John because it furthers his isolation. Now he is isolated from the one person he had in the Reservation: his mother.
Quote #17
"Yesterday's committee,
Sticks, but a broken drum,
Midnight in the City,
Flutes in a vacuum,
Shut lips, sleeping faces,
Every stopped machine,
The dumb and littered places
Where crowds have been:…
All silences rejoice,
Weep (loudly or low),
Speak—but with the voice
Of whom, I do not know.
Absence, say, of Susan's,
Absence of Egeria's
Arms and respective bosoms,
Lips and, ah, posteriors,
Slowly form a presence;
Whose? and, I ask, of what
So absurd an essence,
That something, which is not,
Nevertheless should populate
Empty night more solidly
Than that with which we copulate,
Why should it seem so squalidly?" (12.56)
It is entirely fitting that Helmholtz's first lines of poetry are about solitude—and that they hint at a divine being ("an essence"). Just as John did on the Reservation, Helmholtz explores his spirituality while he's alone.
Quote #18
"But what were your rhymes?" Bernard asked.
"They were about being alone."
[…]
"Well, I gave them that as an example, and they reported me to the Principal."
"I'm not surprised," said Bernard. "It's flatly against all their sleep-teaching. Remember, they've had at least a quarter of a million warnings against solitude." (12.52-8)
In case you forgot that solitude was outlawed…