How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
A government functioning in its Pelagian phase commits itself to the belief that man is perfectible, that perfection can be achieved by his own efforts, and that the journey towards perfection is a along a straight road. Man wants to be perfect. He wants to be good. The citizens of a community want to co-operate with their rulers, and so there is no real need to have devices of coercion, sanctions, which will force them to co-operate. (1.4.1)
The Pelphase that Tristram describes to his students is firmly in place when the novel begins. However, little does Tristram know that things are about to take a very dark turn.
Quote #2
'Brutality!' cried Tristram. The class was at last interested. 'Beatings-up. Secret police. Torture in brightly lighted cellars. Condemnation without trial. Finger-nails pulled out with pincers. The rack. The cold-water treatment. The gouging-out of eyes. The firing-squad in the cold dawn. And all of this because of disappointment.' (1.4.1)
According to the cyclical model of history that Tristram teaches his students, the transition between the Pelphase and the Gusphase will always be terrible and bloody. As the State realizes that citizens do need to be coerced into doing what they're told, its methods will get more and more aggressive.
Quote #3
'Shock,' he said. 'The governors become shocked at their own excesses. They find that they have been thinking in heretical terms—the sinfulness of man rather than his inherent goodness. They relax their sanctions and the result is complete chaos. But, by this time, disappointment cannot sink any deeper. Disappointment can no longer shock the state into repressive action, and a kind of philosophical pessimism supervenes.' (1.6.1)
According to the cyclical model of history that Tristram teaches his students, the terrible violence and bloodiness that marks the transition from the Pelphase to the Gusphase always results in a sense of deep social pessimism. Although the State will eventually stop exercising direct violence against its citizens, it also will have lost its sense of the value of human life.
Quote #4
The orthodox view presents man as a sinful creature from whom no good at all may be expected. A different dream, gentlemen, a dream which, again, outstrips the reality. It eventually appears that human social behaviour is rather better than any Augustinian pessimist has a right to expect, and so a sort of optimism begins to emerge. And so Pelagianism is reinstated. (1.6.1)
The pessimism of the Gusphase means that human lives are considered worthless and expendable, which is why it's so easy for the British Army to murder droves of citizens without batting an eye. Luckily for Tristram and his compatriots, this phase never seems to last too long either.
Quote #5
And there, just by the turning into McGibbon Avenue, he saw something which, for no immediate reason her could assign to the sensation, chilled him. On the road, blocking the sparse traffic, watched by crowds that kept their decent distance, was a company of men in the grey uniform of the police—three platoons with platoon commanders—standing at ease. Most of them grinned awkwardly, shuffled; recruits, Tristram divined, new recruits, but each of them already armed with a squat dull-shining carbine. (1.10.2)
When London expands its police regiments and arms the young recruits with carbines (rifles), Tristram sees immediately that the Pelphase has begun to shift into the Interphase—the transition period that marks the turn towards the Gusphase. More than most of his fellow citizens, he knows that a new reign of police brutality lies ahead.
Quote #6
And then the police were upon him. It was swift, balletic, laughing; not violence as Tristram had read of violence in the past; it seemed more tickling than hitting. But, in no more than a count-out of five, the unfrocked priest was leaning against the bar, trying to draw up breath from a great way down, blood all over his mouth. (1.10.20)
This is one of many scenes of police brutality in The Wanting Seed, and it is also the most playful. Why is it significant that the violence seems more like "tickling" than "hitting"?
Quote #7
Beatrice-Joanna and Tristram also missed some exciting stereoscopic film-shots of the summary settling of the strike at the National Synthelac Works—the police, nicknamed greyboys, using truncheons and carbines, laughing the while; a splash of chromatic brains on the camera lens. (1.13.2)
In just one short day, the Pelphase shifts rapidly into the Interphase, and police regiments begin murdering British citizens in the streets. As in other scenes of messy violence, the narration here is almost cheery. What is its effect?
Quote #8
There were black vans waiting, side-doors open, lorries with tail-boards down. A sergeant yelped something. There was a jostling at one place, the vexillae advanced. The whistled shining inspector unholstered his pistol. He peeped one silver blast, and a carbine spat at the air. 'Get the sods,' called a worker in torn overalls. A tentative thrust of a phalanx of crushed men gained momentum speedily, and a greyboy went down shrieking. The whistle now pierced like toothache. Carbines opened out frankly, and shot whined like puppies from the walls. (2.6.7)
When Tristram is caught up in a street riot, he witnesses firsthand the violent struggle between citizens and the police. Why are the "greyboys" so eager to crush the striking workers?
Quote #9
At Redhill the scholar alighted and three members of the Population Police came aboard. They were young men, subalterns, well set-up, their metal ashine and their black unmaculated by hairs, scurf or food droppings. They examined the women passengers insolently, as with eyes expert at burrowing to illegal pregnancies. Beatrice-Joanna blushed, wishing the journey were over. (2.7.2)
Anthony Burgess's use of the word "as" is masterful in this passage, and it opens up a lot of room for interpretation. Are the young men of the Population Police staring "insolently" at the women on the tube-train in order to discover illegal pregnancies, or does their staring suggest something else (hatred, lust, disgust, etc.)?
Quote #10
Late December, in Bridgwater, Somerset, Western Province, a middle-aged man named Thomas Wharnton, going home from work shortly after midnight, was set upon by youths. These knifed him, stripped him, spitted him, basted him, carved him, served him—all openly and without shame in one of the squares of the town. A hungry crowd clamoured for hunks and slices, kept back—that the King's Peace might not be broken—by munching and dripping greyboys. (3.5.1)
This is one of the subtle moments in the novel that marks the collapse of the repressive police state. Rather than beating and shooting the hungry crowd (as they beat and shot striking workers and protestors not so long ago), here the greyboys are simply keeping the crowd back while they gorge on poor Tommy Wharnton. It won't be long before most of the greyboys themselves will be murdered and eaten all over the country.