How we cite our quotes: (Record.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"I must repeat, I have made it my duty to write concealing nothing." (6.1)
D-503 emphasizes his commitment to honesty and clarity, suggesting that he abhors deceit. And yet as the book goes on, he practices it more and more often in the name of hiding his changing identity. Is the author suggesting that D-503's claims to clarity are deceitful, or at least self-deceiving?
Quote #2
"'I have a physician in the Medical Bureau; he is registered to me; if I ask him, he will give you a certificate declaring that you are ill." (6.56)
This is the first presentation of a lie as a way to get around the dictates of the State. The lie is therefore a weapon to be used against the State. Freaky stuff!
Quote #3
"Yes, you are right, I am sick," I said with joy (that seems to me an inexplicable contradiction; there was nothing to be joyful about). (7.33)
Many times in the book, what appears to be deceit is actually the paradoxical division of D-503 into two warring mental halves. It's a sutble distinction, but an important one.
Quote #4
Not dreaming at all. If you will, "standing in adoration." (8.6)
Liar! Here, he's coming more and more to I-330's way of thinking, and possibly lying to himself as a way of escaping it.
Quote #5
I write all this merely in order to demonstrate how strangely confused our precise and sharp human reason may become. (11.2)
Here, he's admitting the possibility of deceit in human reasoning: in the ability to deceive oneself as well as others.
Quote #6
And now I am no longer able to distinguish what is dream from what is actuality; irrational numbers grow through my solid, habitual, tridimensional life; and in· stead of firm, polished surfaces, there is something shaggy and rough. (18.3)
This gets pretty heavy: the idea that reality itself is deceiving him—has always been deceiving him—and now its true nature may finally be showing itself.
Quote #7
"I went downstairs and put my name down in the book for the outgoing Numbers, as everyone did. But I felt I lived separately from everybody; I lived by myself separated by a soft wall which absorbed noises; beyond that wall there was my own world." (18.6)
This is the punishment of keeping secrets: guilt and a sense of separation. In our world, we could live with it much more easily since we're used to deceit. But for D-503, it must feel like the end of the world.
Quote #8
You have, my dear, an abnormal, sickly look about you—since abnormality and sickliness are the same thing. You are ruining yourself—and no one will tell you so. (23.5)
This is interesting because it acknowledges the presence of deceit in the State. No one will tell him about his looks, and therefore, they're deceiving him. A little hypocritical in a society that stresses clarity, don't you think?
Quote #9
It just goes against nature for a thinking and seeing being to live among these irregularities and unknown X's. It is as if someone blindfolds you and then makes you walk around like that and you feel your way around, stumbling, and you know that there is an edge somewhere very nearby and that it would only that one step for the only thing left of you to be a flattened, mangled piece of meat. Isn't that just about the same thing I'm going through? (30.32)
Again, we're confronted with the possibility that reality itself is the deceiver and that D-503—having thought himself open and honest for his entire life—has actually been living a lie.
Quote #10
And suddenly, like a lightning strike to the head, it was shamelessly clear: he is also them … And my whole self, all my agonies, all that I, exhausted, with my last strength, brought here, like a victory—all this was simply funny, like the ancient anecdote about Abraham and Isaac. Abraham, in a cold sweat, was already waving the knife over his son—over his own self—and then suddenly there was a voice from above: "Don't bother! I was just joking …" (39.28)
The dull realization of deceit—that S-4711 is a pawn of I-330 too—brings him no happiness here. Or to paraphrase another famous book, "how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise?"