How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #10
He has performed a supreme creative feat, a work endlessly reflecting upon itself, not discursively but in its very substance, a Chinese box of words as high as the tower of Babel, a meditation upon the bottomless trickery of consciousness and the redemptive role of words in the lives of those without identity, that is human beings. (1.23.171)
In keeping with the whole what-Bradley Pearson-says-about-Hamlet-also-applies-to-The Black Prince theme, this passage gives us yet another important bit of insight into the novel we're reading. Just as Shakespeare did in Hamlet (according to Bradley Pearson), Iris Murdoch has given us an extraordinarily complex text that works to convey the limitless nuance and complexity of human consciousness. Not a bad achievement for the novel's 370-something pages to pull off.