Quote 28
"Anyway," he concludes, "having said farewell to the city, what do I find myself doing in the wilderness? Doctoring dogs. Playing right-hand man to a woman who specializes in sterilization and euthanasia."
Lucy laughs. "Bev? You think Bev is part of the repressive apparatus? Bev is in awe of you! You are a professor. She has never met an old-fashioned professor before. She is frightened of making grammar mistakes in front of you." (11.33-34)
Regional differences affect the way people regard one another. Maybe David hasn't thought about it before, but just as he forms opinions and judgments of everyone he meets, so do they examine him. In this case, doesn't it seem like Bev regards David as some kind of mythical creature?
Quote 29
"You will marry Lucy," he says carefully. "Explain to me what you mean. No, wait, rather don't explain. This is not something I want to hear. This is not how we do things."
We: he is on the point of saying, We Westerners. (22.80-81)
This is a classic "Us versus Them" moment, and it plays out through the contrast between city and country ways. The proposition that Petrus will take Lucy on as his third wife seems to be a totally reasonable idea to Petrus, but it is completely absurd to David.
Quote 30
"His pleasure in living has been snuffed out. Like a leaf on a stream, like a puffball on a breeze, he has begun to float toward his end. He sees it quite clearly, and it fills him with (the word will not go away) despair. The blood of life is leaving his body and despair is taking its place, despair that is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment. You breathe it in, your limbs relax, you cease to care, even at the moment when the steel touches your throat." (13.13)
Suffering doesn't just have to be a product of what you feel, either physically or emotionally. Sometimes not feeling can arouse feelings of suffering. For David, despair is kind of like an invisible, tasteless, undetectable force that takes away the joy of living.