How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
"You know there's two hundred sixty kids in that one complex suffering from kwashiorkor? All low-income or Basic Support families, and they aren't getting protein. And what the hell am I supposed to do about it? I've put in five different reqs for Minimal Protein Ration for those kids and they don't come, it's all red tape and excuses. People on Basic Support can afford to buy sufficient food, they keep telling me. Sure, but what if the food isn't there to buy? Ah, the hell with it. I go give 'em Vitamin C shots and try to pretend that starvation is just scurvy.... " (1.33)
Kwashiorkor is a form of malnutrition that results from eating enough calories, but not enough protein. It causes swelling, irritability, anorexia, an enlarged liver, and a bunch of other not so good things. But it's not something that happens in the developed world, so what's up? The mention of this disease occurring in Portland lets us know that the future is not a good place: if Portland is having these kinds of problems, then imagine how bad things must be elsewhere.
Quote #2
Urban and industrial effluvia had not been controlled soon enough to reverse the cumulative trends already at work in the mid-Twentieth Century; it would take several centuries for the CO2 to clear out of the air, if it ever did. (3.2)
In the future, global warming has destroyed the environment, and humanity has polluted the air. It's kind of an environmental warning in novel form—and this was written back in the '70s. Have things changed since then?
Quote #3
There was more scurvy, typhus, and hepatitis in the Old Cities, more gang violence, crime, and murder in the New Cities. (3.4)
In this world, even though disease has been controlled in the new cities, lots of new things have stepped in to kill off the inhabitants. It's as if in this novel, no matter how good the technology looks, there will be consequences for it that no one really imagined. Is the technology at fault? Or are humans at fault for always leaping before they look, never thinking through anything before they slap on some new tech like a Band-Aid?