How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
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"?