How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
The screen above their heads glowed whitely, then erupted into a coloured stereoscopic image of the statue that crowned Government Building. [. . .]
'There he is,' said Derek, 'whoever he is—our patron saint. St Pelagius, St Augustine, or St Anonymous—which? We shall know tonight.' (2.11.21-22)
Derek's words imply that when Britain is in a Pelphase, the Government Building statue will seem to represent Pelagius. When Britain is in a Gusphase, the statue will seem to represent St Augustine. Here, Derek's comments also foreshadow the onset of the Interphase: a moment of dark, violent movement from the Pelphase to the Gusphase. "Tonight" is the night that the British Government plans to announce its new police regime.
Quote #5
'Sit tight and wait,' counseled Tristram. 'History is a wheel. This sort of world can't go on forever, either. One of these days we're bound to go back to liberalism and Pelagianism and sexual inversion and, and—well, your sort of thing. We're obviously bound to, because of all of this.' (4.4.13)
Although Tristram's history lessons suggest that it usually takes some time to shift from Pelphase to Interphase to Gusphase and back again, in The Wanting Seed, British society comes nearly full circle in little less than a year. Is this simply for the sake of the plot, or does it make a deeper point?
Quote #6
'Oh,' cried Tristram in sudden irritation, 'don't be so sorry for yourself. It's people like you who've made the kind of world you say you no longer believe in. We were all safe enough in that old liberal society.' He was talking of less than a year back. (4.10.13)
Just as social values shift rapidly in The Wanting Seed, so too does hindsight make the past seem safer and cheerier than it was. It hasn't taken Tristram long at all to forget that he and Beatrice-Joanna really weren't safe before the new social order set in.