How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"Bernard's stories amuse me," said Neville, "at the start. But when they tail off absurdly and he gapes, twiddling a bit of string, I feel my own solitude. He sees everyone with blurred edges. Hence I cannot talk to him of Percival. I cannot expose my absurd and violent passion to his sympathetic understanding." (2b.34)
Though it's fairly standard to refer to passion as violent to highlight its intensity, is there anything more to Neville's word choice here? Given the novel's concern with brutality (and with blurring binaries) we have to wonder if Neville might love Percival so much he wants to wear his skin or something.
Quote #5
Then one of them, beautifully darting, accurately alighting, spiked the soft, monstrous body of the defenceless worm, pecked again and yet again, and left it to fester. Down there among the roots where the flowers decayed, gusts of dead smells were wafted; drops formed on the bloated sides of swollen things. The skin of rotten fruit broke, and matter oozed too thick to run. Yellow excretions were exuded by slugs, and now and again an amorphous body with a head at either end swayed slowly from side to side. The gold-eyed birds darting in between the leaves observed that purulence, that wetness, quizzically. Now and then they plunged the tips of their beaks savagely into the sticky mixture. (3a.4)
Blegh. What starts out as a fairly serene image of birdies singing in the garden turns a bit dark as the birds swoop down "beneath the flowers" to where there are "dead smells" and bloated, swollen, decaying things. Also, one "beautifully darting" bird attacks a defenseless worm and leaves it for dead. Not so pretty and serene, it seems.
Quote #6
The wind rose. The waves drummed on the shore, like turbaned warriors, like turbaned men with poisoned assegais who, whirling their arms on high, advance upon the feeding flocks, the white sheep. (3a.6)
This is a fairly violent image—poisoned assegais (those are spears??). Yikes, what happened to the pretty sparkling sea?