How we cite our quotes: (Volume.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
People were fighting savagely for standing-room in the carriages even at two o'clock. By three, people were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a couple of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station; revolvers were fired, people stabbed, and the policemen who had been sent to direct the traffic, exhausted and infuriated, were breaking the heads of the people they were called out to protect. (1.16.2)
And then, just seven chapters later, we see what has become of the community. Instead of offering each other strawberries, these neighbors are attacking each other. Now that's a turnaround. Rather than the Martian invasion making people band together and build up a sense of community, we see the breakdown of the old community.
Quote #5
So much as they could see of the road Londonward between the houses to the right was a tumultuous stream of dirty, hurrying people, pent in between the villas on either side; the black heads, the crowded forms, grew into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner, hurried past, and merged their individuality again in a receding multitude that was swallowed up at last in a cloud of dust. (1.16.40)
Here, the brother and the Elphinstone ladies are caught up in the "exodus" from London. The chapter title, "Exodus," might be a little ironic. After all, in the Biblical book of Exodus, the exodus from Egypt is like a Biblical version of a team-building exercise. All the tribes come together to get out of there. But here, the exodus from London is like a negative version of that. Instead of building the team out of individuals, these people are disappearing in the crush. (And for some, that's literal, as they get trampled.) What sense of community can be built in such a situation?
Quote #6
But once in the stream he seemed to lose volition, to become a part of that dusty rout. (1.16.80)
When the brother is (temporarily) swallowed up by the crowd, we probably feel even more the danger of this sort of crowd. That is, we've followed the narrator's brother now for two chapters, and gosh darn it, we like him. He's vaguely heroic and pretty clever. And what happens to him? The same thing that happens to everyone else: he loses some of his individuality in the crowd.