Naomi’s Reviews > Kallocain > Status Update

“Everything she had said was said from within myself. I was sick, unstrung to the roots of my being, because she had held herself like a mirror in front of me. I had not suspected that she, with her tight lips, with her silence and her penetrating eyes, was made of the same weak timber as I. How could I threaten her, how could I force her, when that was how it was?”

“‘How can it be?’ she whispered in anguish. ‘How can it be, that we search for something that doesn’t exist? How can it be that we are sick unto death, when we’re completely well, when all is as it should be. . .’”

Leo’s wife, Linda, is unhappy but she is also confused as to why she is unhappy because everything in her life is “as it should be” but she’s still not happy. She worries about her children how they are not “home age” anymore and she misses them and she loves Leo but she’s also confused. Cause she “should be happy”

So he gave Linda a shot of Kallocain while she was sleeping (well first he tied her up and before that he covered up the “police ears & police eyes” aka cameras in their bedroom) and she said she would’ve killed him dayyys ago if she wasn’t so scared. She also said basically she had so many things she wanted to do or say but never did.

⭐️“‘Terror?' 'Yes, terror. We've been moving towards ever stricter surveillance - and it hasn't made us safer, as we hoped, but more fearful. Along with our terror grows our impulse to strike out around us. Isn't it so: when a wild animal feels threatened and sees no way to flee and escape, it goes on the attack. When terror creeps over us, there is nothing left to do but to strike the first blow.…’”

denunciations: “…is the act of publicly assigning to a person the blame for a perceived wrongdoing, with the hope of bringing attention to it. Notably, centralized social control in authoritarian states requires so” —Wikipedia

⭐️“‘The denunciations have been increasing steadily during the past twenty years, said Rissen. 'I have it on the authority of the chief of police himself.’ ‘But it doesn't mean that criminality has increased’, I said. ‘It may equally be loyalty that has increased, there's more awareness of what's rotten...’ ‘It means that terror has increased’, said Rissen, with unexpected vehemence.”

“To express oneself was already to know out loud, but I did not stop to argue, and hurried into the lift, tired as I was. But he was right: I knew very well what the interruption meant. The World State lay in the shadow of another war.”

“I am almost certain that what he had done was something stupid. Only a few days later it became quite clear to me that I should never really have gained admission to the Film Studio Palace. It was plain that a different disposition, perhaps a completely different education would have been required were I to have avoided the shock I now received…”