“She seized a safety pin caked with blood and rust, gouged a great hole in her leg which seemed to hang open like an obscene, festering mouth waiting for unspeakable congress with the dropper […]”

Lee describes a woman in prison trying to get a hit of heroin without access to a. On one level, this suggests the desperation and self-destructive nature of the heroin addiction. At the same time, the act is a metaphor for the cycle of addiction, in which the user’s attempt to satiate the need further deepens the wound and the craving for more of the drug.

“The citizens are well adjusted, cooperative, honest, tolerant and above all clean.”

After meeting Dr. Benway, Lee describes the state of Freeland, where Benway was once an advisor. On the surface, Freeland seems like the ideal state, without violence or conflict. However, we learn that the authorities achieve this state through a massive and oppressive process of social and psychological control and manipulation.

“Every citizen of Annexia was required to apply for and carry on his person at all times a whole portfolio of documents.”

Annexia is the precursor state to Freeland, of which Benway was in charge. His task was to completely demoralize and break down the population and reshape citizens in the desired form. However, he didn’t do this through overt violence or oppression but by subjecting citizens to a ridiculously complex and arbitrary bureaucracy that kept them in a permanent state of anxiety.