The Flame Alphabet Pt. 2

"I did my work and fed the material to the technicians, who came to my office with a bucket to collect what I'd done.  That's what the work I gave them amounted to: slops.  In the courtyard men and women fell unconsciousness, turned into gaze less creatures.  Some of them were sick because of alphabets I made.  I raised a sparse beard on my face and I learned to stare between the people I saw." (183)

I thought this passage really embodied how much an apocalyptic event can impact individuals.  The tone of the passage was dull and lifeless, reflecting the nature of Sam and the "creatures."  It was frightful how little emotion the subjects had.  As a result, I thought it was appropriate and clever how the passage mentioned the men and women were turned into "gaze less creatures."  The complexity of human motion is a well known trait that distinguishes humans from other animals.  If people were to adopt emotionless states, what would set them apart from any other creature?  Another part of the passage that intrigued me was the emotional distant enforced by Sam.  I thought the last sentence was particularly powerful.  This reminded me of Rabab's reference to people with depression and post traumatic stress disorder.  All of Sam's traumatic and painful experiences had hardened him.  The contrast between how he was in the beginning of the book and now is so different it's difficult to imagine that these two personas were ever the same person.