“It is not the intensity but the duration of pain that breaks the will to resist.”
Lee explains how the symptoms of withdrawal cause the cyclical nature of drug addiction. He brushes off the misconceptions around the total need for a fix that causes the addict to lose control of their suppression or sobriety. He clarifies how the intensity of the pain that comes with withdrawal is not why a junk addict breaks but the longevity of the pain. A dope fiend can tolerate the pain of withholding the use of heroin but due to the long duration of the pain, it makes it harder to quit.
“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 which she now plunged out of sight into the gaping wound.”
The statement accentuates the novel’s motif of the vileness of heroin addiction. The striking imagery of the assertion implants the gory details of drug abuse and how it enslaves its user over time. The minute particulars of the process of an addict injecting opioids in her body in a graphic manner show the repulsiveness without exaggerations. Burroughs aims to convey the accurate portrayal of heroin use without trying to glorify or criticize the habit.
“You see, control can never be a means to any practical end...It can never be a means to anything but more control...like junk...”
Lee utters this statement after examining the political parties in Annexia that have distinct philosophies but are all in favor of totalitarian concepts. He criticizes the seemingly applicable yet sadistic policies of the different factions such as The Senders. The Senders’ ideas aim to create a one-way mind control system where a few in authority control the minds of the citizens. Thus he asserts how their policies that favor control over its citizens can only lead to more absolutism in the future akin to heroin addiction. In that, the continual use of junk only leads its user to be a slave to the habit. As a satire to tyrannous governments, Burroughs critiques the political rules that aim to subjugate its citizens to particular ideologies.
“White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionless air. A group of children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire and built a fire between his legs and stand watching with bestial curiosity as the flames lick his thighs. His flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony.”
The quotation from Dr. Benway alludes to the sadistic acts that take place in Annexia that he played a big part in. He describes the atrocious deeds and savagery that befall individuals ravaged by new ways of getting drugged up. It paints the hostility of these alternate realms that Lee comes across in his journey expressing the sadistic nature of its dwellers.
