How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
You had to translate and translate, explain and explain, back and forth, and it was the punishment of hell itself not to understand or be understood, not to know the crazy from the sane, the wise from the fools, the young from the old or the sick from the well. The fathers were no fathers and the sons no sons. You had to talk with yourself in the daytime and reason with yourself at night. Who else was there to talk to in a city like New York? (5.36)
The Tower of Babel is a recurring image throughout Seize the Day, and here the novel's narrator is gesturing to it again. Like the men who suffer God's punishment at Babel, Wilhelm is desperate to understand, and, most importantly, to be understood. Too bad God has other plans.
Quote #8
And in the dark tunnel, in the haste, heat, and darkness which disfigure and make freaks and fragments of nose and eyes and teeth, all of a sudden, unsought, a general love for all these imperfect and lurid-looking people burst out in Wilhelm's breast. He loved them. One and all, he passionately loved them. They were his brothers and sisters. (5.38)
A fleeting experience in an underground tunnel is a revelation to Wilhelm, as it makes him feel that there is "a larger body" of which he is but one small part (5.37). Although the moment passes quickly, Wilhelm struggles to remember it later in times when he feels anxious and alone.
Quote #9
And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence—I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. (7.89)
As Wilhelm faces his ruin, his vision of the "inexhaustible" crowd is almost like the one he has in the underground tunnel. But, whereas in the tunnel he felt sure that all the men and women were part of one "larger body" of humankind, here, he can only perceive the crowd as a never-ending current of individual "I"s, kind of like this.