8.2.14

Ouch.

From The Magus by John Fowles, Chapter 61--



'As Doctor Conchis has observed in his The Midcentury Predicament:  "The rebel with no specific gift for rebellion is destined to become the drone; and even this metaphor is inexact, since the drone has at least a small chance of fecundating the queen, whereas the human rebel-drone is deprived even of that small chance and may finally see himself as totally sterile, lacking not only the brilliant life-success of the queens but even the humble satisfactions of the workers in the human hive.  Such a personality is reduced to mere wax, a mere receiver of impressions; and this condition is the very negation of the basic drive in him - to rebel.  It is no wonder that in middle age many such failed rebels, rebels turned self-conscious drones, aware of their susceptibility to intellectual vogues, adopt a mask of cynicism that cannot hide their more or less paranoiac sense of having been betrayed by life.'"