the silent one, suddenly on the air

The scene ends by launching the theme's most violent reversal: John Wayne — the book's monument to affectless reserve, the boy whose face is an "almond on its end" — abruptly "holding forth innermost thoughts for public ears," put "on the air" by Troeltsch's headset. The one character who never transmits is suddenly all transmission, interiority forced into open broadcast and read by everyone as having "lost his mind," which is the theme's grim symmetry: total silence and total disclosure both register as breakdown. [sweep · cross-ref 172]