killed for words he cannot make; freed into every tongue · S2
Words that are not and can never be words are sought by Lucien here through what he guesses to be the maxillofacial movements of speech
Context
The figurant's death is the theme's cruelest literalization: the A.F.R. demand words Lucien physically cannot produce, and he is executed — the beloved broom driven down his throat — for the failure to speak, his mouth moving after a language it never had. And then the book grants in death exactly what it withheld in life: the freed Lucien sounds an alarm "in all the world's well-known tongues," the voiceless man become, at the instant he stops being a body, universally articulate. Communication arrives only once there is no longer anyone to reach with it.