Mario, the Bolex, and Avril on sadness (p. 766)
‘My point here is that certain types of persons are terrified even to poke a big toe into genuinely felt regret or sadness, or to get angry. This means they are afraid to live. They are imprisoned in something, I think. Frozen inside, emotionally. Why is this. No one knows, Love-o. It’s sometimes called “suppression,” ’ with the fingers out to the sides again. ‘Dolores believes it derives from childhood trauma, but I suspect not always. There may be some persons who are born imprisoned. The irony, of course, being that the very imprisonment that prohibits sadness’s expression must itself feel intensely sad and painful. For the hypothetical person in question. There may be sad people right here at the Academy who are like this, Mario, and perhaps you’re sensitive to it. You are not exactly insensitive when it comes to people.’
Context
"Born imprisoned": Avril's lecture arrives, by its own route, at the theme's cage — imprisonment that prohibits sadness and is itself intensely sad, the same self-feeding circuit as the essay's closed current and Marathe's cage of the self two scenes later. "There may be sad people right here at the Academy" lands squarely on her own son without her hearing it land.