IJ study archive

the Big Buddy sessions: the hatred is part of the work

quote

The end-of-the-day hatred of all the work is just part of the work. [...] It's all planned out. The bitchers and moaners in there are just doing what's expected.

Context

Hal opens the Big Buddy session with the scene's governing thesis: the players' end-of-day loathing of the regimen "is just part of the work," scheduled and expected. The academy has metabolized even the resistance to it — the after-shower bitch-session is a designed release valve, "all planned out." It's the first move in Hal's long exposition that E.T.A.'s real project isn't the body at all but the management of the mind that inhabits the exhausted body.

Quoted from

In anthology