Passage 1
I shall be quite frank: even we have not attained the absolute, exact solution of the problem of happiness. Twice a day, from sixteen to seventeen o'clock and from twenty-one to twenty-two, our united powerful organism dissolves into separate cells; these are the personal hours designated by the Tables. During these hours you would see the curtains discreetly drawn in the rooms of some; others march slowly over the pavement of the main avenue or sit at their desks as I sit now. But I firmly believe, let them call me an idealist and a dreamer, I believe that sooner or later we shall somehow find even for these hours, a place in the general formula. Somehow, all of the 86,400 seconds will be incorporated in the Tables of Hours.
Government, measurement, and surveillanceFree will and automatismhuman institutions · advancesautomatism · advancesgovern · advancesRights and self-governmentConsequences and welfareDiminishes autonomy
The passage presents a society whose Tables regulate nearly all time and collective conduct, treating the absorption of private hours into a general formula as the route to happiness. The narrator appears to endorse this logic, but the dystopian fiction makes the resulting loss of private choice and individual separation satirically alarming.
Local word range 4971–5395