My wife has allergies!
-- Man on train (chapter 1 paragraph 1)

Importance: Mary Shelley takes the train to San Diego during the outbreak of the Spanish Influenza. People try to avoid public contact but if they must go out, they wear gauze masks over their mouth and nose and poultices around their necks. Everyone is suspicious of everyone else as being a carrier of the virus. When a woman sneezes on the train, the people around her begin to panic and become angry thinking that the woman has infected all of them with the flu virus.

I wonder if surgical gauze is really doing anything besides making us look like monsters from another planet. My science teacher, Mr. Wright, wore a mask, and he's just as dead as the people who didn't.
-- Mary Shelley (chapter 2 paragraph 5)

Importance: Mary Shelley has a tendency to question authority and challenges previously held ideas. She has a scientific mind and old ways of thinking and folklore irritate...