"A white...and yet not - not white, but colourless - a glass face, glass lips. He was all eyes - black, absorbing, swallowing holes - with that terrible world but several minutes away. His golden badge and digits were already removed. His hands were bound with a purple ribbon (an old-fashioned custom: the explanation, apprarently, is that in ancient times, when all this was not carried out in the name of One State, the convicted, understandably, felt it within their rights to resist, and so their hands were usually fettered with chains."
This cipher, who is about to be executed is described to have a "glass face, glass lips." Glass becomes a symbol of no privacy, in the world of One State the most delicate of situations is made public. Earlier D-503 explains a metaphor of our face and how it is like apartments. You can only see into the person through their eyes, the windows to your soul. However this cipher "was all eyes - black absorbing, swallowing holes..." In his case where he is about to be executed in public, his eyes reveal the defeat, the emptiness inside him. He does not even fell that it is "within [his] rights to resist" that as an individual he has no power to make a change.
This shows how in a society where privacy does not exist and everyone is forced to confine, individuals are unable to express their individual opinions.
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