"'We all know it. We're modelled from trash. Junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps. Convicts, maybe, just so long as they aren't psychos. That's what we come from. We all know it, so why don't we say it? A woman like that?'" (pg 166).
This excerpt from Ruth has such a nice array of strategies that I just had to use it.
First, it is a fine example of British vernacular with the word "modelled." I realized it early on that this book has other words like "realise" where Ishiguro is using that sort of talk. This is probably just because the author is British, but I did not really notice this much vernacular in Brave New World. It does give this novel more of a sense that it takes place outside of the United States though (seeing that it is in the United Kingdom, it makes sense).
Also, the term "winos" is a very informal, colloquial term to use. Using a colloquial term in parallelism with more common terms made me stop to figure out what exactly a wino was. I feel like it probably is more of a British term, but all the dictionaries say that it is informal.
The italicization of "trash" made it emphasized before Ruth expounded beyond the already insulting nature. This really hammered in that the tone associated with possibles is one of disgust. While everyone secretly wants to know who they were cloned was (so it seems), no one actually wants to know who they were cloned from out of fear that they are magically going to turn into the prostitute which they were made from. Here is one of those moments where I start to wonder about nature versus nurture.
The phrase "just as long as they aren't psychos" kind of appears to be a litotes. She definitely negated a negative form for a certain attitude that would not have been felt had she said "just as long as they are normal." For some reason, psychos made me feel more strongly about the situation than had she just stated a positive.
In the words of Mrs. Sander, "a dark chocolate paragraph."
No comments:
Post a Comment