However, with the closing line of the book being ‘Congratulate me.’, having a sarcastic tone, in conjunction with his lack of sensitivity and the fortifications that he has against women who are not ‘symmetrical’, gives the reader the insight into the mind of a stereotypical man. The way that he says he is focused on ‘symmetry’, and the way that he is obsessed with the female form instead of the cognition and how women are emotional. This quotation is the main focus of criticism here. The sibilant use of ‘sym’ is so bitter that both ‘sympathy’ and ‘symmetry’ are going to be the cause of his downfall – his hamartias. I’m far more interested in symmetry.’ (p.37). Little did the poor narrator know that the following declarative sentences was prophetic of his later loss of power: We find disgust in his bitter manner, but when he loses his bitterness he stays just as colloquial, but more sorrowful. When he speaks in this way, it is difficult to take him seriously as a middle-aged man. Expletives are also used to tell the reader that he is angry, happy, sad, enjoying something, calm, sexually allured. He speaks like the stereotypical teenager would when they become so out of touch with society that they ramble until they get back into society. The colloquialisms that the writer uses reinforces his inability to detect when things are wrong. Well, this is how the narrator portrayed it. He goes to bars with his lady and drinks soft drinks while she boozes up like she is sewn to a bottle of vodka and a shot glass. They both “happen” to be Irish, and the narrator’s former alcoholism feeds the stereotype of Irish drinkers. Despite this, he stays with her out of this desire he had for her, and this unintentionally makes his pit become much deeper than he thought. She is a photographer, twenty-eight years old, and the narrator talks of getting worried about her getting mistaken for a sixteen-year-old. She is much younger than himself, and he becomes completely infatuated by her. The narrator doesn’t comprehend that he is becoming weaker and weaker as he talks, and as a retired alcoholic he thinks he’s actually getting stronger. We see the narrator becoming less and less revolting, and more vulnerable towards women. Hate boomerangs between the narrator and several different women throughout the novel. This creates a story for us, but we do not know if it is actually fiction, or if it is the author’s own life being put into our minds. We learn what the narrator deems unlearnable. As though, despite the anonymity, we all learn the story further. The way that the narrator tells everyone, but Penelope, to stop reading for a paragraph just makes it more readable. He juxtaposes the apology, that may be sincere, with the verbs such as ‘hurt’, ‘despise’, and ‘rippled’, as well as the holophrase ‘Disgust.’ This creates a simplicity that was obviously not apparent in their relationship: they were not a simple couple, but perhaps the narrator wanted to make their “break” simple. The writer creates the semantic field of pain in this paragraph, to show that he is strong enough to cause pain in others. I began to hate you for not having the courage to tell me what you really thought of me. You tried to hide how you felt, but it rippled across your face. The rest of you turn your heads away the next bit is for her only. ‘The possibility exists that she’s out there somewhere reading this right now. But, when he is telling the story of Penelope, who is his ex-long-term-girlfriend, and the one who he enjoyed hurting, the narrator directs Penelope by saying: It makes sense that if the writer is telling an autobiographical story, he wouldn’t want people to know that he had lived this life. I studied the alley that the anonymous writer wrote down, and I tried to decipher whether the narrator of the novel is actually the writer himself. For me, however, it made me more intrigued, despite being a young woman myself. The reader may perceive this, despite the past tense, as a current hobby and will make them turn away. Although, we must take note of the past tense of the word ‘liked’, because this implies that the narrator has changed since he ‘liked’ hurting girls. The book begins with a declarative sentence which would make any feminist turn away after reading just these words: I liked hurting girls. We follow a monologue of an anonymous author. But, we do know his past, and he has become the victim of the cliché a taste of his own medicine. Had we not known his past in romantic abuse, we would see this as a sinful act of the devil on the woman’s part. We are stuck in a fantasy of: despising the ruinous narrator for his lack of female acceptance, and the harm he causes people for the fun of it, crossed with feeling sorry for him because he is, too, hurt by women replacers of himself.
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