It was partly, I suppose, that I was so floored by the fact that Ruth would come out with such a trick. I remember a huge tiredness coming over me, a kind of lethargy in the face of the tangled mess before me. It was like being given a maths problem when your brain's exhausted, and you know there's some far off solution, but you can't work up the energy even to give it a go.
This has to be one of my favorite similes I've ever heard. It's very effective because it appeals to his entire audience. I'm assuming if a person is reading this book, they've been to school and have taken a difficult or just plain boring math class (but not Mr. Small's first period Algebra 2 last year, because that was awesome). Many people can relate to the feeling of exhaustion- and often hopelessness- when facing a long math problem. It's a pretty universal phenomena.
Also, Ishiguro has a way of building suspense by foreshadowing throughout the novel, which is odd because suspense is something that usually dispersed pretty sparingly in a novel to make said suspense more . . . suspenseful. But somehow, Ishiguro makes it work. This quote from pg. 191 helps prove my point, I think:
We both laughed and the uneasiness seemed to pass. But there was something about the way Ruth put the tape back without discussing it any further that made me think it wasn't finished with yet.This made me anxious for when Ruth brought it back up. When she finally did, I was shocked; it was an "oh no, she didn't" moment. The way she went about it so sneakily reminded me of the movie Mean Girls (when Lindsay Lohan explains that "in girl world, all the fighting has to be sneaky). I couldn't find a good enough clip, so blame YouTube, not me.
Until Next Time,
Alysse
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