chapter 1

• "your engagement to Sheila means a tremendous lot to me "


  • engagement - seen almost like a business deal and only for social escalation and money, he only cares about how he is seen not the love his daughter receives
  • tremendous - connotations of great in size or intensity, excellence and immensity, it is a massive deal for him to gain status because he is avaricious
• " heavy looking, rather portentous"

  • heavy looking - fat, symbolic of upper middle class greed and selfishness
  • portentous - wealthy and so seams to be his only personality trait
• "all these capital verses labor agitations and all these silly little war scares "

  he is foolish, ignorant, idiotic and an ultracrepidarian [ a person who expresses opinions on matters outside the scope of their knowledge or expertise ]
• " as if were all mixed up together like bees in a hive "

  simile

  • mixed up - criticizing socialism
  • bees in a hive - working together as equals
• " still I cant accept any responsibility "

  • cant accept - he wont change showing the stationariness of the older generations compared to younger generations
  • responsibility - none of it was his fault as his status covers his wrongdoings because it was socially normalised by the higher statuses
• " well we've seen serval hundred young women there y'know, and they just keep changing "

  people are working in poor conditions for low pay and he's still ignorant to their suffering

  • they just keep changing - he's insensitive to his workers as he doesn't care about their personality only the profit he makes from their work
• " well its my duty to keep labor costs down "

  he prefers profit over people

  • duty - its his role as a business owner to make peoples lives miserable
• " she has a lot to say ... so she had to go "

  • lot to say - women should be voiceless - misogynistic
  • she had to go - they're replicable and don't matter as long as money is being made