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Date Posted: 14:45:14 05/06/07 Sun
Author: flowr6powr
Subject: Re: Saturday
In reply to: Susan Troutman 's message, "Re: Saturday" on 16:30:26 04/30/05 Sat

Yes!!! I saw this too!!!! This also was my first McEwan novel, and I read it for a class. I really wanted to bring this up in discussion during class, but we never really touched on anything that related.

Yes. Okay. So. I also think it has something to do with looking at each person in different ways and shows that no person is "flat". Admittedly, Perowne himself is incredibly self-absorbed and would WANT people to think of him this way. It brings into focus how some instances call for the depersonalization of a human and some call for an intimate connection. Perowne gives Baxter the opportunity to interpret their accident as either one by giving him his full name while Baxter robs Perowne of any agency by not even telling him whether the name he gives is his first or last.

I also think it adds to Perowne's already inflated ego. Who REALLY calls themself by his/her last name? I've never, ever, ever done it. I just flipped through the book, but I never saw or remembered an instance when someone outside of himself called him "Perowne" except for the hospital guards when he is on his way to surgery; they call him "Mr. Perowne", which is suppose is out of respect (although shouldn't it be "Dr."?). This is just my opinion, but I think that he does it to make himself sound important in a newspaper-ish way. Yes, the narration is not directly done by Perowne himself. The reader is still to understand that it closely follows Perowne's own thoughts though, and although Perowne and the narrator do differ and the narrator sometimes goes off on his own little spiels, I really think that Perowne himself choses to use Henry and Perowne at different times.

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