Well either I’ve reached a slightly more accomplished level of reading, or I simply don’t have a clue and made a mountain of a molehill.
My last posting made a point of the threads of conversation in the inner world of narrative. The almost melody of several themes going on in parallel streams were wonderfully natural in this unnatural world. O’Brien, after getting us to the endpoint of the characters’ journey, jerks us out and plops us into the primary world of the narrator in the middle of a meeting of his uncle and a few friends at the house.
The perfectly normal situation of a committee meeting planning a event becomes a metaphor for the more restricted bonds of society as the uncle demands adherence to the rules of order. This is nearly laughable; communication among a group of men of similar background and interests–at its simplest, human–needing to follow methods of communication.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology