Topic 13 - Shared knowledge and absurdist drama (Session B) > Zoo Story > Task F > answer

Zoo story

Task F – Our answer

In turns 11-15 Jerry trespasses even further into Peter’s ‘private space’ than he has done earlier in the extract – by asking rather personal questions about his attitude to the gender of his children. In turn 15 Jerry is stating the rather obvious point (in 1958 for certain, though perhaps a little less clearly these days) that people can’t normally choose the gender of their children at the moment the baby is conceived. But he seems to say it in a very offhand way when he uses the expression ‘that’s the way the cookie crumbles’. This idiomatic metaphor is usually used in comments on relatively trivial, even humorous matters, and so it seems that Jerry is not treating Peter’s feelings seriously enough because he is choosing an inappropriate style (cf. what we noticed about style and style variation in Topic 6).

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