Chapter 20- Quote Analysis

  For a moment he only stood there looking toward the sound of the ocean, which was very clear in the stillness.

    'You really ought to get off whatever hunger strike you are on, Mr Halleck,' he said without turning around. 'In many ways the world is nothing but a pile of shit. But it can also be very beautiful.

Billy cannot tell anyone outright about what has happened to him, because he would sound insane. It must be excruciating not to tell anyone, and throughout this chapter, Fander probably thought Bill was just obsessively trying to lose weight, but in retrospect, he is attempting to reverse a curse, which obviously, doesn't sound sane. This quote was relatively depressing, because Bill is trying all he can to not die from this, and someone just assumes that he does want to kill himself. 

Chapter 11

In chapter 11 it is reveled that Leda Rossington's husband, Cary. Instead of losing weight though, he's growing scales and turning into a reptile. I find this surprising...I didn't realize that the gypsies would go after other people in the case. I thought it would just be Billy, because he was the direct cause of the death.

Do you guys think that there may be other people involved in the case that have been cursed?
Do you think that the gypsies would take off the curse if they hunted them down?

I feel like I would be freaking out if I was cursed, but I feel like Billy isn't freaking out as much as he should have.

Similarities Between Billy Halleck and Cary Rossington

In chapter 11, Leda Rossington reveals that her husband, Cary Rossington, was also cursed by a gypsy, since he ensured that Billy Halleck wasn't punished for his crime. Instead of losing weight though, he's growing scales and turning into a reptile.

As Leda told the story of how Cary handled the situation I noticed a lot of similarities to the way that Billy handled being cursed by the gypsy. They both went through a stage of self-denial before eventually displaying self-awakening and recognizing what was going on.

At first, Billy refused to admit that he had been cursed by a gypsy, so he forced himself to think he had gotten cancer. Similarly, Cary Rossington believed that skin cancer was what was causing the scales on his skin to grow. He said to Leda, "This is skin cancer, skin cancer, skin cancer! Now will you for Christ's sweet sake shut up about that old wog!" (by the old wag he meant the gypsy who had cursed him). Then later on, both Halleck and Rossington started to come to terms with the fact that it was really the gypsies who were causing their situation. Both of their conditions are getting worse by the day so I'm interested to see what they're gonna do next. My guess is eventually they're going to try to track down the gypsy who cursed them.

The gypsy from the Thinner movie

Is Billy really to blame?

In the beginning of the book, Billy is consumed by his guilt for killing an innocent woman. He thinks about the accident constantly and it soon takes over his every thought. As the book progresses, Billy seems to feel less guilt about the incident and starts to think that his wife is responsible. He tells Hopley, "It was my wife's fault; because of what she was doing to me" (Chapter 12). Billy hit and killed the old gypsy woman with his car while his wife was giving him a hand job. He also goes on to blame the old gypsy woman claiming that "She came out from between two parked cars, didn't look either way. They teach you better in third grade" (Chapter 12). I find it confusing that Billy can go from being consumed by his guilt to blaming everyone else involved besides himself. I was reading this article about psychology and how people tend to deal with guilt and it reminded me of Billy. According to Mother Me, (excuse the weird name, it's actually a pretty interesting article) the first stage of guilt is feeling apologetic. Billy was definitely apologetic in the beginning of the book. He was not only haunted by the memory of the gypsy woman, but he felt guilty for putting his family in a bad position. He had given his family a bad reputation and Linda was ostracized at school. He tells Linda, "I heard you've been getting some pretty rough handling from the other kids. I'm sorry about that" (Chapter 1). Billy was enduring the first stage of guilt with his apologetic mindset toward everyone. But by chapter 12 he has transitioned to a combination of stage 2 and 3: defensiveness and the tendency to make excuses. He blames the gypsy and his wife and refuses to believe that he is responsible. The next step is absentmindedness, which I can envision Billy doing. He will probably try to suppress his memories of the incident by binge eating. Do you think Billy should be blamed for the accident? Or is his redirecting of the blame toward others justified?

Effects of the Curse on Billy

Aside from the physical effect of losing weight, I noticed that the curse is changing Billy a lot as a person. He seems really pissed off about his situation, especially since the weight loss is starting to occur at a faster rate, and its reflecting in his personality. He's now a more angry and hateful person then he was before he was cursed. He has an overall negative outlook and says that nobody is complimenting him on weight loss anymore and he's sure everyone is talking about him behind his back. He thinks everyone believes he has cancer or some sort of disease and the problem with his pants falling down in court only made him angrier.
He even starts to hate Heidi and he continues to avoid telling her what is truly causing his weight loss, mainly because he feels she's party responsible for his situation. 
I think that because Billy is mad about the fact that he's been cursed by the gypsy, he wants to blame it on somebody else; so he chooses Heidi. It says, "For one moment . . . he felt a sudden savage moment of hate for her" (75). He knows that is Heidi wasn't giving him a handjob and distracting him for driving he wouldn't have hit the gypsy. It explicitly says that Billy thought, "If Heidi hadn't picked that day to try out a little auto eroticism, Halleck would have been on top of his job and his responsibility as the operator of a motor vehicle, and {they}would have stopped at least five feet from the gypsy woman" (77). Even though I think Halleck accepts part of the responsibility, I think he's trying to dump the blame of Heidi so he can say its somebody else's fault. He didn't do anything to stop her in the car, so its also his fault.
Overall, you can see that the curse is taking a toll on Billy and he's becoming a lot more negative and he's assuming the worst. 

Chapter 10

I do not really understand Leda's toward Billy. She seems to hate the fact that Billy hit the gypsy with the car, and she is trying to prevent him from speaking to Cary. But it also doesn't seem as important as he makes it out to be to speak to him. Leda is also a bit sketchy as well, instead of laughing about him having a curse from a gypsy, she simply keeps pressing information from him and becomes upset.

What is King Saying About Society?

I feel like Thinner is intended to be satirical. He depicts each character in an equally unlikable way. Most authors present the protagonist as a likable character who the readers tend to root for. However, Billy is selfish and pretty disgusting. His top priority seems to be food. Every other sentence is about some different food Billy is eating. "During his commute home on Tuesday, he pulled off the Connecticut Turnpike at Norwalk and picked up a couple of Whoppers with cheese at the Burger King there. He began eating them the way he always ate when he was driving, just working his way through them, mashing them up, swallowing them down bite by bite" (Chapter 5). Billy obviously has an eating problem and he lives in a constant cycle of saying that he will stop eating junk food but never does so. King presents Billy as a character who has no control over his excessive eating and is the stereotypical American. Americans are often associated with being fat and loving fast food and Billy perfectly embodies that stereotype. His wife, Heidi, is the typical house wife. She cooks, cleans, and waits on her man's every need. And their daughter, Linda, is the typical teenage girl who cheers and struggles with all that high school drama. King gives this average family a twist by having the father hit and kill an old gypsy with his car. Why do you think King creates the stereotypical American family? Do you think he is being satirical and criticizing society?