Coffee Break
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- Feb 13, 2022
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I encountered the expression "nail the coffin on our indictment of mankind whole", but am struggling to understand it. Could you please let me know what it means? Here is the excerpt:
“Otherpeoples,” I said, to fill the silence, repeating the word we’d tacitly agreed to give them, as though this one word summed up everything we’d felt about everyone else and would nail the coffin on our indictment of mankind whole. We were fellow aliens conspiring to renew our reluctant courtship with Earthlings.
“Otherpeoples,” she echoed, still holding the plate, whose contents neither of us had touched yet. She hadn’t offered it to me, and I didn’t dare.
- André Aciman, Eight White Nights, First Night
This is a novel published in the United States of America in 2010. It is narrated by a nameless male protagonist. He meets Clara at a Christmas party in Manhattan. Now the protagonist is talking with Clara, calling other people in the party as "otherpeoples". (This seems to be a word they made up, to mean unimportant other people, though this is just my guess.
)
I wonder what the underlined expression means.
I couldn't find anything about the expression "nail the coffin", so I am at loss as to what that means...
“Otherpeoples,” I said, to fill the silence, repeating the word we’d tacitly agreed to give them, as though this one word summed up everything we’d felt about everyone else and would nail the coffin on our indictment of mankind whole. We were fellow aliens conspiring to renew our reluctant courtship with Earthlings.
“Otherpeoples,” she echoed, still holding the plate, whose contents neither of us had touched yet. She hadn’t offered it to me, and I didn’t dare.
- André Aciman, Eight White Nights, First Night
This is a novel published in the United States of America in 2010. It is narrated by a nameless male protagonist. He meets Clara at a Christmas party in Manhattan. Now the protagonist is talking with Clara, calling other people in the party as "otherpeoples". (This seems to be a word they made up, to mean unimportant other people, though this is just my guess.
)I wonder what the underlined expression means.
I couldn't find anything about the expression "nail the coffin", so I am at loss as to what that means...
