IJ study archive

the Kodiak and the wastecan — "Hal spits way more than is…"

quote

Hal spits way more than is his norm, now, and also likes having the wastecan right nearby in case he might throw up. [...] His nausea has nothing to do with watching his father’s cartridges.

Context

The secret cold-quit showing through the surrogate: Hal chews Kodiak and spits into the wastecan, a substitute oral compulsion slotted where the pump-room pot used to be, and he keeps the can close because he might throw up — a nausea he pointedly attributes to anything but the withdrawal it plainly is. "Anyone else looking at him would call Hal depressed"; the disavowal ("has nothing to do with") is the tell, the quitter's insistence that the body's rebellion is unrelated to the thing he's quitting. The disease and the denial run in him exactly as they ran in the father onscreen.

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