the bestiary of what the body broadcasts — "Sounded most of all like a…"

The reception rendered as a chorus of similes, each Dean reaching for a comparison and none for a person: animal, sub-animal, drowning goat, struck butter, a vision of hell. The face and voice have become a screen onto which meaning is projected wrongly, and the comedy of the mounting descriptions is exactly measured against the fact that what they are describing is a young man saying he feels and believes.