Harry's Cuckoo Clock Speech, Explained：cut you in

What's really going on

The scene gives Harry his most famous speech, and the speech is the clearest statement of what the film is about. He has just been told that the coffin was opened and held the wrong body, and he answers with a shrug: "Pity." From there he builds his defence — governments do not think in terms of human beings, so why should he? — and then reaches for history, contrasting the Italy of the Borgias with Switzerland. His conclusion, that five hundred years of peace produced only the cuckoo clock, is funny and chilling at once, because the logic that produces great art from murder is the same logic he uses to excuse his own. The rest of the scene measures the cost: he offers Holly a place in the business, and Holly, who once wrote westerns about men who did the right thing, tells Calloway that he will not tie the rope.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• The cuckoo clock line makes endless peace sound dull.
• Lime turns a murder charge into a debate about history.
• Cutting someone in is a bribe dressed as friendship.
• Calloway studies Lime the way a general studies a rival.

発音のポイント

• dug up your — Link dug up your so the words run together.
• mind, send — The d in mind often drops before send.
• meet you any — Meet you can blur into mee-chu in fast speech.