Chapter 7 Summary

"Punch Line" "'So', said the doctor. "Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?"

Chapter 7 Analysis

Here the narrative plays out its final irony. The doctor's line is, as the chapter heading indicates, the punch line of what Alex has described from the beginning as his "Jewish joke" of a life. Yet, it contains a profound truth—at the core of an individual's onion-like layered truth, the only option is to rebuild, to create new layers of truth and experience (genuine this time) on the individual's core needs. The end of this journey is in fact the beginning, of a layering process that, in an oyster and over a long period of time, constructs a pearl.