Sealed Off

封锁

张爱玲

Then she understood his meaning: everything that had happened while the city was sealed was a non-occurrence. The whole of Shanghai had dozed of, had dreamed an unreasonable dream. (Zhang 45)

The tramcar driver raised his voice in song: “Sad, sad, sad! No money do I have! Sad, sad, sad – “ An old beggar, thoroughly dazzed, limped across the street in front of the train. The driver bellowed at her. “You swine!” (Zhang 45)

These two excerpts are from the ending part of the short story, “Sealed Off”. After depicting Cuiyuan’s mental activity, i.e., her thought about the city dreaming an “unreasonable dream”, the author ends the whole story with vulgar reality: the beggar, and the driver’s curse. This incident seems unpredicted to me and a little off topic. Why does the author end her story with the depiction of a random beggar and the driver’s bellow? Does she intend to describe what kind of person the tramcar driver is, or does she use the image of driver and beggar to symbolize something or someone? Why does the author end the whole story with a curse “You swine!”?