It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.

This fiddling and drifting and not impressing oneself upon anything – this always refraining and fingering and cutting things up into little jokes and facetiousness – that's what's so annihilating. Yet given little money, little looks, no special gift – what can one do? How could one battle? How could one leap on the back of life and wring its scruff?

He was attaching meanings to words of a symbolical kind. A serious symptom, to be noted on the card.

She had been trapped into saying something she did not mean.

How could one leap on the back of life and wring its scruff?