Grammatical interpretation of Don DeLillo sentence?

Question

I'm puzzled by these three sentences from Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo: Heavy trucks went downtown bouncing, headed to the garment district or the meatpacking docks, and nobody saw them. They saw the cockney selling children's books from a cardboard box, making his pitch from his knees. Eric thought they were the same thing, these two, and the old Chinese was the same, doing acupoint massage, and the repair crew passing fiber-optic cable down a manhole from an enormous yellow spool.Who is meant by 'these two,' the cockney and the heavy trucks (which seems weird to me since the trucks are not one single thing), the cockney and the cardboard box (which I also don't really believe) or something else?I think there is no usable context in the preceding or following sentences. Also, is it correct to assume that the (last) sentence would stay grammatically correct and preserve its meaning if it said 'and the old Chinese were the same' instead of 'was the same?'

Answer 1

Although all literature is open to subjective interpretation, you are asking a grammatical question. Your first guess is correct. "The two" does refer to the cockney and the trucks. This makes more sense if you consider the main theme of the story is capitalism and Eric personifies capitalism--the good, the bad, and the ugly. Remember he's a business billionaire riding across town to get a hair cut, and he's riding in his chauffeured well-equipped and expensive limousine. "They"--most people--don't see the trucks that are going to the garment district and the meatpacking docks--the trucks that carry consumer goods to businesses. They only see people--the cockney selling books out of a box. Eric is different. He sees it all as one big market place. All the people mentioned here are workers on a job of one sort or another. This is a great book and was adapted into a movie you might want to watch. I'm curious if you are reading this for fun or if it's an assignment for school.