I could sell a bicycle to a barracuda
The Death of Bunny Munro“I could sell a bicycle to a barracuda” is Bunny’s boast, delivered in a moment that turns sales confidence into comic exaggeration. The boy laughs, and Bunny promptly pushes the claim further, imagining that he could sell two bicycles to the same unlikely buyer.
The Expression in Context
Bunny first says, ‘I could sell a bicycle to a barracuda!’ The boy’s laughter marks the line as amusing; Bunny then pauses and restarts with ‘No … no …’, replacing the single bicycle with two. The exchange gives the expression its shape: the boast is not merely repeated but enlarged in response to the moment.
Rhetorical Shape
The barracuda makes the imagined sale absurd, while the second version escalates the absurdity rather than correcting it. That quick self-amendment presents Bunny’s confidence as playful bravado: even an impossible customer becomes an opportunity to boast about selling more.
