“You poor man”

“You poor man” recurs as an expression of sympathy addressed to Bunny, but its meaning shifts with the circumstances in which it is spoken. River first uses it while Bunny is emotionally exposed; she repeats it as she comforts him physically, then turns the words into a rhythm during sex. Later, Georgia whispers the phrase to herself. Across these encounters, pity seems to recognize Bunny’s distress, yet its repetition also makes his suffering sound like a role others can respond to without necessarily understanding it.

First expressions of pity

The first instance follows a domestic gathering in which Raymond, his mouth open and eyes closed, raises and rotates an index finger as though preparing to make an important point. Barbara turns her attention to Bunny and tells him that at least he has his son. River nods, licks the purple birthmark on her upper lip, looks directly at Bunny, and lets her gate swing wide. She says, “You poor man.” The expression arrives amid gestures that mix solicitude with sexual invitation, so the scene does not establish a simple distinction between emotional care and flirtation.

Bunny responds by saying that his father raised him largely alone and taught him everything he knows. His eyes tear up, and the words come to him in a dreamy, disconnected way. River repeats the expression soon afterward, again pairing it with a gesture of her left knee, and Bunny’s attention drifts into a memory. He recalls Libby in the maternity ward at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, holding their newborn with wholehearted love. Faced with the intensity of that bond, Bunny felt that everything had changed and that he had been pushed to the edge of his marriage. Rather than answer Libby’s look with the tenderness the moment invites, he asked for a cigarette and left the hospital into the rain. The phrase therefore precedes not just tears but a recollection of the moment Bunny understood himself as displaced by fatherhood.

River’s repeated refrain

Later, at River’s home, the words return as Bunny struggles to make sense of what he sees. He moves back and forth in front of letters on the fridge, unable to bring them into focus; their phrase blurs into something alien, and he asks what they say. The air seems to fragment as he throws out his arms and asks again. River approaches with her arms held forward, moving in a zombie-like glide, and says, “Oh, you poor man.” Before he can ask a third time, she embraces him. Bunny cries genuine tears against her breasts. In this moment the expression seems to offer a name for suffering that he cannot articulate, and the embrace gives that apparent sympathy a physical form.

The encounter then becomes sexual, although Bunny experiences it as a disconnection from his own body rather than as ordinary desire. Naked on the sofa, he feels detached from the action and cannot bring himself to touch River. The contrast complicates the comforting phrase: River’s sympathy accompanies energetic sexual activity, while Bunny feels unresponsive and removed from what is happening. The words do not restore his agency or make the encounter emotionally reciprocal.

A television switches on when Bunny shifts on the remote. Upside down, he sees news footage of the Horned Killer and hears that the attacks are continuing; he mutters that the killer is only getting started and is coming their way. River does not hear him. Instead, the narration describes her as absorbed in what she would later consider a sympathy encounter. She repeats the phrase in broken units, matching each word to the movement of her body: “Poor,” then “Poor,” then “Man.” The pauses and repetition turn compassion into a sexual refrain. The scene leaves the words suspended between genuine pity and a performance of pity, without making River’s earlier tears or Bunny’s distress unreal.

Grief, apparition, and repetition

During the encounter Bunny sees what appears to be Libby, his deceased wife, by the window, partly hidden in rose-coloured curtains and dressed in her orange nightdress. He makes a wounded sound, tries to dislodge River, and shuts his eyes while River reaches climax. When he opens them, Libby has disappeared. Bunny says that his wife was there watching. The phrase’s immediate context thus includes an apparition that returns the scene to the marriage and bereavement that have been present beneath River’s attempts at comfort. What began as a response to Bunny’s tears becomes entwined with his sense of being observed by Libby.

Georgia’s echo

The expression appears again in a different encounter. Georgia places her hand over Bunny’s and gives him a tissue when she sees that he is crying. Bunny compliments her eyes and dabs at his cheeks. Georgia whispers, “Oh, you poor man,” to herself. The quiet self-directed delivery differs from River’s spoken address and sexually charged repetition: Georgia’s words are not presented as a reply to Bunny. Yet the gesture with the tissue and the phrase again accompany visible tears. The narration also notes Bunny’s shivering recognition that the metallic mushroom on Georgia’s shirt is a mushroom cloud, setting her small act of consolation beside an image of destruction.

Across River’s and Georgia’s encounters, the expression recurs wherever Bunny’s distress becomes visible to another person. Its repetition supplies a recognizable verbal response, but the scenes keep changing what that response can mean: an invitation, an embrace, a sexual rhythm, or a whisper beside a tissue. The phrase offers sympathy without resolving Bunny’s grief, his estrangement from his own body, or his haunting sense that Libby remains present. Its force lies in that tension between care and inadequacy: Bunny is pitied, but the words do not explain or undo what has made him pitiable.