Motivation

"'There you go. And you claim you want to be a writer, too. You're only a newspaper man. An expatriated newspaper man. You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of pity'" (pg 119). Bill Gorton

At one point in chapter 12, when Gorton is continuously criticizing Barnes, he is worried that he may have hurt Barnes' feelings and stops. Barnes tells him to keep going; therefore, I believe that Barnes was using Gorton's criticism as motivation to do more with his writing or to change something. Gorton consistently calls him an expatriate. I did not know what that word meant, so I looked it up.

ex·pa·tri·ate

–verb (used with object)

1. to banish (a person) from his or her native country.

2. to withdraw (oneself) from residence in one's native country country.

3. to withdraw (oneself) from allegiance to one's country from allegiance to one's country.

So expatriate means someone who left their country and started a new life for one reason of another. I believe Gorton calling Barnes an expatriate was giving him reason to question himself, his life, and his writing. It gave him the chance to think of it all in a new light. It gave him the opportunity to possibly better himself. Maybe none of this is true, but that is the way that I took it.