The Saturday Job

Text 1: Only Meat, by Augustin Merriweather

An original novel extract.

Amira had been a vegetarian since she was nine, and she had taken the Saturday job at Pratt’s Family Butchers because it paid two pounds an hour more than the café and because, she told herself, it was only meat. It was only meat. She repeated this at eight o’clock, tying the striped apron, and again at nine, when Mr Pratt carried in half a pig on his shoulder as casually as a rolled-up carpet.

The shop was cold, colder than outside, and it smelled of sawdust and iron. Rows of chops lay pink and glistening behind the glass, each one exactly like the next, dressed with little plastic sprigs of parsley as if for a party. Mr Pratt’s cleaver rose and fell on the block with a sound like a door being knocked by someone who would not go away.

By eleven she could wrap a pound of mince in paper with a neat twist at each end. By twelve she had learned the names of the cuts, brisket, shin, silverside, and could say them without her voice going strange. An old lady with a tartan trolley called her ‘duck’ and told her she had kind hands. Amira smiled and took the money. Only on the bus home, smelling the iron still on her fingers, did she find that she was crying, and that she did not entirely know why.

How does Augustin Merriweather use language and structure to show Amira’s mixed feelings about her Saturday job?

You should use relevant subject terminology to support your answer.