Qfwfq...

Qfwfq does not know people like he thinks he does.

Fern-Flower was telling Qfwfq about her dream, in which a dinosaur came and assaulted her. “That dream should have made me understand many things and especially one thing: that Fern-Flower wanted nothing more than to be assaulted.” (pg 101 from The Dinosaurs.) Qfwfq is dead wrong wrong on this, and it shows how he assumed things. Saying that someone wants to be assaulted is one of the most awful things you can say. Qfwfq is convinced that this is all that she wants. Dreams can not usually be interpreted that directly. Throughout the story Qfwfq makes these radical assumptions about Fern- Flower.

Qfwfq makes another assumption about someone. Here, Qfwfq has approached a New One at a spring, apprehensively waiting for her to recognize him. “I could already imagine her desperate scream  the moment she saw me, her breathless flight. She would spread the alarm, and the New Ones would come out in force to hunt me down. She turned and said ‘nice and cool, isn’t it?’ ” (pg 98, The Dinosaurs.) As Qfwfq is approaching the New One, he expects her to run off in fear, he expects to BE feared. That kind of behavior shows off how he doesn’t know what he thinks he knows, because things didn’t work out like he planned they would. She didn’t react violently or defensefully.

Here, Qfwfq and Lll have just gone to see his great uncle Nba’ Nga, who Qfwfq is very embarrassed of. After a humiliating few hours with him, this happens: “I was thinking that now she would begin her comments, that the worst was still to come. But then Lll, without stopping, turned slightly toward me: ‘He’s very nice, your uncle,’ and that was all she said. More than once in the past her irony had disarmed me; but the icy sensation that filled me at this remark was so awful that i would rather not seen her anymore than to have to face the subject again.” Qfwfq finds out later in the story that Lll actually liked his uncle (maybe a little TOO much, but you know,) and that her opinions were the exact opposite of what Qfwfq thought they were.  Qfwfq assumes that since his uncle is so unlike Lll has ever seen, that she will be repulsed be him and his stick in the mud (literally) personality.