Characters
When I introduce you, and I tell them who you are, I don’t think anyone will stay for dinner.
— William Parrish ‧ Meet Joe Black
Behind the line May contain spoilers.
Our reading
An editorial interpretation.
Revealing an identity is imagined as enough to empty the dinner table. The remark gives a disclosure an immediate social consequence, contrasting the ordinary act of staying for a meal with what knowing the truth might provoke. Its force lies in that prediction, not in a departure actually shown.
Context reviewed