What the Stencil Really Means
The stencil metaphor in "Knife Grinder" chapter is basically saying that each group defines itself by tearing the other one down. The villagers spend the entire meeting making the Romani into the worst possible version of themselves, and then when Jason ends up at the Gypsy camp, he sits by the fire and listens to them do the exact same thing about gorgios. The mother goes off about how dirty non-Romani people are. Clem Ostler is sneering about them sleeping with their pets. They are doing exactly what the villagers were doing. And Jason catches it. He thinks about how the Gypsies wanted the villagers to be gross, "so the grossness of what they're not acts as a stencil for what they are" (Mitchell 232). That is such a specific way to describe it and I think it is perfect. A stencil does not show you what something is. It shows you the shape of everything around it. Both groups are doing that. They are not defining themselves by anything real about who they are. ...