How to parse 汚れた物ででもあるかのように、捨てるように


I wonder if someone could confirm my understanding of the grammar in the
following sentence on p32 of the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar:

> さて、教員は清兵衛から取り上げた瓢箪（ひょうたん）を汚れた物ででもあるかのように、捨てるように、年寄った学校の小使いにやってしまった。
>
> Later the teacher gave the gourd he had taken from Seibei to an old janitor
> as if it was a filthy object.

I think it is taken from a children's story so it is supposed to be written
with basic words but results in a difficult expression*.

My clumsy analysis of the section 汚れた物ででもあるかのように、捨てるように is

> 汚れた物で= "it is a dirty object and/but.."
>
> でもあるか＝ "we still have it?!", でも="still" in the sense of extreme, か conveys
> surprise
>
> (か)のように、＝ "as if", the particles indicate that the preceding expression
> describes the position of the teacher to the gourd ("It is dirty, and we
> still have it?!")
>
> 捨てるように = in order to throw away
>
> [小使いにやってしまった = gave it to the janitor]

If I put this together I think we find the teacher:

> "gave [the gourd] to the janitor, as if it was being thrown away, as if it
> was something still in our possession that was dirty[and therefore should be
> thrown out]"

**Is this correct? Could we replace ででもあるかのように with として? If so, how much of
the poetical nature of the original Japanese would be lost?**

* * *

*It may just be me but I often found the "simple" explanations of grammatical expressions in the JLPT books that use this type of language harder than the expressions itself!




ででもある（か） is the tricky part of this sentence, although it could be deleted
with almost no change in meaning.

It is in fact である (=だ) with でも ("or something") placed in the middle. In the
same way you might see で **は** ある ("is [with contrast]") or で **も** ある ("is
also"), this is で **でも** ある ("is or something"). (It could probably also mean
"is even" in other contexts?)

So 汚れた物ででもある means "is a dirty object or something", + かのように (as if it is a
~).

汚れたもののように, 汚れたものかのように, 汚れたものであるかのように... all of these are pretty much the same
with increasing levels of verbosity and very slight extra nuance as explained
above. Incidentally, some people might tend to avoid the second one because of
か immediately following a noun, but I often see it used myself. There's some
discussion on that [here](http://togetter.com/li/21496).

