Maya's 20th Century Novels Blog

One thing that struck me when reading The Stranger was Meursault’s repeated assertion that things didn’t “matter” or “mean anything”. He uses this phrase throughout the book, and in a way it ties all the events from both halves of the book together. At times, I found it hard to understand what he was trying to say by this or even what the “it” even referred to, but going back and looking at the quotes, I think there are a few different types of situations where Meursault uses this phrase and he has different intentions in each one. One of the most notable times this phrase is used is when Meursault responds to Marie asking if he loves her with “I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so” (Camus 35). Here, he seems to be saying that his love for Marie has no consequences and therefore doesn’t matter. Whether he loves her or not isn’t affecting his actions and so in his view, there is no point in reflecting on it further. Meursault’s use of the phrase in reaction to h...

None of the characters in The Sun Also Rises seem to like Robert Cohn. In fact, many of them frequently state their dislike for him. However, I think that if you look past these words, their actions (especially Jake’s) tell a different story. In a way, I think that Jake does consider Robert a pretty good friend. From the beginning, Jake shows us how important Robert Cohn is to his story. The first sentence of the novel is about Robert (Hemingway 11). Although Jake does not depict Robert’s personality in the best light, the decision to tell the readers about Robert before anything else indicates his significance to Jake. Jake thinks it is important for us to know about Robert and read the whole book with him in mind. Additionally, the first sentence that explicitly tells us a fact about Jake is also about Robert, as Jake says “I was his tennis friend.” (Hemingway 13). The first thing Jake wants us to know about himself is his connection to Robert Cohn and that he considers himself a f...

From the very first sentence of Mrs. Dalloway, both the reader and the characters anticipate Clarissa’s party. Much of the book builds up to it, so I was really excited to read the party scene. When I did, however, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Although the party did feature many of the main characters finally getting to interact, we did not really see Clarissa interact with them (in particular Peter and Sally) for long. I thought this was a really interesting choice since it meant that Clarissa’s relationship with her past and her old friends didn’t feel fully resolved at the end. On the surface, it seems like the way Clarissa almost ignored her friends during the party supports Peter’s point that Clarissa is superficial. I could sympathize with Peter in this scene. I really wanted Clarissa to stop for a minute and take the time to talk to her friends. I could feel Peter’s disappointment when she just kept moving on and talking to other people. I could understand the way he wo...

There aren’t a lot of characters in The Mezzanine , but the ones that do exist are described in very different ways, right down to the way they are referred to. I thought that the way Baker chooses to write each character’s name was really interesting and it influenced my view of the character and their personality. The best example of this is the narrator’s name. For over half the book, we have no idea what it is and this made me see the narrator less as a single individual and more as a type of person. The narrator’s lack of a name made it almost as though the narrator could be any person working in a similar setting, which made me see his experiences as universal rather than as the unique experiences of one particular person. However, as the book goes on, we get more personal and unique stories from the narrator. Although the overall kinds of experiences he has are still very universal, we also get glimpses into more unique aspects of his life, such as his father’s love for ties. Fi...