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...