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Réflexions sur la Guillotine.
His main aim was to express the positive side of surrealism and existentialism,
We value our lives and existence so greatly, but at the same time we know we will eventually die, and ultimately our endeavours are meaningless.
“If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.”
Even after a conflicting spiritual discussion with a pastor inciting Meursault to consider a possible path towards redemption, the latter still refuses to take upon salvation and symbolizes his ultimatum by embracing the “gentle indifference of the world”; an act which only furthers his solidarity with a society incapable of realizing his seemingly inhumane and misanthropic behavior.
The language he used was that of a man who was sick and tired of the world he lived in, though he had much liking for his fellow men and had resolved, for his part, to have no truck with injustice and compromises with the truth.
“Query: How contrive not to waste one’s time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while.
There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.
But though a war may well be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn’t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven’t taken their precautions.
And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.
Are you absolutely convinced it’s plague?” “You’re stating the problem wrongly. It’s not a question of the term I use; it’s a question of time.”
Hostile to the past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future, we were much like those whom men’s justice, or hatred, forces to live behind prison bars. Thus
The common lot of married couples. You get married, you go on loving a bit longer, you work. And you work so hard that it makes you forget to love.
Obviously Grand’s thoughts were leagues away from the plague.
I feel that Grant thinking about actions he regrets is the indicative of how the
plague makes you come to terms with your actions (and on that note) coming to terms with what you've done is acknowledging and welcoming the end
Rieux had learned that he need no longer steel himself against pity. One grows out of pity when it’s useless. And in this feeling that his heart had slowly closed in on itself, the doctor found a solace, his only solace, for the almost unendurable burden of his days.
To fight abstraction you must have something of it in your own make-up.
To some the sermon simply brought home the fact that they had been sentenced, for an unknown crime, to an indeterminate period of punishment. And while a good many people adapted themselves to confinement and carried on their humdrum lives as before, there were others who rebelled and whose one idea now was to break loose from the prison-house.
But, now they had abruptly become aware that they were undergoing a sort of incarceration under that blue dome of sky,
“In the early days, when they thought this epidemic was much like other epidemics, religion held its ground. But once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thoughts to pleasure.
matter? Death means nothing to men like me. It’s the event that proves them right.
Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn’t come in contact with death; that’s why he can speak with such assurance of the truth, with a capital T. But every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do. He’d try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its excellence.”
When I entered this profession, I did it ‘abstractedly,’ so to speak; because I had a desire for it, because it meant a career like another, one that young men often aspire to. Perhaps, too, because it was particularly difficult for a workman’s son, like myself. And then I had to see people die. Do you know that there are some who refuse to die? Have you ever heard a woman scream ‘Never!’ with her last gasp? Well, I have. And then I saw that I could never get hardened to it. I was young then, and I was outraged by the whole scheme of things, or so I thought.
“Who taught you all this, doctor?” The reply came promptly: “Suffering.”
‘Say what you like, Tarrou, but let me tell you this: the one way of making people hang together is to give ‘em a spell of plague. You’ve only got to look around you.’
How could he fail to recognize at every turn reactions that were his; the efforts everyone makes to keep on the right side of other people; the obligingness sometimes shown in helping someone who has lost his way, and the ill humor shown at other times; the way people flock to the luxury restaurants, their pleasure at being there and their reluctance to leave; the crowds lining up daily at the picture-houses, filling theaters and music halls and even dance halls, and flooding boisterously out into the squares and avenues; the shrinking from every contact and, notwithstanding, the craving for
...more
“That’s not it,” Rambert rejoined. “Until now I always felt a stranger in this town, and that I’d no concern with you people. But now that I’ve seen what I have seen, I know that I belong here whether I want it or not. This business is everybody’s business.”
“a man can’t cure and know at the same time.
“So if he is to die, he will have suffered longer.”
For the plague-stricken their peace of mind is more important than a human life.
was with them and yet I was alone.
“But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.” “Yes, we’re both after the same thing, but I’m less ambitious.”
They dressed and started back. Neither had said a word, but they were conscious of being perfectly at one, and the memory of this night would be cherished by them both.
As for Dr. Rieux, that brief hour of peace and friendship which had been granted him was not, and could not be, repeated.
Could it be that a sudden gentleness showed in those hard, inexpressive eyes? Yes, they had grown misted, lost their steely glitter.
gifts, and old as human sorrow, yet new as the hopes of youth. There was no room in any heart but for a very old, gray hope, that hope which keeps men from letting themselves drift into death and is nothing but a dogged will to live.
now confirmed the popular belief that the victory was won and the enemy abandoning his positions. Really, however, it is doubtful if this could be called a victory. All that could be said was that the disease seemed to be leaving as unaccountably as it had come. Our strategy had not changed, but whereas yesterday it had obviously failed, today it seemed triumphant. Indeed, one’s chief impression was that the epidemic had called a retreat after reaching all its objectives; it had, so to speak, achieved its purpose.
And this brought home the fact that since the outbreak of plague no one had hitherto been seen to smile in public.
at the picture-houses.” But Cottard didn’t smile. Was it supposed, he asked, that the plague wouldn’t have changed anything and the life of the town would go on as before, exactly as if nothing had happened?
“Thanks. I don’t want to die, and I shall put up a fight. But if I lose the match, I want to make a good end of it.”
the tears that blinded Rieux’s eyes were tears of impotence; and he did not see Tarrou roll over, face to the wall, and die with a short, hollow groan as if somewhere within him an essential chord had snapped.
But he knew, too, that to love someone means relatively little; or, rather, that love is never strong enough to find the words befitting it. Thus he and his mother would always love each other silently.
Tarrou had died this evening without their friendship’s having had time to enter fully into the life of either. Tarrou had “lost the match,” as he put it. But what had he, Rieux, won? No more than the experience of having known plague and remembering it, of having known friendship and remembering it, of knowing affection and being destined one day to remember it. So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories. But Tarrou, perhaps, would have called that winning the match.
For even Rambert felt a nervous tremor at the thought that soon he would have to confront a love and a devotion that the plague months had slowly refined to a pale abstraction, with the flesh-and-blood woman who had given rise to them.
Each was returning to his personal life, yet the sense of comradeship persisted and they were exchanging smiles and cheerful glances among themselves.
But the moment they saw the smoke of the approaching engine, the feeling of exile vanished before an uprush of overpowering, bewildering joy.
And with his arms locked around her, pressing to his shoulder the head of which he saw only the familiar hair, he let his tears flow freely, unknowing if they rose from present joy or from sorrow too long repressed; aware only that they would prevent his making sure if the face buried in the hollow of his shoulder were the face of which he had dreamed so often or, instead, a stranger’s face. For the moment he wished to behave like all those others around him who believed, or made believe, that plague can come and go without changing anything in men’s hearts.
“His only real crime is that of having in his heart approved of something that killed off men, women, and children. I can understand the rest, but for that I am obliged to pardon him.”
That’s how life is. But he was a man who knew what he wanted.”
And, indeed, as he listened to the cries of joy rising from the town, Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperiled. He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.
