To Quote Tarrou...

 “All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences…I grant we should add a third category; that of the true healers. But it’s a fact one doesn’t come across many of them, and anyhow it must be a hard vocation. That’s why I decided to take, in every predicament, the victims’ side, so as to reduce the damage done. Among them I can at least try to discover how one attains to the third category; in other words, to peace.” -Tarrou (253-54)

The above quote is one of my favorites as I feel like it is a good representation of the book as a whole, and possibly even what Camus is looking for the reader to get out of the book. The concept of existentialism/absurdism, as I understand it, has to do with living life for the good of the individual and that anything that happens otherwise is out of one’s control. Death is imminent and uncontrollable and also everywhere, so doing what you can to live life not only to the fullest, but also with the best sense of direction in a directionless world seems to be key.

This is where Tarrou seems to have found his direction. By dedicating his life to pull himself out of the “pestilence”, he becomes a “victim” vying for the position of the “true healer”. Still, this position as a victim reminds me an awful lot of the concept of martyrdom, an idea that I don’t tend to think of as especially existentialist, as it means solely living for the good of others while neglecting the self. This is where Rieux steps in. Whereas Tarrou is trying to become a saint with no god, Rieux is holding strong to his anti-hero stance and claiming he is only interested in “being a man”. Both men grasp the idea that everything is an accident, so it is the wise option to try and attain happiness in even the darkest corners of the world. But Rieux is the one who finds satisfaction in his current state without trying to attain anything just out of reach like Tarrou might be trying to do, but what Rambert is certainly trying to do. 

The plague itself is also a metaphor for all of human indifference according to Tarrou. He claims, in the context of the above quote, that if one does not acknowledge the suffering going on around them then they are essentially complicit. Henceforth, Tarrou has dedicated his life to battling the rampant violence and ignorance that he was seemingly born into when he was born into a quite well-off family and under the care of his prosecutor father. The fact that Tarrou is constantly working off some amorphous debt reminds me of Christian-esque ideology like the original sin and, connecting to what I talked about before, sainthood and martyrdom.

I think that the obvious connections that could be made between Tarrou’s and Rieux’s albeit similar ideologies are completely valid and necessary to understanding existentialism within The Plague. Though reaching the end of this blog post, I am inclined to say that Rieux’s brand of existentialism is a fairly pure one compared to Tarrou’s, in that Rieux has come to the conclusion of it honestly and through no specific event in his past, but that he has reached it just by believing that a man is to do what he feels he must. Tarrou on the other hand, no matter how similar his beliefs, has gotten to these beliefs through a very different medium of events. 

My question is this: does that even matter? Is the fact that Rieux and Tarrou share common ground in their pursuit of happiness and satisfaction and morality enough? Or are the differences that I “uncovered” over the course of this post so great that Tarrou’s ideology should be deemed “impure”?

Behind Bullfighting: Beauties and Beasts

 I think that the way bullfighting as a subject and as a symbol is framed in The Sun Also Rises can be very telling about the rest of the book. In my eyes, bullfighting represents not only masculinity (and Jake’s perception of masculinity), but also parallels the themes of sex/love throughout the book. The beauty of both masculinity and sex being tied to this symbol that is bullfighting is that, no matter your preconceived notions of how connected sex and masculinity are, they are held together by the bullfighting metaphor: someone always gets hurt, will it be a bull or a person? And which is which?

In the context of masculinity, the act of fighting does not seem to be much of a stretch. One of the earlier times in the book bullfighting is brought up as a point of interest is when Jake is trying not to think about Brett. However, this particular instance just so happened to be right after he was thinking about and looking at his wound in the mirror. He thinks to himself: “Of all the ways to be wounded. I suppose it was funny” and then starts reading his bullfighting papers two sentences later. Jake uses bullfighting to reaffirm his own masculinity even in the face of doubt. 

Montoya also is a major player in the bullfighting metaphor. We talked for a minute in class about him being almost like a father figure to Jake. Someone else to keep the sanctity of the masculinity of bullfighting in check. I see this a bit in Montoya claiming that Jake has “aficion” and how he makes sure that bullfighting is not tainted by those without aforementioned “aficion”. For instance, he does not especially like it when Brett is flirting with Romero as he “went out of the room” after seeing Romero drinking with Jake’s friends, all of which have not been dubbed with the title of “aficionado”. 

However, although the idea of bullfighting may carry masculinity in the book, the actual act of bullfighting shown mirrors the romantic and sexual encounters in the book. The bullfighting itself is described using fairly seductive and romantic language. The major players in bullfighting, the bullfighter and the bull, can be compared to Brett (the bullfighter) and the men she seduces and eventually lets go (the bulls). This would make Brett’s love, and subsequent “killing” of Romero, all the more ironic. 

Do you think bullfighting has earned as much significance in the book as I’m giving it? Do you see other metaphors/symbolism founded in bullfighting that I didn’t mention?

What Jake's Lacking

Jake, both as an “above all” narrator and as an internally conflicted character, is constantly speaking from a place of insecurity. This specific form of hypermasculine insecurity is one that I can fairly confidently trace back to Jake’s unfortunate war wound that quite literally takes away his manhood. Jake is often overcompensating through his sparse narrative style and his homophobia/antisemitism/ racism and, through this overcompensation, I have actually learned to like him as a character significantly less. I also think that Jake’s overcompensation for his lack of (functional) genitals makes him an unreliable narrator, or at least an interesting perspective, for the other ~3 characters in the book that also lack what Jake specifically lacks. These characters of course being: Georgette, Frances, and Lady Brett Ashley. 

Georgette is a prostitute and not especially bright from the limited conversation we get from her. She is toted around by Jake before being abandoned in a bar in favor of Brett. Although Georgette is beautiful and feminine, this is shown to be more of a fault than working in her favor. 

Frances is Cohn’s ex-girlfriend who we meet briefly at the beginning of the book. While she is markedly smarter than Georgette, she uses this intelligence to manipulate and nag Cohn. Jake wonders why Cohn just sits there and takes it- bonus points because he’s insulting both Cohn’s lack of masculinity while also insulting Frances. 

Finally there’s Brett. She is introduced as quite a feminine figure, but offsets this by sporting a boyish hairstyle and calls herself “chap”. This is the only woman in the book that sticks around as a pivotal character in Jake’s story. I think it is especially interesting that the only woman in the book that Jake becomes infatuated with (although there don’t seem to be a whole lot of women to choose from) is one that puts just as much energy into coming across as “masculine” and detached as Jake does. 

It is an intriguing look into how Jake thinks about women, as well as men, when he forces himself to compensate for his war wound. If he, hypothetically, doesn’t think of himself as enough of a man with his war wound and without his manhood, how does he see women who weren’t born with one in the first place?

The Duality of Clarissa (contains spoilers for The Hours)

I thought that the juxtaposition between Sally’s character and Richard’s character in The Hours vs in Mrs. Dalloway was a really interesting one. Where Richard provided stability, yet some mundanity, to Clarissa’s life in Mrs. Dalloway, Sally filled that role in a more recognizable way in The Hours. In a similar respect, where Sally Seton was the pinnacle of romanticism in Mrs. Dalloway, Richard actually fills that role in his own poetic way in The Hours. 

However, this might reflect more on our Clarissa character in either form of the story being told than on the Richard and Sally characters. For instance, Clarissa is the one in both the movie and the book to romanticize that which they don’t have. In this way, “The Hours Clarissa” clung onto her past with Richard, with Richard even telling Clarissa that he’s essentially only staying alive for her. “Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa” inducts the reader into her life through the use of nostalgia and what-ifs, including but not limited to Sally Seton.

I think that by somewhat inverting the roles of these characters in The Hours, the watcher is forced to indulge in the what-ifs that “Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa” indulges in throughout the book. By having Clarissa unsatisfied in both the movie and the book in some way, it forces the watcher to understand that it's the societal roles that Clarissa is stuck in in both versions of her lives that ends up making her so unsatisfied. And it is these societal roles that carries in theme throughout The Hours, in all 3 of the women’s stories. 

Is Richard Dalloway the new L.?

 I found that, as I was reading Mrs. Dalloway, I started making a connection between the mysterious Richard Dalloway and the mysterious L. from The Mezzanine. Both characters, despite their lack of initial depth as characters due to a lack of description from the main character/narrator, come across by the end of the book as the sign of stability for the main character, for better or for worse. They both, L. and Richard, represent a sweet domesticity between themselves and the main character. 

I wrote in a previous blog post that I wish we had gotten more perspective from L. as a character. In fact, I would’ve enjoyed Howie even telling the reader anything more about L., besides the fact that they get along with one another (a sign of similar thinking). Richard, I believe, is the result of my argument for L., as in he is essentially the faceless entity with no personality given a voice in the story. 

L. is essentially only described in relation to Howie. And while this does offer insight into their relationship and is telling of the compatibility between the two characters, it doesn’t tend to offer the best look into the personality of L. herself. In my other blog post about L., I talk about how I would have liked to see Howie’s same types of observations through a more nuanced lens, a lens that automatically comes with not being a straight white guy. The interesting thing about Richard is that that more authentic and nuanced view that I believe would be so abundant coming from L. flows from Richard in such a way that it really does mirror what I believe L. would bring to the table. Richard’s compassion for others, despite his rather stuffy title as a “conservative politician” when first introduced to the reader, practically replaces the setback of being a straight white guy. Clarissa, although she doesn’t initially appear to think of him as anything more than a husband and perhaps even a status in society, really does understand him to a certain extent, and he understands her.

Both L. and Richard are by no means major characters within their respective books (although there is an argument to be made that Howie is the only major character in The Mezzanine), but both are important in providing a backdrop via which we can measure the main character. Both characters are almost so lacking in personality apart from their relationship to the main character (at least for the first half of the book in the case of Mrs. Dalloway) that they provide the “clean background trick” for the main characters of their novels. When the main character is doing or thinking something odd or nostalgic, it usually tends to connect back to our love interest, L. or Richard. However, their difference does emerge in how they are shown to compare to their main character. Where L. will often mirror Howie in a shared oddness, Richard and Clarissa will often only mirror in a shared respectability, but yet differ when it comes to their concerns about the world (triviality to Richard might seem like the big picture to Clarissa). 

Do you feel that L. are more similar or more different? Are they different in character and similar in their role, or vice versa? Or neither? 

Sally Seton and Societal Suggestion

I think that Sally’s character is one of the most relatable and interesting characters in the book, even when compared to the 21st century. She is a female character that tends to act of her own accord and is quite daring compared to the rigid Victorian ideals that she grew up knowing. She even is said, by Peter, to have “suddenly lost her temper, flared up, and told Hugh that he represented all that was most detestable in British middle-class life. She told him that she considered him responsible for the state of ‘those poor girls in Piccadilly’”, when getting into an argument with Hugh about his conservative views on women’s rights. 

Not to belabor the point, but just to prove how unconventional Sally is in relation to her rather stuffy and conservative fellow characters at the age of 18, she: “ran along the passage naked” and “bicycled round the parapet on the terrace; smoked cigars” and, perhaps most notably, Clarissa describes how Sally “kissed her on the lips”. Clarissa characterizes Sally as “reckless” and “absurd”. At this point in the book, the only thing I wanted to know about was: what happened to Sally Seton? Was she traveling around pulling similarly daring stunts? Did she have some kind of career? No. Sally Seton was married. 

Now I don’t have the best personal 20th century gauge for how surprising it is that Sally settled down with a nice, rich, conservative husband and life. The reader, however, at least has Peter’s commentary on the situation: “It was Sally Seton--the last person in the world one would have expected to marry a rich man and live in a large house near Manchester, the wild, the daring, the romantic Sally!”

Ultimately, I think Sally’s story is very telling about the limited pathways for women in the late 19th and early 20th century. Even in relation to what happened to Clarissa, what Clarissa and Peter keep imagining what Clarissa could have been and how she could have possibly become like Sally instead of becoming the naive and proper “perfect hostess”. Contrasting young Clarissa and young Sally is easy and almost instinctual to the reader in that they are almost perfect opposites that are, like opposites do, attracted to each other (as friends or otherwise). 

And yet, they both end up at about the same station in life when all is said and done in middle age. The question I pose then is this: why does Sally have to settle into the life she never apparently wanted in her younger years? Why give up her freedom and strong morals just to get married? And did she really have a choice?

We Need L.'s Version

 The one thing that I think that I would love more than The Mezzanine would be The Mezzanine from the perspective of Howie's girlfriend, L. Allow me to start off my explanation with this quote: 

"In bed I kissed L. good night while she wrote down the events of her day in a spiral notebook," (110)

This is a very promising quote for a couple of reasons. The first of which being that L. could most certainly write her version of The Mezzanine without much trouble at all. From this quote we already know that she's as meticulous as Howie is with her observations about what is around her, and that she has some knowledge of how to articulate those observations. The second main point that I want to get into about why L. should write her own book has more to do with Howie than with L. 

Namely, Howie is a straight, white man and is going about his day noticing the most minute details about everything in his life. Things that are not in his life are therefore unimportant to him at that moment because he is obviously thinking about something else. I am a person who would love the same level of scrutiny that he places on objects such as shoelaces and straws and abstract ideas such as unspoken rules about when to leave a conversation, placed instead on the unspoken rules of being a woman in the workplace- or any place for that matter. That isn't to say that Howie doesn't talk about women, but when he does, they're either just another observation, like the women looking at their respective products in the CVS, or they're too close to him for it to be interesting or necessary for him to speculate on, like L. or even Tina.  

We talked in class about the "clean background trick". I propose that the clean background that Howie is holding up observations to is, in fact, himself. As a white man with a girlfriend, but otherwise not many friends, Howie is essentially just a blank slate. This might be why a reader would find him so relatable. And despite his incredible specificity with his observations and hypotheses, he is holding up these observations to a man who has no real, discernible characteristics. He acts seemingly however he wants in and out of the workplace, whether that be nearly missing hitting the parking meters with his arm, or playing with things on a secretary's desk while she's on a call. He is but a ghost in his environment and apparently has no real weight on the situations around him. 

L., however, might have the ability to have insights past simply this "blank slate", and could very easily pick up on the nuances of why a woman might want to buy a specific item at a CVS, or at the very least discuss why it would be considered unkempt for a woman to pick up something from a male coworkers desk. L. has a lot of the same qualities as Howie, a trait that certainly suits her to living with him and, in fact, suits her to writing a book with as many of the same trivialities as the original book. However, I think that we as a society can move past just simply the thoughts and observations of a straight, white man and even focus on something a little more complex in nature.