Journal #17

Journal #17: On your own blog post your topic and 15 quotes that connect to your topic (these quotes can connect thematically or by technique). Once collected and analyzed, write a thesis statement.

Topic: Power and its importance to society

Quotes:

Salamano:

“You can see them in the rue de Lyon, the dog pulling the man along until old Salamano stumbles. Then he beats the dog and swears at it.” (26)

“Once the dog has forgotten, it starts dragging its master along again, and again gets beaten and sworn at.” (26)

“I noticed old Salamano standing on the doorstep. He looked flustered. When we got closer, I saw that he didn’t have his dog. He was looking all over the place, turning around, peering into the darkness of the entryway, muttering incoherently, and then he started searching the street again with his little red eyes.” (37)

“He asked me if it was a big fee. I didn’t know. Then he got mad: ‘Pay money for that bastard – ha! He can damn well die!’ (37)

Raymond:

“So I let him have it. He went down. I was about to help him up but he started kicking me from there on the ground/ So I kneed him one and slugged him a couple of times.” (28)

“I’d smack her around a little, but nice-like, you might say. She’d scream a little. I’d close the shutters and it always ended the same way.” (29)

“I realized that she was cheating on me.” (28)

“He wanted to write her a letter, ‘one with a punch and also some things in it ot make her sorry for what he’s done.’ Then, when she came running back, he’d go to bed with her and ‘right at the last minute’ he’d spit in her face and throw her out. (30)

The Chaplain:

“For the third time I’ve refused to see the chaplain. I don’t have anything to say to him; I don’t feel like talking, and ill be seeing him soon enough as it is.” (103)

“As for me, I didn’t want anybody’s help, and I just didn’t have the time to interest myself in what didn’t interest me.” (111)

“At that point he threw up his hands in annoyance but then sat forward and smoothed out the folds of his cassock. (111)

“Then, I don’t know why, but something inside me snapped. I started yelling at the top of my lungs, and I insulted him and told him not to waste his prayers on me. I grabbed him by the collar of his cassock.” (114)

“His eyes were full of tears. Then he turned and disappeared.”(116)

Meursault:

“I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.” (117)

“I realized then that a man who had lived in prison only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored. In a way, it was an advantage.” (75-76)

“I had ended up making friends with the head guard” (74)

“if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowering overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.” (73)

Thesis: Camus contrasts Meursaults attitude to losing power with the attitudes of society (Salamano, Raymond, the Chaplain) to show that having power is not a necessary part of life.

(Very tentative. Could use a ton of work and rewording fosho.)

The Chaplain, Raymond and Salamano all exert power and react negatively to their loss of power throughout the book, while Meursault loses his power of freedom when he is imprisoned but seems indifferent and not as upset as the others. I think Camus uses this contrast in reactions to say that power isn’t everything and that it is not necessary to live a decent life.