Silas Marner by George Eliot – A book review

Silas Marner is a weaver. And so is George Eliot. 

As Marner relentlessly, dedicatedly and dolefully weaves for the village folk, so does not Eliot; she pauses every now and then, she smells the blossom, she listens to the gossip of the multitude, she gives in to the blind faith of the rustic brethren, she runs her hand lovingly over the simplicity of neighbours, through her needle she looks into the cunningness and heartlessness of the affluently powerful and while doing so, infuses in the pages, one after the other, a warmth the reader isn’t ready to forsake.

Stabbed in the back by one considered closest, Marner takes his craft to the village of Raveloe where he lives a life of solitude. In the village, where being neighbourly isn’t an option, Marner has made himself an outcast; the village folk leave him alone. At intervals, incidents happen that not only change the course of his life but also the way he lives it and the way people change their thoughts about him. From losing his money to theft - the sole happiness in his life then, to the finding, keeping and making of Eppie his daughter, Marner’s life transcends his misfortune.

Silas Marner is pure in his thoughts. And so is George Eliot with her characters.

Eliot effortlessly contrasts beliefs of the poor and the rich, of the simple and the powerful. Is it naivety, ignorance or goodness in Mrs.Winthrop, one of Marner’s uneducated neighbors to declare that she hardly understands anything that the priest preaches in church but has the thought that it definitely has to be good? In fact, she goads Marner to go to church, to listen, to be accepted, for Eppie to be accepted.

On the other hand, the design of thoughts of the elite Casses are so hurtful but deemed pragmatic by them. How easily the frivolous Dunsey Cass starts thinking about Marner’s money, to beguile him out of it and starts anticipating what he’ll do with it even when it’s not his. What gives him the right to think and decide for others? And how different is Godfrey Cass, the sensible son, who reprimands himself for lying, believes he has a conscience but lays his entire life on deceit? And he too attacks Marner; this time unlike his brother, the imposition is for much more than money. Eliot unveils the rich class to show how money brings in complacency, an inevitable confidence and an ego which ridicules their thoughts and carries them away from being sensible.

I found a strange purity, simplicity and calmness in Eliot’s writing. The reader is never kept in suspense, though the characters are. It’s there and you know it but still keep reading for the joy of it, to feel, to laugh, to shame, to feel sorry, to despise and ultimately, to rejoice in the plainness of Marner’s life.

The edition I read has an introduction by Q. D.Leavis which is equally interesting and full of thoughts on the lives in and around the times of the story and the author.

My rating: * * * * * * * * * * - 8/10

Pictures courtesy of:

George Eliot picture - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot

Book cover - https://www.pinterest.com/pin/480900066436057124/

'The woman who walked into doors' by Roddy Doyle – A book review

A lady on a swing, a full smile, a happy one. Night time for sure, a disappearing tinge of blue in the black. Probably the moonlight, probably not. There’s something eerie about the cover. And it makes me wonder, walk into or walk through; is it to do with the supernatural? And then I read praises written on the back cover and they put my mind to rest and I venture on.

‘Walk into’ it is! Bang! Again. And again. And again. Battered, bruised, shattered, broken, bleeding, hurt – inside and out, dead – almost – inside, not out. But unnoticed. No veil, yet unnoticed. Invisible.

How did you get that? – I walked into a door. So sad. Ha ha ha.

Paula was born an O’Leary, had to fall in love to be a Spencer. Married at 18 to Charlo, this the story of Paula’s married life. If it can be called one. Married - yeah, life – not very sure. Set up in a suburb of Dublin where girls were either sluts or not, and boys were either a good ride or not.

Paula is a good ride, thinks Charlo. Charlo is a good ride, thinks Paula.

And one day Paula is there on the floor. And the next day too. And as Paula lies curled up, whimpering on the floor almost every day, or night, or the times in between, the author writes on. He takes you there; in the bedroom, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. You look and that’s all you can do. All you can do is nod grievously as the bottle takes over her.

Roddy Doyle’s brilliance is evident in Paula’s humoring herself and her life. Please don’t tell me she actually believed love still existed; till the very end. Did it, Mr. Doyle? Or is it that unseen, empowering shit called positive thinking where you train your mind to believe things. “He loves me. He can’t live without me. He said that.”

The gory violence is only subdued by her relentless pursuit for normalcy, a hope that negates despair. And in the end it is the mother in her that fights back; the wife is merely a believer, the mother thankfully treads the path beyond the realm of belief. The beast is finally put in place.

Roddy Doyle is a powerful writer. He’s drilled a hole into Paula’s mind. He’s managed to connect the wires to a giant screen and he sees and he writes. There is no tarnishing, there are no blemishes as he captures the ramblings. Paula talks to you; she does. And more often than once you want to scream, ‘Get up bitch, get a life. Wake up, wash your face, lose your pain, lose him’. And you do. Compelling!

And I look at the cover again. Is that a toothless smile I see? Is that a black eye hidden by a shadow? Let’s see, no, can’t be a broken finger curling on to the chains. Or is it?

My rating : * * * * * * * * * * (9/10)

Cover image - https://blankbooks.co.za/obz/20182-the-woman-who-walked-into-doors.html

Roddy Doyle image - https://www.rte.ie/culture/2017/0901/900835-reviewed-smile-by-roddy-doyle/

Half of a yellow sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – A book review

Olanna unfurled the cloth flag and told them what the symbols meant. Red was the blood of the siblings massacred in the North, black was for mourning them, green was for the prosperity Biafra would have, and, finally, the half of a yellow sun stood for the glorious future.

 “There are two answers to the things they will teach you about our land: the real answer and the answer you give in school to pass.” says Odenigbo to Ugwu, his house-help.

The land is Nigeria. The time – 1967 to 1970. The real answer? So often is it lost in the labyrinths of history, buried deep, until a wanderer unearths the fossils and the truth is then attempted to being understood, theories invented and situations created. The journey from ‘was’ to ‘might have’ is traversed on an uncertain drive. And the real answer? Is most of the times lost forever, was known only to those who lived the moment, maybe isn’t as dramatic as history reveals it to be, maybe is, maybe – always a point of view.

 Adichie’s book is based on the Biafran war and her protagonists are educated, politically opinionated and knowledgeable people, thinkers and believers. The story unfolds through the affected and altered lives of Odenigbo and Olanna, then Nigerians, now fighting for the Biafran cause and their family, friends and close associates. The point of view of a foreigner, Richard, a white man, having learnt the local dialect, in love with Olanna’s sister Kainene and now one of them makes it more real. Through his lens and others, the abrupt and brutal changes that war brings are presented.  

The demand is for a separate country called Biafra. By the Igbo (a Nigerian tribe) people. And why? There’s always a spark. To light the fire. The disdainful massacre of the Igbo people in the north is supposedly the cause for the unrest. But is it really so? And what caused the massacre? And has there ever been a war without British involvement?

“David Hunt thinks we are all mental children.” It was Okeoma. “The man should go home. Why is he coming to tell us how to put out a fire, when it is he and his fellow British who collected the firewood for it in the first place?”

Richard writes in his book ‘No doubt these groups also fought wars and slave-raided each other, but they did not massacre in this manner. If this is hatred, then it is very young. It has been caused, simply, by the informal divide-and-rule policies of the British colonial exercise. These policies manipulated the differences between the tribes and ensured that unity would not exist, thereby making the easy governance of such a large country practicable.’

Odenigbo said while arguing with Kainene “The white man brought racism into the world. He used it as a basis of conquest. It is always easier to conquer a more humane people.”

An interminable dissection of the war has always been the norm of the day, after it has killed millions. The war epilogue is not just banal but longer than the contrived war itself. But to what result; has it ever been able to stop the next one? How many times has it been concluded that the civilians who fight for the war never benefit from it, only the powerful with ulterior motives do, how many candles have been burnt at war memorials, how many tears shed! And what have we learnt? Nothing! We read, we talk, resent, argue at times of normalcy but the hatred is always there, locked inside with an easily accessible key that unlocks itself at the slightest instigation. We cease to be humans, we cease to think. We are imbeciles not naïve to not accept the disparate differences in people, we are ugly to be so easily brain washed and carried away by religion, caste, fanaticism; we are a hatred hungry creed, we frenetically turn to monsters, we crave for power only to realize in the end that we have none. It’s so laughable to hear that a war is being fought for peace. Which civil war has actually been civil?

“What peace are we looking for? Gowon himself has said that a basis for unity does not exist, so what peace are we looking for?” Odenigbo asked.

“Yes! Yes! Ojukwu, Give us guns! There is anger in our hearts.” The chanting was constant now.

And there is damage beyond the eye can see. Irreparable damage, irreversible damage. The lives of the Biafrans are changing every single day; from the comforts of their homes they are shoved to the abuses of stifling shanties. Beyond the hunger and the bullets and beatings, does war change something deep inside? Adichie answers that through Ugwu’s complicity in the stoic rape of a bargirl, the priest satiating his hunger with the young kids before satiating their need for protein food to stay alive, in Kainene’s forgiveness of her sister for her immoral act.

Beyond the bloating stomachs of starvation and the loss of tufts of hair, do we, as individuals lose ourselves in war or do we find ourselves; can we still hold on to our sanity? How steadfast can morality be in the proximity of death? Should a bereft stomach justify adultery just because it’s the time of war, can friendship hold more weight than the caste, creed or religion you’re fighting for, and can forgiveness replace barbaric acts?     

Richard’s book – He writes about starvation. Starvation was a Nigerian weapon of war. Starvation broke Biafra and brought Biafra fame and made Biafra last as long as it did. Starvation made the people of the world take notice and sparked protests and demonstrations in London and Moscow and Czechoslovakia. Starvation made parents all over the world tell their children to eat up. Starvation aided the careers of photographers. And starvation made the International Red Cross call Biafra its gravest emergency since the Second World War.

His Excellency would come back from his foreign visit with justice and with salt.

Was it risible then that Olanna asks of her husband if he slept with her starving neighbor when their car wouldn’t start while the bombing and shelling were fast approaching them? Why couldn’t she get that out of her mind even when the next bullet could’ve rendered her or her husband dead? And was his complicity in the rape of the bargirl an incredulity for Ugwu, a simple, honest, loyal, conscripted, god fearing teenager; why did he do it, did the moment define him? Would he have done that if it wasn’t war time and does that speak something about who we are and who we can be?

Finally Ugwu looked at the girl. She stared back at him with a calm hate.

Olanna thought “how a single act could reverberate over time and space and leave stains that could never be washed off. She thought about how ephemeral life was, about not choosing misery.

As Chinua Achebe quotes ‘One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.’

Richard about Kainene – there was something brittle about her, and he feared she would snap apart at the slightest touch; she had thrown herself so fiercely into this, the erasing of memory, that it would destroy her.

Richard, a British writer, now turned into a war journalist and a local unfolds and unveils the unrelenting gruesomeness of happenings and his rendition spurts vividness to the reality of matters. His book on the war is aptly titled ‘The world was silent when we died.’

Richard’s book – He writes about the world that remained silent when Biafrans died. He argues that Britain inspired this silence. The arms and advice that Britain gave Nigeria shaped other countries. In the United States, Biafra was “under Britain’s sphere of interest.” In Canada, the prime minister quipped. “Where is Biafra?” The Soviet Union sent technicians and planes to Nigeria, thrilled at the chance to influence Africa without offending America or Britain. And from their white-supremacist positions. South Africa and Rhodesia gloated at further proof that black-run governments were doomed to failure.

Adichie’s pedantic pen is calm as she unnerves the Biafrans from their lucidity. No furtive glance is cast; her lurid delirious description frames the brevity of human life. You read it and visualize it as a documentary video. Nothing is misconstrued, not even feelings.

Finally before Richard fell asleep, Moliere’s words came to him, strangely comforting: Unbroken happiness is a bore; it should have ups and downs.

The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills – A Book Review

 

The restraint of who? – The restraint of beasts!

But where are the beasts?

Two workers, Tam and Ritchie, and the foreman, the narrator, are responsible for building high tensile fences on their clients’ farms. Their manager, Mr. Donald is a fastidious boss. So, they drive, smoke, rest, have tea, sleep, work, visit the local pub, look for women, have beer, get drunk, sleep. And again, and again. They need to be prodded, instigated, Tam and Ritchie, for them to be out of their beds and do some work. If not, they would rather have beer and sleep all day, and night of course. The fence is finally built and it’s looking good. Oh, but the client is accidentally killed. And buried.

So they move on to the next assignment. They drive, smoke, rest, have tea, sleep, work, visit the local pub, look for women, have beer, get drunk, sleep. And again, and again. The fence is finally built and it’s looking good. Oh, but the client is accidentally killed, and buried, yet again.

And then they move to the next assignment.......

The fences are built, but there’s no sign of no animals, and now there are no owners as they peacefully lie in the depth of the buried earth.

I surprised myself by not getting bored with the ludicrously trite routine of the characters; rather enjoyed their idiosyncrasies. I grinned at their indolence as they reminded me of some people I’ve had the misfortune to work with.

The author, Magnus Mills has subtly and metaphorically drawn the need to restrain the two legged creature as much as is deemed necessary for the four legged ones (Between 1979 and 1986 Magnus Mills built high-tensile fences for a living, an experience he drew upon for this novel). The need to be tamed, disciplined, berated, to move, to be motivated to move to greener pastures is felt needed by both; the safety in confines is the disposition of both. Like the beasts, we are born, live and die; we don’t give much thought to the goat that was served for dinner, do we, except maybe to the tenderness of the meat? Maybe, that explains the dead-pan humour (discovered this phrase when reading about the author) in the cold (accidental) killings of the clients. Was it sorrowful – no, was it deliberate – no, did it evoke reproach – no, was it funny – no, why should it? Was it forgotten – easily! Life goes on...

On another note, we feel free, safe in our confines, don’t we? We aren’t born to be free, we are born to be restrained – to do as we are told, do this, don’t do that, do it this way, behave, sit, stand, brush, eat, travel, go to work, return home, sleep, ready yourselves for another day of a mundane struggle – the more taut the string, the more effective the fence. An introvert would feel as free in a crowded party as would a garrulous person on a marooned island.

We are tethered by the invisible shackles of our thoughts and imposed values and we roam around feeling free only till we feel the tug of the chain, and then we saunter back to our safer grounds. We are herded into the influential lives that we live; only few choose to, resolve to break free and live in the wilderness.

As Oscar Wilde said “To define is to limit.” But then again, was that for humans? :)

 

My rating: * * * * * * * * * * - 6/10 

Image Copyright:

Magnus Mills - https://alchetron.com/Magnus-Mills-256041-W

Book cover - https://www.amazon.com/Restraint-Beasts-Magnus-Mills/dp/0684865114

 

 

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut – A Book Review

Why are we born? Why do we die?

And what happens in between?

What is truth? What is fear?

What is religion?

Isn’t fear religion? Or is religion fear?

Can we love everyone the same way; are we supposed to?

Who tells us what we’re supposed to; who tells the eagle to soar and the snake to slither?

And we can think, yes! So? Do we create our destiny?

Was I destined to write this review?

Is there a purpose?

As the books of Bokonon say, “In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly!” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this.” said God. And He went away.

He’s John, a journalist. He’s out there to collect material for a book ‘The Day the World Ended’ – a factual book giving an account of what important Americans had done on the day when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

Dr. Felix Hoenikker, a scientist, the father of the atomic bomb is long dead; so all John is left with are his three erratic children, Angela, the tall horse faced, caring daughter who soulfully plays the clarinet, Frank, the quiet modeller and thinker and little Newt (Newton), a midget, a painter.  Stumbling upon their whereabouts, he crosses paths with Dr. Breed, Felix’s associate and comes across a brilliant discovery by Dr. Felix, a discovery that could change the world like all ‘Eureka’ian discoveries do.

“Dr. Breed keeps telling me the main thing with Dr. Hoenikker was truth.”

“You don’t seem to agree.”

“I don’t know whether I agree or not. I just have trouble understanding how truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person.”

The endeavour to know more about Dr. Felix and the discovery finds him on the island of San Lorenzo, an island cultivating utopian thoughts, where everyone believes in Bokonon and his books but are not supposed to. A roller coaster ride follows, where he meets the most beautiful girl in the world, is asked to marry her, is to become the President of the island and then – then he encounters Dr. Felix’s sinister discovery, in the most inexorably devastating way as all good discoveries are inadvertently showcased. The island, its caretakers, its people, all is made, bred, destroyed by the preaching of Bokonon and a higher authority, of course!

“What is sacred to Bokononists? I asked after a while.

“Not even God as near as I can tell.”

“Nothing?”

“Just one thing.”

I made some guesses. “The ocean? The sun?”

“Man,” said Frank. “That’s all, just man.” 

Now, who’s Bokonon? Is it important? Yes and no. Replace him with any religious preacher, teacher, leader that you believe in, have been asked to, forced to believe in; anyone or everyone your parents, your society asked you to listen to, follow and why? Because their parents and so did their parents asked them to; religion is traditional isn’t it?

The first sentence in the books of Bokonon is this “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies”

“She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing.” writes Bokonon

Isn’t every religion created? By a selected few, a privileged few? And who gave them the privilege to tell us what we should do, what we should believe, the way we should or shouldn’t live? And should we listen to them, to these obstinate men of God or these political zealots? We do, don’t we? Is there an option? Look around you, we are surrounded by preaching, teaching, lies; do we really believe in them, maybe not, but that’s not important. What is important is that we cling on to them, why, of course for safety, like a drowning man holding on to a float for dear life! Our existence!

“Are you a Bokononist?” I asked him.

“I agree with one Bokononist idea. I agree that all religions, including Bokononism, are nothing but lies.”

“I wanted all things
To seem to make some sense
So we all could be happy
instead of tense.
And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice,
and I made this sad world,
A par-a-dise.”
- from the books of Bokonon

 

And if we break the shackles and become free thinkers, we say we create our own world, our own destinies. We think, we work, be creative, we wonder, we invent and He laughs. We send a man on the moon, we create satellites, we create penicillin and other vaccines and He laughs. Have you heard of earthquakes and volcanoes and tornadoes and floods and tsunamis and plagues and forest fires and of course wars, He mocks!

“Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why go right ahead and scold Him. He’ll just smile and nod.”
- from the Books of Bokonon

 

So then, are we mere puppets, is ignorance bliss? If everything was destined to happen the way it did, does, will, why then are we equipped with the ability to think? Is there any respite from this despair?

I say “Oh! What a plight!”

He says, “Just hold on tight.”

“My God – life! Who can understand even one little minute of it?”

“Don’t try,” he said “just pretend you understand.” He quoted another poem:

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly,
Man got to sit and wonder, “why, why why?
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land,
Man got to tell himself he understand.

This book is high on nihilism, there are no clear answers, and if there are, there is more confusion, more dilemmas. The more you delve deep, the more the confusion rises and all that it does is wake you from your somnolent safety and takes you a step closer to a lurking insanity.

Thought of and written in the most eloquent form, Kurt Vonnegut raises a subject of poignant interest, the most basic one. His wit and sarcasm is evident in his story telling as you grin and laud and applaud at his cunningness, his deceptions, and his clever ambiguities. You lose and find yourself between pangs of lucidity. You look at the sky now and smile OR you look at the sky now, frown and get back to what you were doing.

Some more Bokononism -

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before,” Bokonon tells us. “He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”

My rating: * * * * * * * * * * - 10/10

Kurt Vonnegut

Image Copyright:

Kurt Vonnegut1 - http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/72006-the-10-best-kurt-vonnegut-books.html

Cat's Cradle image - https://www.amazon.com/Cats-Cradle-Novel-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/038533348X

 

 

 

Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge - A Book Review

 

 

George Hardy, rather Master George is an obsessed medical practitioner, a surgeon and an ardent photographer too. Shortly after his father’s untimely death, the whereabouts of which are to be kept a secret from the other members of his family, a choleric proliferation and the waging war against Russia sets Master George on a journey to offer his services to his countrymen, to the sufferers of war. Could he have possibly known that he was to turn into one, a sufferer and likewise, the ones around him?

Myrtle is an orphaned girl, taken into the Hardy family, raised to be a lady, to all - George’s adoptive sister, but that’s possibly an introduction for the world. For her, she’d rather be Georgie’s skin, which can be cut, wounded, torn, sutured, and repaired but remains till the very end, before it withers, fades. So, convoyed by Myrtle the infatuated, Dr.Potter the geologist brother-in-law, a caravan of relatives and of course Pompey Jones, the assistant, George walks into the labyrinthine decay of the war.

Beryl Bainbridge fascinates us with the numbness of war; the dead are luckier than the unfortunate living. Every brush stroke only deepens and darkens the colour, a singular one, of red, a bloody one at that, the only miscellany presented in its shades. And as one inebriates in the gory visuals, the putrid miasma of decay suffocates you but there is nothing to cover your nose, your eyes with, not even your willingness.

        a gun is meant to kill and so it will!
                a soldier is meant to, made to kill and so he will!
                a war is meant to destroy, burn, annihilate and so it does!

No dissuasion can keep a moth from the light; no enticing would keep Master George away from the war. Cut, cut, cut, tear, tear, tear, sawing limbs is the norm of the day; stripping a dead body of its soiled clothes to adorn a living is no dread. Nonchalance isn’t an option. Like Dr. Potter who’s losing it with all the delusions and hallucinations, one would agree that to be insensitive to the calamities of war is the only sensible thing to do; how would one breathe otherwise? To be insane is the only way to be sane.

In this decadence, in this coldness, the author manages to light up emotions and allure the reader with their dancing shadows. There aren’t any secret lives, or any secret emotions, almost everything is blatantly real, only trampled on by the squalor of war. Pompey Jones likes Myrtle, he believes the attraction more to come from the nasty cavern of poverty and squalor that they once belonged to. Myrtle is hopeless when it’s about George but he, the curer, is only a curer of the surface, the body; the soul isn’t a surgeon’s lookout. Can love possibly surface in such abominable conditions? Is it still important to know if you’re loved when a cover from the next bullet or the next chance for a meal are the only things you should really care for?

       "I stood , resentment wriggling like a worm within my breast. It had been my conceit that it was enough to give love, that to receive it would have altered the nature of my obsession. When passion is mutual, there is always the danger of the fire burning to ashes. Rather than lose love it was better to not have known it." - Myrtle

Bainbridge’s eloquent portrayal scratches beyond the surface and delves deep; the emotions infused in the characters are real and hence felt. Whether you shed a tear for the dead or not, the eyes will be in vain for the living, the living dead. The book and its gory descriptions reminded me of the movie ‘The Pianist’. I’ve read Beryl Bainbridge before, ‘Every man for himself’ but this one has struck a chord, an effective one!

 

My rating - * * * * * * * * * * - 10/10

Image copyrights:
Master Georgie cover - http://www.readersparadise-me.com/book-for-rent/9780349111698-master-georgie-a-beryl-bainbridge.html
Beryl Bainbridge - http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=54418878

Beryl Bainbridge

The Stranger by Albert Camus – A book review

Are we to fear God or love him?

This novella is about Meursault, a person indifferent to everything and everyone around him. Having murdered a person, he faces a trial and is convicted for the homicide. Though the story builds onto the indifference that the protagonist shows towards society in general, the essence of the book lies in the last few thought provoking pages, in his conversation with the priest – his obstinate and unyielding non-acceptance of God.

The book has raised a lot of questions in my mind and the inexorable ramblings that it has created strive to find answers.

Indifference – is it dangerous? Could be! But is it necessarily so? Could I force you to like me, like anyone, anything? Am I right in doing so – obviously not! What changes in me if you are indifferent? Is Meursault’s sending away his mother to an old age home, an act of indifference, couldn’t it be plainly an act of being practical? The lack of sadness at the loss of his mother, his inability to mourn her absence isn’t normal, yes. I would personally abhor such a being, but what’s he to do if he actually doesn’t feel it? Should he enact the perfect mourning? My mind does say that that’s being less human, as I said earlier not normal, but maybe he likes to live in the present rather than in the past or the future like most of us. Am I trying to empathise here or am I holding a mirror to my feelings, my thoughts with Meursault’s torso in an attempt to comprehend him?

The killing – was that an act of fear or ruthlessness? Was it the fear of being killed if not kill? He said the sun was in his eyes and he was tired. Why did he shoot again and again the motionless body once life had escaped it? Hmmm! That again could have been fear, right, or was it the sudden impulsive thrill from having pulled the trigger for the first time? For one, Meursalt for whatever else he was, wasn't a liar, rather he was a truthful person. His inability to express his thoughts exaggerated each of his shortcomings. The lack of pity, repentance, tears, his calmness, his irritating ability to let go is what makes it so hateful. But, aren’t we all, when we do something wrong, repeatedly asked by our dear ones to get out of it, to forget it – doesn’t that make Meursault a winner then?

If he was so grotesque a character, why was he madly loved by Marie or was she insane too?

Does God exist? For me, yes, for you, I don’t know, but the fact is, if He exists, He exists, whether your answer is a yes or no. Are we supposed to fear Him or love Him? Why then, like our parents, like our elders, the priest too forces Meursault to believe in something he doesn’t. Doesn’t that question the priest’s faith in the first place? His frustration at not being able to convince Meursault of God’s power, his presence, his benevolence, his forgiveness is derisive. Does he, the priest have all the answers just because he’s draped in a cassock and lives in the supposed house of God? His belief – isn’t it trying if he realizes that Meursault is created by the same power that created him. Can you, should you force someone to love a piece of poetry if he or she doesn’t appreciate it? Isn’t it beautiful by itself or does its essence fade away with the lack of appreciation of a few?

“I had only a little time left and I didn’t want to waste it on God”

Am I defending him? No, definitely not! Does Meursault seem even a bit moral? No. He seems almost a stranger to himself, to humanity. Then what’s disturbing me? I guess the fact that I, we expect him to be normal, his acts, his thoughts to be acts of textbook normalcy is what has irritated me as I advanced to dislike him. Normalcy, now what’s that?

My rating: * * * * * * * * * * - 8/10

Copyrights:

Book cover - https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Albert-Camus/dp/0679720200
Albert Camus image - https://www.pinterest.com/pin/72057662761049810/




Albert Camus