YKnow what I mean

Main idea: Through his conversation with the chaplain, Mersault sees death in a new way and in turn transforms his views toward the subject of life. Immediately after being sentenced to death, w e see Mersault struggling with hopes of escaping his death and soon despairing about the absolute certainty of his death: "I could see that the trouble with the guillotine was that you had no chance at all, absolutely none" (111). At this point, his fear of death causes him to hold negative views on both life and death: “But everybody knows life isn’t worth living …Whether it was now or twenty years from now, I would still be the one dying” (114). Here he claims that life isn’t worth living because he will eventually die anyway–in other words, death is an agent that makes life meaningless. Along a similar idea, he says “I understood very well that people would forget me when I was dead. They wouldn’t have anything more to do with me. ” (114-115). Here, Mersault thinks that death des...

Before we started reading this novel, as a class we discussed the meaning of the title “The Sun Also Rises” in the light of the theme of a “lost generation” being portrayed in the book. We said how the title may be implying that the people in the lost generation are stuck in the unending cycle of unhealthy lifestyles, which persists as the sun rises every day. Although I agree with this interpretation, the title could have another meaning: that the sun rises, and therefore there is a chance for a new start or at least some salvation from the misery that the lost generation is suffering. My thought is that this “sun”, or “salvation”, comes to Brett and Jake in the form of their trip to Spain (notice how Paris is mostly portrayed during the night and Spain is characterized by the sunlight/heat).  At the beginning of the book, we see Brett and Jake intimately tied with each other in a way that they are to no other people. They take their private time together in the taxi after the par...