valiah > Recent Status Updates

aw we read that poem last year

me vs book

the scene with his sister. holy symbolism

a liar and soo disconnected and hypocritical about people only doing things when they want to. emotional but disconnected and his suicidal ideation is written in so naturally
such an interesting fella!

"i swear to god i'm a madman" x20
so hypocritical, constantly projecting his inconsistencies onto people (particularly girls). the second he gets comfortable, he info dumps onto some poor girl while simultaneously saying nothing at all and asking her to run away. she promptly says no and he leaves with a 'i didn't want it anyway, but i meant it when i asked' mentality. what an interesting guy

the prostitute scene gave a lot of insight on holden

i thought id understand holden more than i do. he's young and grieving and, therefore, immature. but he's SOO questionable and annoying like PLEASE

but i get it

holden chill

"It took me a few minutes to understand the last part because he kept saying 'his mistress' and to me she was Marie."

separation of crime and criminal?

sometimes u just need a random reddit user to analyze the book for u 💕

omg worst fear. imagine living five months unknowingly verbalizing every thought

"I hadn't understood how days could be both long and short at the same time: long to live through, maybe, but so drawn out that they ended up flowing into one another. They lost their names. Only the words 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' still had any meaning for me."

cont. this is why change is a temporary punishment

the physical world is all that exists because, no matter what the physical situation may be, your mind - and everything else - will adapt to it

cordiality is a mask

religion is projection

by society, you can (and will) be labeled both a criminal on earth but also innocent by God (contradictory, yet fabricated by the same people)

mindless words have more perceived value than mindless silence (one rewarded while the other rejected).

"On my way out I was even going to shake his hand, but just in time, I remembered that I had killed a man."
societal attributions --> individual action, inaction, and perception (even when the individual is disconnected from perception altogether)

this is also shown in the attorney interrogation, how society expects emotional reactions from certain things
and it's almost offensive to naturally steer from it

i like the attorney paragraph

people solve innately convenient non-issues with other conveniences

people feel the need to solve something, to make things more complex than they are

the murder himself says his case is simple, yet the people prosecuting him insist on complicating it

"It was this burning, which I couldn't stand anymore, that made me move forward. I knew that it was stupid, that I wouldn't get the sun off me by stepping forward. But I took a step, one step, forward."

action doesn't fix discomfort
meursault knew this
but he did it anyway

he is so connected to his senses and nothing else

meursault a freak

i'm struggling to find purpose in life.
thought i'd see what the professional pessimist thinks about that

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT MENTIONED

"The more I feared people the more I was liked, and the more I was liked the more I feared them - a process which eventually compelled me to run away from everybody."