Ciara's Thursday Reaction

I definitely see the ideas of Camus and Dostoyevsky all over this novel.  Tony reminds me of Meursault regarding his relationship with Victoria.  Though Tony’s thoughts are more complicated in general compared to Meursault’s limited physical motivations, he does not dwell on the strange nature of their relationship.  When they have sex after they break up, Victoria is angry that the sex did not have the desired effect on him, but he takes a calm approach to the situation and easily moves on from it.  Just like Maria in the Stranger, Victoria is upset with his lack of emotion and tries to change him, but his attachment to her never reaches the stage where she could wield this power.

Tony never likes to come to a standard conclusion; rather, he does not like to commit one idea to fact.  This could be because he is not confident in his own ability to perceive the world appropriately, or it could be that he does no trust his mind’s ability to preserve memories exactly the way they occurred.  In fact, he warns the reader that there is a large chance that the way he remembers things may not be the way they actually happened, which brings up the issue of the unreliable narrator that we faced with Dostoyevsky.  We do not know whether to believe what Tony is saying is true, but we have no choice to believe so; it is the only information we have to work with.

Everything Adrian does is thought out, so I believe that Adrian must have had a good reason as to why he committed suicide.  By a good reason, I mean a logical reason.  In today’s society, we are told to think of life as a gift that should never be taken for granted, and never wasted. We are told that suicide is never the right choice…but who said?  Who said this life was meant for every one?  The only reason more people do not commit suicide is because it is the body’s automatic physical response to prevent us from harming ourselves; however, if we had a mind like Adrian’s that could properly rationalize a situation, would more people do it?  I believe that it is possible that suicide could be the right choice for some, because I do not believe in definites: my mind is quite Dostoyevskian in that respect.