Who's the Narrator?

 Now I'm writing this right before I read the last section of the book because I really wanted as much information as possible to look at before trying to decide who the narrator of The Plague is. I wasn't actually expecting Camus to take so long before revealing who the narrator was, I was kind of expecting in somewhere in the middle of the book, but I suppose it would be harder to look at other people's point of views after you know exactly who's talking. Now there are a few things that the narrator says that lets me eliminate some people, first off he talks about people that are forced to stay in this town while traveling as another group, so I think it is safe to assume that the narrator does live in this town. This can eliminate the reporter which I think would've made a great narrator but since he doesn't really know what this town is like when the plague isn't here so it would be hard to comment on the extent of the changes the plague causes to us. Though I still think he would make a pretty good narrator as he should be invested in telling people about this plague as a reporter. The narrator also says that he knows what it is like to be separated from your love so it is safe to assume that like Rieux or Rambert his significant other is out of town at the moment. Now this really makes me believe that Rieux is the narrator, which would make sense, he is one of the biggest characters in the story and most of the other main characters interact with him regularly. He appears in practically every chapter so it would make sense to me if he was the narrator. The only reason that I feel that he might not be the narrator is because it wouldn't make too much sense to not just have him be revealed as the narrator at the beginning of the book, I do think that he makes the most sense out of the rest of the characters though.

My First Thoughts on The Plague

 When I first saw The Plague, I was honestly not expecting it to be about the Bubonic Plague, I figured it would be some weird completely made fantasy plague or something like that, although this might be slightly more interesting as I have actually learned about it in history class freshman year. Of course I do think it is interesting to look at this story while having the perspective of out current pandemic. I do find it slightly odd how they notice that all the rats are dying and do know about the plague and how it is transferred via fleas yet they don't think anything of it. They completely ignore the rats to begin with and even when thousands of rats died while spurting up blood they don't take any precautions and don't even kind of associate it with any kind of disease, much less the plague. The narrating style is also kind of weird, the narrator clearly mentions at the beginning of the book that he is both a third person and first person narrator and I'm okay with that it makes sense and I can understand why its setup like that completely. But he speaks about himself in the third person, referencing himself as the narrator, it just seems kind of odd. I'm also not completely sure how real this story is, because it could be all real, although I don't think it is, it could also be completely fake, although in my opinion it falls somewhere in-between as a fake story based on a real event. I do like the book so far though, it is interesting to look at it while going through this current pandemic, although I know that is why we are reading it to begin with.

Why I Don't Like The Sun Also Rises

Now as you might have guessed from the title I am not a big fan of The Sun Also Rises, it is kind of boring and is the first book this year to have actually made me fall asleep while reading it. I think the main reason I don't like it is that nothing important is happening. In Mrs. Dalloway we were building up to something, and in the Mezzanine we got to see how the main character sees the world. In The Sun Also Rises we are just following Jake as  he goes about his day drinking and talking with his friends, people who usually only get a couple of sentences of introduction. The only people we really get to know are Jake, Brett, and Cohn and most of the time we are only watching Jake and his other friends, who we barely know. Then there is the fact that pretty much the entire book so far (Chapter 10) is just short back and forth dialogue. And the dialogue all consists of pretty meaningless things, sometimes its a joke and they say something contradictory immediately after but it is extremely difficult to notice when this is happening, as they don't mention how something is said. It just isn't interesting to read, the most interesting part of this book is when Jake describes the other characters, but most of the time when it isn't dialogue all we get is where people are going and what the area around them is like which can be important but really it isn't as important as the characters in a book like this. I significantly preferred the Mezzanine because while it was boring we got a really interesting view of the world of the character's POV, which we don't get in The Sun Also Rises.

The Changed Ending of Mrs. Dalloway

 Now as we all should know at this point Virginia Wolfe changed the ending of Mrs. Dalloway from Dalloway herself committing suicide to the entire Septimus storyline and the party going on relatively well. Although I believe that the story would've been better if it ended with Mrs. Dalloway committing suicide compared to Septimus. To begin with Septimus doesn't really affect the story of Mrs. Dalloway, his suicide slightly ruins her party but not really, and he barely interacts with any of the characters that the story focuses on, at the most existing close to them. His story is interesting, don't get me wrong, but it feels slightly out of place because it doesn't give us any perspective on Mrs. Dalloway, unlike basically everything else in the story. I think it would have been better if she had removed the Septimus storyline and instead added another character that interacted with Mrs. Dalloway, or maybe a character who is about to meet Mrs. Dalloway for the first time, all of the characters in Mrs. Dalloway, at least the ones the narrator focuses on, have known Mrs. Dalloway for a long time, usually since their childhoods, and it would be extremely interesting to see what she is like to someone who has never met her before. Or even see what they think she is like compared to any preconceived notions of her they might have gotten from people who did know her. It would definitely be more interesting then Septimus who doesn't give us any info on Mrs. Dalloway, even though that's the entire reason the book exists. I also think it would've been a very interesting scene seeing how everyone reacts to Mrs. Dalloway committing suicide, Peter Walsh, Robert Dalloway, and Sally Seton would have very extreme reactions most likely and I would've loved to see how that would play out. Ending with the party Mrs. Dalloway throws, while being the natural end, is not very interesting and it would've been great for something more stunning to happen. Something to make the characters react in new and different ways, and I think Mrs. Dalloway committing suicide would definitely do that.

Peter Walsh and PTSD

 Now to begin with I want to stay that Peter Walsh doesn't actually have PTSD having not really fought in a war, but he lived in India in the years immediately following World War I and people around him were probably going through it and I think that that rubbed off on him as from what we see him thinking about and what I know about PTSD he seems to exhibit similar symptoms. When he came back and talked with Clarissa what went through him mind was just like what goes through peoples mind when they come back from war like, "how are these people living their lives just like normal after what happened to me?" Even though such a terrible thing happened to the people fighting in the war the people in the place you fought for doesn't even act like anything is different aside from congratulating you for fighting for your country.

Not only that but he seems to really regret not staying with Clarissa, along with being really disappointed she didn't love him back. But he appears to have fallen in love in India though I'm not entirely sure what he said as he sounded like he was divorcing the woman he just met, as he seemed really sad while talking about a divorce. He also chased after some unknown girl, which could've just been a figment of his imagination showing him the exact woman he wanted to marry, and showing him how he could never obtain her.

The Privacy of Plastic Bags

     I really relate with Baker's passage on the plastic bags you get things in when you buy stuff from the gas station. I often go to the gas station to get snacks and the such as there is one near my house, and I always wanna keep the bags hidden even though I know that it really doesn't matter if anyone sees them. Just as Howie thinks that people want to keep what they buy hidden as they see it as their private information and no one else should see it. I also want to keep what I have bought hidden from others. I think it's really interesting how he talks about people wanting to keep their privacy, they see it as a very important thing, yet here Howie is, or really Baker, spilling pretty much all his thoughts about all these subjects to anyone who wants to read them. He tells about his childhood, L, his coworkers, and most importantly what he thinks about many of these subjects. He is just throwing away his privacy while telling us about how much people want to keep their privacy. How he wants to keep the privacy of his purchase hiding it in his plastic bag. Although it is hard to tell if this is Baker telling us about Howie's mind, but considering the book is from the perspective of Howie telling us about his thoughts during this escalator ride, I think it's okay to believe is is Howie who has decided to give up his privacy.