Comment on today's discussion

           Before the class ended, we established that the narrator is highly intelligent because he can see both sides of an argument. Since he understands both extremes and can argue for each side, he has to retire with the unsolved issue while other men easily pick one side and disregard the other. The narrator isolates himself from these purposeful men or fools because he is at an inherent contradiction. Would he rather deceive himself and happily pick a side or suffer with unfinished business? It would be even worse if he did pick a side knowing that there was another option and regretting that he didn’t choose that option. Yet, he can’t switch sides because that would make him ashamed of his decisions and seem inferior to the more direct and purposeful men. I think this is why he doesn’t bother choosing a side and accepts that he is contradicting himself. To make up for his inactiveness, he says that he will live past forty in order to equalize himself with the fools who also live to that age. Unlike the other intelligent men who die at forty, the narrator will continue living with the fools because he is invisible and immortal to the causes that kill men. I’m not sure what figuratively causes these men to die, maybe arrogance, ignorance, impatience; nevertheless, the narrator is immortal. The narrator is like Mersault in The Stranger because he can see past the human desires that kill men.