Tueur sans gages (killer without a point)

The story

Let's do this short and sweat. Bérenger, main character, visits a neighborhood wich is supposed to be perfect. He hears a murder, talks about it with the architect of the neighborhood. He says it's really normal, but Bérenger is convinced he can find the murderer and save the neighborhood. The next few scenes really don't make sense. When you take them scene by scene, they don't make sense, the connexions between each other don't make sense either, however, the big picture makes a bit of sense. The only other scene that makes sense is Bérenger's monologue with the murderer (yes I said monologue with someone, but the murderer's only action is laughing, and even that he doesn't do a lot of it so...). That monologue is at the end and probably the best part of the book.

Metaphor behind the book

Love/passion

The main character in the book, Bérenger, is an over-the-top passionated person. He falls in love with every thing and every one he sees. That's one big problem in our reality, and a critique from Ionesco that I really enjoyed in the book, more love you give, less precious it becomes. For those like Bérenger, love doesn't mean anything anymore, the poetry behind it, or in the words of Robert Pirsig (Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenace), the Quality behind it is gone. It's a perfect critique of our generation, a generation that doesn't get amazed anymore, because we've seen everything, and we just simply can't fall in love. I've always been a hater of love (I think it's an over-rated and superficial feeling, that we accept as the good one because it's always been ''the good one'', I prefer being comfortable with someone; but that's for an other post), but in the case of falling in love with moments, not persons or objects, Ionesco's critique is, in my opinion, an almost perfect one. Let's compare his critique with a rollercoaster. What gives us a rush in a rollercoaster is not being high in the air, it's going up and down. The rollercoaster of life would not be fun if it would be doing a straight line at a 1000m in the air, we want the rollercoaster to go up and down, left and right. Same thing with passion, if we're passionate about everything we see, then we're not passionate about everything. It's just like the economy, if everything is worth a lot, then there's a crash and nothing is worth anything any more.
    The hard thing about that is that we're not programmed to tell ourselves ''let's be depressed, so I can be more happy'' (it's so weird to say, I had problem structuring my sentence :P). So the solution to that is, let's not force oursleves to be happy. When we're sad, let's be fuckin sad. Sadness is still a passionate feeling, as muh as love. Let's actually not ask ourselves why we`re not happy, or why we're happy, let's just not think about it. Maybe if we don't think about it so much, we'll go back to a childish mentality (it's a good thing in this case), we'll be impressed by rainbows, cats with funny looking eyes, and your grand father's mustache. And we'll keep on being amazed by those things because we wont ask ourselves why those ''stupid'' and ''superficial'' things are amazing to us. Maybe in this case, and in a lot of ones, thinking is something that makes us un-happy.

Irrationality vs. rationality

  That's the part of the book I liked the most. The fight between rationality and irrationality. So let's describe it as a fight. 1st round. Ding-Ding. Bérenger represents rationality in the book, and everybody else; irrationality. That's the first thing I like about this fight. The 2 sides are proportinally represented. Rationality only has one; because there's only one truth, one reason. Irrationality has everything else, because everything makes sense in irrationality. That's what happen when you just accept things for what they are and you don't look for a reason, everything makes sense, everything just is. End of 1st round, 1-0 irrationality. 2nd round. In ther book, Bérenger, is the only one that is anxious. He worries... a lot. Always looking around, under tables, in napkins, looking for a truth, or even worst, the truth. The others just live, not worrying, not wondering why they're happy, why there not. They live like animals. And I say that as a compliment, because in a ''human vs. the other kind of living things'' comparasion, the second team has a way lower rate of suicide, of depression, alcoholism or drug addictions. It's and obvious fact that the simplest living beings, are the happiest ones. That's the reason why the people that really, but I mean really looked for a truth all their lives, end up being religious or addicted to something, because the end noticing that the truth, is an invention of the human race, to give us a purpose, a different role in this world. But in that sense, we're not different at all. End of round 2. 2-0 irrationality. Last round. The sex appeal of the two sides. This is an important round, because this is the difference between, this theory behing acceptable, and simply, utopicly stupid. Irrationality is not for everyone and every situation. Irrationality is for the people that spended their whole lives looking for rationality and for the situation of more fundamental questions. If ever I ask someone why is the sky blue and they respond to me, ''that's just how it is man, chill out, just live your life'',  I will be the first one to punch them, because for 95 percent of the questions ask everyday, there's a rational and simple answer. Living in irrationality, is not iving at all. But I think that for the people asking themsleves bigger philosophical questions, maybe irrationality is a better way to go. Tie round, 2.5-0.5 irrationality.

 Conclusion

This book, is ironicaly the subject of the book (irrationality), it's not for everyone. Actually I don't think it's for anyone. I would reccomend the actual play, but let's say that the book is like a Wii, we like it when our friends have it, but having it yourslef is not that cool.