The First Man by Albert Camus

_The First Man_ by Albert Camus

NY:  Alfred Knopf, 1995

ISBN 0-679-43937-4

(123)  for old age would come - at the time Jacques thought his mother was old and she was barely the age he was now, but youth is above all a collection of possibilities...

(124-126)  The barrel works was near the parade grounds.  It was a yard cluttered with rubbish, old hoops, slag, and extinguished fires.  At one side had been erected a sort of roof of bricks supported at regular intervals by pillars made of rubble.  The five or six artisans worked under that roof.  Each one was supposed to have his own area:  a workbench against the wall and in front of it a space where the barrels and wine casks could be assembled, and, separating it from the next area, a sort of bench with a rather large slot cut in it into which the barrelhead was slid and then shaped by hand with a tool that resembled a chopping knife, but with the sharp side facing the man who held it by its two handles.  Actually this layout was not evident at first glance.  Certainly that was how it had been originally designed, but little by little the benches were moved around, hoops piled up between the workbenches, cases of rivets lay here and there, and it took lengthy observation or, which amounted to the same thing, a long stay to see that everything each artisan did took place in his separate area.  before he reached the shop carrying his uncle's snack, Jacques could recognize the sound of hammering on the hoop-drivers that drove the metal hoops down around the barrel after the staves had been put in place, and the worker pounded one end of the driver while deftly moving its other end all around the hoop - or else Jacques would guess from a louder, less frequent sound that someone was riveting a hoop fastened in the shop's vise.  When he arrived in the midst of the hammering racket, he was greeted joyfully and the dance of hammers would resume.  Ernest, dressed in old patched blue pants, espadrilles covered with sawdust, a sleeveless gray flannel shirt, and a faded old tarboosh that protected his handsome hair from dust and shavings, would embrace him and suggest that he help out.  Sometimes Jacques would hold the hoop in place on the anvil where it was wedged while his uncle would drive the rivets in with mighty blows.  The hoop vibrated in Jacques's hands, and with each blow of the hammer would dig into his palms - or else while Ernest seated himself astride one end of the bench, Jacques sat the same way at the other end, holding the bottom of the barrel while Ernest shaped it.  But what he liked best was bringing the staves out to the middle of the yard for Ernest to assemble roughly, keeping them in place with a hoop.  In this barrel, open at both ends, Ernest would place a pile of shavings that it was Jacques's responsibility to set on fire.  The fire caused the iron to expand more than the wood, and Ernest would take advantage of that to drive the hoop down with great blows of his hammer and driver, while the smoke brought tears to their eyes.  When the hoop had been driven in place Jacques would bring big wooden buckets he had filled with water at the pump at the end of the yard, then moved aside while Ernest threw the water hard against the barrel, thus chilling the hoop, which shrank so it bit deeper into the wood, softened by the water, all amidst a great blowing of steam.

At the break they left things as they were to have their snack, and the workers would gather, in winter around a fire of wood and shavings, in summer in the shade of the roof.

(155)  And then he knew that war is no good, because vanquishing a man is as bitter as being vanquished.

(195)  ... and he was sixteen, then he was twenty, and no one had spoken to him, and he had to learn by himself, to grow alone, in fortitude, in strength, find his own morality and truth, at last to be born as a man and then to be born in a harder childbirth, which consists of being born in relation to others, to women....

(241)  Their base was oleander, simply because they had often heard it said around them that its shadow was deadly and that anyone so imprudent as to go to sleep at the foot of an oleander would never awaken.

(242)  But to tell the truth, there was no one they hated, which would greatly hinder them when they were adults, in the world where they then had to live.

(288)  What rescues us from our worst sorrows is the feeling of being abandoned and alone, yet not so alone that "others" do not "take notice" of us in our happiness.  It is in this sense that our moments of happiness are sometimes those when the feeling that we are abandoned inflates us and lifts us into an endless sadness.  In the sense also that happiness often is no more than self-pity for our unhappiness.

(290-291)  Conversation about terrorism:

Objectively she is responsible (answerable)

Change the adverb or I'll hit you

What?

Don't take what's most asinine from the West.  Don't say objectively or I'll hit you.

Why?

Did your mother lie down in front of the Algiers-Oran train?  (the trolleybus)

I don't understand.

The train blew up, four children died.  Your mother didn't move.  If objectively she is nonetheless responsible (answerable), then you approve of shooting hostages.

She didn't know.

Neither did _she_.  Never say objectively again.

Concede that there are innocent people or I'll kill you too.

You know I could do it.

Yes, I've seen you.

(292)  Yes I hate.  For me honor in the world is found among the oppressed, not those who hold power.  And it is from that alone that dishonor arises.

(300)  Rescue this poor family from the fate of the poor, which is to disappear from history without a trace.  The Speechless Ones.

(314)  And Jacques's father killed at the Marne.  What remains of that obscure life?  Nothing, an impalpable memory - the light ash of a butterfly wing incinerated in a forest fire.

(319)  Since when is an honest man who refuses to believe the liar a skeptic?

(324)  Louis Germain:  I believe that throughout my career I have respected what is most sacred in a child:  the right to seek out his own truth.