Essay Questions

Evaluate the differences in Gerard's relationships with Issy and Laurel.

Issy is fiery and unpredictable. Gerard's "relationship" with her, insofar as it can be labeled as such, is purely based on the physical; the only descriptions he remembers of her have to do with her sexual appeal and subsequent activity. Soon after she gives birth to Lucy, she abandons them to pursue her acting ambitions in Los Angeles, reflecting the shallowness of her love for others.

Laurel, on the other hand, can make Gerard happy just by her company and conversation. She is the only woman he's ever loved, and his actions regarding her demonstrate more consideration than those towards anyone besides Lucy. They were happily dating for a few months before Gerard messed it up by having the affair with Issy. The difference in his relationships is summarized in this sentence from page 5: "Gerard vaguely remembers the feeling of being in love with Laurel and the desire to have sex with Issy."

Compare and contrast Gerard with the character of Meursault in The Stranger.

Both Gerard and Meursault have a distinct lack of immersion in the world; they relate their experiences with remarkable objectivity and passive detachment. Neither of them seems to have passions; dispassion is one of the principal marks of their characters. Both have a tendency to mentally flow from normal things to horrifying things (like Gerard seeing his daughter to remembering her mother's floating corpse) with no sense of abnormality or disjointedness; that's simply how their minds operate.

There are differences, though; Meursault is explicitly existentially nihilistic in a relative sense; he believes that there is no truth, and dying in the satisfaction of knowing that one must make one's own meaning is the purest and highest form of joy. Gerard, on the other hand, does not know the meaning of life, nor does he claim to; the last paragraph of the story demonstrates his tendency to have vague sensations of something beyond the visible, but he seems content not to know what it is. His dispassion is less ambitious than Meursault's; he doesn't even summon the mental effort to try to understand the nature of the universe beyond the immediately understandable through rudimentary contemplation.