We never change. Neither our socks nor our masters nor our opinions, or we're so slow about it that it's no use. We were born loyal and that's what killed us! Soldiers free of charge, heroes for everyone else, talking monkeys, tortured words, we are the minions of King Misery...It's not a life.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the human condition of unwavering loyalty and the consequences it brings.
In this quote, Celine presents a stark commentary on the nature of loyalty and its detrimental effects on individuals. He suggests that people are often trapped in their unchanging ways, whether it be in their allegiance to authority, their beliefs, or even their mundane habits. This inflexibility leads to a life of servitude and suffering, painting a dark image of existence where individuals act as mere 'minions' under the rule of a metaphorical 'King Misery'. The assertion that this is 'not a life' challenges the reader to consider the cost of loyalty and the need for personal freedom and change.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of self-identity and personal freedom, this quote illustrates the idea that blind loyalty can hinder personal growth.
Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself.
To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength.
In the kitchens of love, after all, vice is like the pepper in a good sauce; it brings out the flavor, it’s indispensable.
Truth is a pain which will not stop. And the truth of this world is to die. You must choose: either dying or lying. Personally, I have never been able to kill myself
Reason died in 1914, November 1914 ... after that everybody began to rave.
Poor people never, or hardly ever, ask for an explanation of all they have to put up with. They hate one another, and content themselves with that.
ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though Horizontalists hold that the posture of the body was immaterial.
The demands that good people make are upon themselves; Those that bad people make are upon others.
Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.
Trees are massacred, houses go up — faces, faces everywhere. Man is spreading. Man is the cancer of the earth.
Here I and sorrows sit; Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.
The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.
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