Section 13 Summary

This section begins with the phrase, "To eat cheaply in America..."

Bardamu runs out of money and continues to muse about the differences between the life of a rich person and a poor one. Bardamu imagines how the forbidding, hostile world around him would be transformed if only he had money. Then he would finally be free of the long frenzy of desires unable to be fulfilled. At a cheap cafeteria, he is moved by the smile of a pretty waitress, proposes marriage to her and is thrown out of the cafeteria. Back in his little room that night, he shouts at the indifferent crowd on the street, calling out insults, crying for help and all the things he says he does not dare say to them in the daytime, but no-one notices him. The taller and bigger the city, the less people...