Summary

After “finding” his pencil and losing two days in the process of searching for it, Malone muses on its diminishing size due to overuse; even though he says he has another pencil from France, he worries that he will lose his current one. During the process of searching for his pencil, Malone claims that it seemed as if the dimensions of the room had changed shape and the walls and floor had begun to pale in color (216). Dropping his exercise book, he uses his stick to retrieve it, and feels his thoughts “streaming and emptying away as through a sluice” (217). He begins to reflect on the absurdity of his situation, the variability of feeling, and existence more broadly, and whether there is a real difference between life and death. He considers that he may have had some semblance of a life once, one where...