Summary

Turning away from Macmann’s story, Malone begins to worry about his possessions: his two pencils, his exercise-book, and his stick, which he notes only became his when he arrived at his current location. He considers some of his other things, including a needle wedged in a cork, and a tobacco-pipe whose stem had broken off. Malone wonders why he kept the pipe, considering that he does not use one nor is it operable, but wonders whether if it could be because of that “foul feeling of pity [he has] so often felt in the presence of things,” and goes on to conclude that the objects he keeps function as a form of mutual consolation (241). He goes through some of his other items: a bowl that he kept things in, a club stained with blood, a single boot, a photograph of an ass (a...