The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet (Book Analysis)

This practical and insightful reading guide offers a complete summary and analysis of The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet. It provides a thorough exploration of the novel’s plot, characters and main themes, including outcasts, memory and crime. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time.

This clear and detailed 52-page reading guide is structured as follows:

• Biography of Jean Genet
• Presentation of The Thief’s Journal
• Summary of The Thief’s Journal
• Character study
  • Jean, the narrator
  • Stilitano, the one-handed Serbian
  • Armand, the moral authority
  • Salvador, Lucien, Guy and Java: the men in Jean’s life
• Analysis of The Thief’s Journal
  • The coming-of-age story of a lonely young man
  • Autobiography: an act of memory and narcissism
  • Redeeming the ignoble: autobiographical poetry that magnifies every flaw

About The Thief’s Journal

The Thief’s Journal is an autobiographical novel which was originally published in French in 1949. It charts the author’s younger days of travelling across Europe and the crimes, stints in prison and lovers that defined that period of his life, which was indelibly marked by a profound loneliness and exclusion from society. However, Genet’s poetic language prevents the novel from becoming a lament, transforming it into a celebration of the reviled, the outcast, and the beauty that can be found in that which the world deems ugliest. Several versions of the novel also feature a foreword written by the renowned French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), who was a great admirer of the novel.

About Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a 20^th-century writer, poet and playwright. He had a turbulent childhood and adolescence: he was abandoned by his mother, became involved in petty crime as a teenager, and was sent to the penal colony of Mettray. He started writing while he was in prison, which was where he produced his first poem, The Man Sentenced to Death, and his first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers. He went on to produce autobiographical works and plays, for which he became famous in the 1960s: The Maids and The Screens were both major theatrical successes. Genet was also politically active: among other things, he supported the Black Panthers in the USA and spoke out against police brutality.