The Red and the Black Analysis

The opening of this book gives us a pretty good idea of what kind of setting we're dealing with. Verrières is a little town whose "white houses with their sharp-pointed roofs of red tile stretch d...

In the classic French style, Stendhal gives us a narrator who is clearly speaking in the first-person, but also has omniscient knowledge of the characters in this book. He even inserts himself dire...

Critics tend to label Stendhal as one of the first writers of "psychological novels," meaning that he writes novels that delve deeply into the desires and motives of his characters. You can think o...

The narrator in this book doesn't tend to get very bent out of shape about anything that's going on. You're not going to see many exclamation points. Instead, you're more likely to get a plain tone...

If you're looking for a writing style to copy, you could do way worse than Stendhal. He does a great job of being poetic without getting overly wordy or difficult in his prose (and this is a guy wr...

The Red and the Black refers to the color that people in 19th-century France would wear to show that they had certain types of jobs. It was usually soldiers who wore red and priests who wore black....

Truth, bitter truth–DantonStendhal opens Part One of The Red and the Black with this quote from Georges Danton, one of the leaders of the French Revolution. Many historians think of him as the gu...

"Madame de Rênal was faithful to her promise. She did not try in any way to shorten her life, but three days after Julien, she died while hugging her children." (2.45.51)When all is said and done,...

Yes, it's tough to pay attention to this book sometimes. But all in all, the prose isn't that difficult and the plot is fairly straightforward. Just be careful with some of Stendhal's long descript...

Laissez AffairThe young peasant Julien Sorel has grand ambitions for his life. His first step toward realizing these ambitions is becoming a tutor in the household of his town's mayor, Monsieur de...

Julien Sorel is an ambitious, intelligent young man who has his whole life ahead of him. He dreams of joining the army and becoming a great commander like Napoleon. Unfortunately, Napoleon is lon...

A young peasant named Julien Sorel gets a job as a tutor for the children of his town's mayor. He soon begins an affair with the mayor's wife. Word about the affair spreads through the town and Ju...

Stendhal definitely draws on some very personal experience when writing about Julien Sorel. Luckily, he never shot anyone. (Source)Stendhal spent a lot of his young life learning about human psycho...

It might be hard to see beneath Stendhal's 19th-century hints, but there's definitely some steam coming off the pages of this book. On at least three occasions, we're told about how Julien Sorel sn...

William Shakespeare, "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (1.17.E)Voltaire (1.17.11)Horace (1.29.28)Virgil (1.29.28)Cicero (1.29.28)Rossini. Barber of Seville (2.4.56)John Locke (2.7.38)Jacobinism (1.2.5)Napo...