All 6 Uses of
futile
in
The Plague
- And in the long run, to these sterile, reiterated monologues, these futile colloquies with a blank wall, even the banal formulas of a telegram came to seem preferable.†
Part 2
- This sense of being abandoned, which might in time have given characters a finer temper, began, however, by sapping them to the point of futility.†
Part 2
- This was their way of resisting the bondage closing in upon them, and while their resistance lacked the active virtues of the other, it had (to the narrator's thinking) its point, and moreover it bore witness, even in its futility and incoherences, to a salutary pride.†
Part 2
- ...a number of people were standing outside the main entrance, some of them hoping to be allowed to visit a patient--a futile hope, since such visits were strictly prohibited--...†
Part 2 *
- How futile was the hatred he saw on faces then!†
Part 4
- Cottard and Tarrou, who had merely risen from their seats, gazed down at what was a dramatic picture of their life in those days: plague on the stage in the guise of a disarticulated mummer, and in the auditorium the toys of luxury, so futile now, forgotten fans and lace shawls derelict on the red plush seats.†
Part 4
Definition:
-
(futile) effort that is pointless because it is unproductive or unsuccessful