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Illustrated portrait of Robert

A character in The Thief’s Journal

Robert

A young criminal whose closeness to Stilitano provokes Genet’s jealousy and whose practical care later cuts through Stilitano’s legend.

What they want in Genet’s retrospective narration

To gain money, excitement, and a place within the criminal fellowship surrounding Stilitano.

The book

Cover of The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet
The Thief’s JournalJean Genet, 1949

Jean Genet turns theft, prisons, sex, betrayal, and wandering through Europe into a defiantly beautiful literary autobiography.

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Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Robert is a young criminal, roughly Genet’s age, who becomes especially close to Stilitano. His place beside the man Genet worships exposes the jealousy and possessiveness inside the narrator’s claims of devotion.

Robert initially justifies theft through ordinary moral logic, which distinguishes him from Genet’s effort to make crime its own moral universe. In the fairground scene, Robert becomes the competent person who can help when Stilitano’s grand image collapses.

How the book draws them

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • Young and livelyHis ease and energy contrast with Stilitano’s cultivated menace.
  • Compact and practicalGenet presents him as capable in action rather than physically overwhelming.
  • Still explains theftHis early need to justify crime shows that conventional morality has not disappeared from his thinking.
  • Capable of careHe can respond to Stilitano’s helplessness directly, without turning the moment into a grand ritual.
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Robert guides Stilitano out of the Palace of Mirrors, reversing the hierarchy Genet had constructed around the supposedly invulnerable deserter.

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