The Absurd Prophecy

(Abridged, full essay available in newsletter)

For this issue of ZED (Fall, 2007) I thought I would include a story of the absurd – Albert Camus’ The Stranger, published first in France in 1942. The protagonist of the book is a man named Meursault. I cannot call him the hero because he is not a hero in any sense of the word. He is a passive man who allows circumstances to determine his path to an inevitable end because he does not care.

The story opens with the death of Meursault’s mother, an event that is hardly significant to the son at the time. He does not grieve. In a first person narrative we learn he is troubled by the inconvenience of the vigil; it causes sleepiness and the physical discomfort of a backache. He does not indulge in speculation on the afterlife or his mother’s state after death. Throughout the chapter, and the book, he does not indulge any ideas, he only thinks of what animalistic human nature dictates – eating, sleeping, and sex.

When chapter one and his mother are finished, Meursault thinks about a co-worker, Marie, and starting an affair with her. They meet, go to a movie, she laughs, they have fun, they have sex. There isn’t a bit of romance about it because the protagonist would not hold romantic notions. Events are either pleasurable or not, satisfying to physical appetites or not, there is no meaning beyond that. Although the author, does at least allow Meursault to have some concept of beauty, evident in the ‘beautiful’ afternoon in Algiers. At least the sensuous is beautiful.

Meursault’s association with Raymond leads him into a conflict with a few other men, the foremost of whom is the brother of the woman Raymond has abused. Meursault shoots the man in what could be argued as self-defense – the natural impulse for self-preservation – but isn’t. The protagonist finds himself on trial, and is unsure himself of his guilt. There are, after all, several witnesses, not of his action with the gun, but of his self-centered, uncivil behavior. The uncivil behavior is his lack of social graces, his refusal to share society’s values. His lack of grief over his mother’s death comes back to convict him. His silence in a number of circumstances, which he defends by simply saying he has nothing to say, is read as guilt; people interpret his silence by their values, not his actual reasons. Camus catches the reader doing as the witnesses do, if they have judged the protagonist harshly, which is difficult not to do. The author uses something most consider to be very personal – grief, and over the one person that should be meaningful in a man’s life – to show how society defines it, and judges others by how well they express that definition. We judge by our values that have been taught to us by society, rather than by the subject’s values. It would be difficult to judge Meursault by his values, as he does not have any.

Meursault’s inaction prior to the shooting, then the rather inconsistent action of the murder, is another reason for the reader’s contempt. If you know someone who is passive about everything, apathetic about everything, you know how it is difficult to care about someone who doesn’t care about himself. Here lies the great fault of Camus’ story: Salamano, Raymond, and Marie would not confide in Meursault. If he is so disengaged from society, so silent and aloof, people would not trust him with anything of themselves. I would say they would not even take an interest in the man. (Take it from a quiet, sometimes anti-social man.) Camus uses a contrivance of Hollywood’s: the romantic interest is that of the appealing woman in the misfit man. (If it is not written from the woman’s perspective.) We have all seen the cliché gorgeous wife and dopey, average or below-average husband in sitcoms, or the male nerd’s fantasy in film. I have to consider whether I would have read all of The Stranger if it wasn’t for the author’s reputation. I knew there had to be more to the story than this poor subject. Camus’ portrayal is descriptive of the rather rare amoral man, but is it at all prescriptive? Is Meursault shown in a good light, or as an example to be followed? I suppose the author would not prescribe anything, but only validate the description of what is. Again, I would say Camus has captured the self-centered human nature we all contain; but for most of us, it is contained. Camus makes the mistake Karl Marx made – disallowing real ideals. Both conceive of morality as only another method of satisfying the human nature, to use to gain power over others, to manipulate others. They do not allow for the possibility that people really can act without or against self-interest. I think Marx was right in seeing economy as the driving and deciding force of history. Camus sees animalistic human nature as the force in individuals. Perhaps he is right about the majority of people, but not all. Both cannot conceive of Christianity as truth, they cannot believe in the Christ. It is a little frightening to think of how these two men have influenced modern thought, and have no concept of self-sacrifice.

As Camus’ depiction is so bleak, and Meursault’s life absurd, does this not show why the human nature should be cultivated? In the story the protagonist does nothing to cultivate, to improve, to grow and shape, the mind or spirit; they remain in an undeveloped state, what is ‘natural.’ The character belongs on a video “Nature Gone Wild.” Camus does not romanticize nature, yet doesn’t that become an argument that perhaps the individual should? The natural state of man is poverty. It is not beautiful. Most of us admire the person’s ability to control the human nature, to act against it for consideration for another person’s state, and to ascend above that nature.

C. S. Lewis's Allegory and Symbolism

From reading Lewis's The Allegory of Love, and his definition of allegory vs. symbolism, The Chronicles of Narnia could be called an allegory, but by his definition. In modern usage of the term people who refer to the series as an allegory for Christianity actually mean to say it is symbolic. Allegory starts with the immaterial, like passion, and illustrates it with fiction. Symbolism sees the world itself as the allegory. "If our passions, being immaterial, can be copied by material inventions, then it is possible that our material world in its turn is the copy of an invisible world," (p. 45). "Symbolism is a mode of thought, but allegory is a mode of ..p. 48). Perhaps I can phrase it another way, for my own clarity. It could be categorized as poetry and philosophy. The poet observes the world and writes fiction to reflect it. The philosopher observes the world to see what it reflects. I think of Lewis as a better philosopher than poet. I can see how his studies in Medieval literature, or, more yet, his love of romance noted in Surprised by Joy, would integrate his philosophy with writing fiction.

The best works of literature have both philosophy and poetry. As I think of those I consider great poets -- Wordsworth, Yeats, T.S. Eliot -- they have both aspects in their poetry. They observe the world microscopically and macroscopically. By these categories I see some faults in poetry more clearly. While I admire the imagist poets, they are limited in observing only the world, and not what it represents. Religious and political poetry, in general, is too concerned with the Idea and does not observe the world closely enough.

C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, New York:Oxford University Press, 1958.