the Kafka Sentence

I had been recommended Disgrace from a number of sources, one of which said Coetzee was the best writer alive. He had told me about the court scene - which sounded very reminiscent of The Outsider, however on reading it I'm not sure whether that's deliberate... surely Coetzee would be familiar with Camus... anyway - : I struggle with books where I can not identify with any of the characters, this is probably one of those cases.

The protagonist, a somewhat washed up lecturer, wants to sleep with his students so endeavours to do so. Everyone's of age, so it's all legitimate, however what makes him dislikeable to everyone else is that he refuses to apologise in the hearing. It's a very Mersault type response, completely admitting the act, but suggesting that it makes no difference whether or not he feels bad about it, because he doesn't agree with their values. What makes the character dislikeable to me at this point, is that he claims to be "in love" with the girls, clearly identifying desire and love as one, which doesn't make him uncommon, I guess, but does make me think he lacks a recognition of the more complex and deeper feelings that constitute love. This is merely the novel's point of departure, the central theme of the novel is reconciliation in South Africa.

Lurie is ostracized and goes to live with his daughter for the sake of everyone and himself. It's not a completely cowardly gesture. His daughter is raped by a group of dark-skinned Africans, and the remainder of the novel looks at the relationship between father and daughter, and their individual responses to the traumatic experience.

To some degree, there is a focus on the difference between the two, Lurie being quite arrogant and righteous when it comes to his privileges, his daughter caring, sensitive and forgiving. What I found most noteworthy was what they shared: a Kafka-type sentence.

Both have been dealt a sentence, one that is to some degree just, and to some degree not. But each accepts this, and is willing to play the hand they have been dealt. Lurie does not agree that he did anything wrong, but he understands his responsibility to deal with it and not proclaim his innocence. His daughter, as she feels, has been punished for the faults of her people. She tries to deal with all the horrors of rape, the hatred and powerlessness, without complaining because she knows that in some ways she is suffering in retribution for the unjust crime committed against the African people during apartheid.

It is an admirable trait of each of them, although I did find myself struggling with the logic of the daughter. Sometimes it might be best to allow yourself to feel the victim, let yourself get angry and project your negativity onto someone else... but i don't know. I can relate to the sense of serving a sentence, just accept the limits now placed on your life and try to do your best in the circumstances. It's somewhat similar to the Kafka sentence - characters are placed in an irrational world, but try to deal with all the nonsense, rather than refuse to accept their predicament.

The Outsider

The Outsider is often understood to encapsulate Camus's philosophical starting point. Sartre's essay, An explication of The Stranger, interprets the book's purpose as to portray the "feeling" of the Absurd – Camus's "point of departure". The novel, however, takes its place amongst a sea of ideas, reiterated and developed throughout a number of works from the same time period. Caligula, The Misunderstanding, A Happy Death and The Myth of Sisyphus were all written between 1936 and 1945. Camus's conception of Absurdity is manifested in each, however at the heart of all these works lies the unilateral pursuit of Ivan Fyodorovich's logic in The Brothers Karamazov: if God is dead, everything is permitted. Sagi perceives the works from a simpler point of view, believing them both to attempt an explication of the "experience of estrangement". This seems to reduce the explorations to a mediocre type of work, found in a vast category of books. It is my view that The Outsider goes much deeper in analysing and reflecting upon the time it is situated in.

What is essential for Camus, and hence what really constitutes the foundation of his philosophy, is the negation of immortality and God. The question is then asked: What is man left with? These works can all be interpreted with reference to this question, and it is perhaps in The Outsider that we find Camus's most lucid response.

Sartre's lecture, Existentialism is a Humanism also identifies the birth of existentialism in this logic. Without God, "man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to." It is this intangibility when confronting existence that Sartre explores in Nausea. While Sartre describes Camus's use of the absurd as "both a state of fact and the lucid awareness which certain people acquire of this state of fact", we can similarly understand his use of nausea. Nausea is both the fact of man's forlornness, and the heightened awareness resulting from the consciousness that ensues. It is important, however to note that both gain meaning from an individual subjectively confronting the world; not from an objectively absurd world confronting the individual . The similarities between The Outsider and Nausea can be traced to an undercurrent of Dostoevskian influence, however when considering their separate approaches to this anguish, it is the connexions to Nietzsche that are perhaps more significant.

The Outsider presents an antagonism towards Christianity that is more prominent than in Camus's preceding works. This is perhaps where we find the most obvious similarity linking Camus and Nietzsche. The asymmetrical dialogues put faith and the Absurd face to face, as Mersault's indifference contends with the Magistrate's compassion, his anger with the priest's promises of salvation. There is thus a strong focus on the disparity between Mersault's apathy and the pre-conceived societal values that others attempt to impose. Mersault is the absurd man, wishing to "live solely with what he knows, to accommodate himself to what is and to bring in nothing that is not certain." It is by negating all that is founded upon a belief in God, that all else follows. Like Nietzsche, Mersault's incense is directed against the priest's passive acceptance of values derived from a God that has been killed by man, "none of his certainties was worth one strand of a woman's hair. Living as he did, like a corpse, he couldn't even be sure of being alive." For Mersault, death is the only certainty.

The logic is followed through more ruthlessly in Caligula. Camus's own commentary upon the work summarises the hero's attempt to practice liberty "through murder and the systematic perversion of values." Caligula, in his denial of a higher principle, puts all values on an equal footing, refusing the logic of his subject Cherea who believes that some actions are more "praiseworthy" than others. This is alluded to in The Outsider when Mersault reflects on his friendship with Raymond - "What did it matter if Raymond was as much my pal as Celeste, who was a far worthier man?"

The Outsider can be seen as another Nietzschean experiment, which also practices the subversion of values and embraces perspectivism. Indeed, although Mersault's apparent passive indifference distinguishes him from Caligula, he is consumed by physical sensations. Even his name, a conjunction of the sea and the sun, brings together the rejuvenation he feels in the water, and his ambivalence towards the heat and beauty of the sun (recall Aristotle's conception of the sun as an enlightening force and contrast with Mersault's frustration at the glare as he fires bullet after bullet into someone he is indifferent to). Although not actively seeking to pervert social values, he is a realisation of Nietzsche's imperative to live passionately and this is what leaves him happy at the end of the novel. To affirm himself, Mersault's final words call for a consummation of the hatred against him.

Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus which is commonly correlated to The Outsider reveals a key difference to Nietzsche in his articulation of the Absurd. The two fundamental elements at the heart of the absurd are: humankind's innate desire for order, and "the unreasonable silence of the world" – which can be related to the conflicting Apollonian and Dionysian ways of perceiving existence. Consciousness occurs when we refuse to reconcile these diametrically opposed forces. The simultaneous recognition and rejection of our situation, that life is limited only by our individual subjectivity and death, holds these poles in equilibrium. Camus then describes an "existential leap" which escapes the absurd; however what he seeks to do is "remain on that dizzying crest".