Stranger on Earth

Within the pages of Albert Camus’ The Fall ( La Chute , 1956), I come face to face with some of the philosophical issues that have kept me intrigued for a number of years: the meaning of innocence, the judgemental God, among other things. Composed as an unbroken internal monologue in typically opaque Camus style, The Fall is an inscrutable read even for the most seasoned of Camus readers. The challenge is to figure out what innocence has to do with it all. The narrator Clamence “speaks” to us from a bar in the seedy old heart of Amsterdam, where its “concentric canals resemble the circles of hell” (10). Clamence, a down-and-out ex-lawyer from Paris, tells us we are in the last circle of hell. Dante’s last circle of hell is reserved for traitors and betrayers. The reader is thus effectively reminded of treachery; he is literally seated in the heart of evil. Clamence’s references to the erstwhile Jewish quarter make it clear that Camus wants the reader to dredge up memories ...

Albert Camus’ The Outsider  (or The Stranger ) features on most high school reading lists. Teachers of English literature are attracted to it because of its slimness; it is compact and written in startlingly uncomplicated language; its protagonist – a man alienated from society - is someone teenagers have no trouble relating to. But is it really that straightforward? Those of us who teach it year after year – have we really felt the gravity of Camus’ landscape-changing message? The students who skim through it year after year – have they really understood Meursault’s stance as they claim? After all, one of the 20 th -century’s greatest philosophers, Jean-Paul Sartre, was completely floored by the novel when he first encountered it during World War II. (His biographer Annie Cohen-Solal says “his intellectual machinery jammed” [5].) In 1943, Sartre, having mulled over the ambiguity of the novel, published “A Commentary on The Stranger ” in the literary magazine Le Cahie...

The traditional reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is that of the Icarus legend: fly too high and too close to the sun, you will lose your wings and plunge to your death. Victor Frankenstein’s attempt to play God gives birth to a “monster” that will stop at nothing to destroy his loved ones. Its hideousness is an affront to civilised society and to godliness. Shelley’s novel does indeed lend itself fully to this reading, but a contemporary reading, one that bears in mind Man’s alienation in modern times, can reveal a new element or two. Doctor Frankenstein is referred to as “the Creator” on numerous occasions. His intellectual pursuit is entirely of a divine nature, as is evidenced in the following passage: It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my enquiries were directed to the metaphysical, o...

The Übermeister  of alienation and paranoia shows us what it is like to be a man judged by the masses for no discernible reason in the uncompleted last novel America (1927). The novel may contain some of the most farcical passages in Franz Kafka’s entire oeuvre (the scene in Chapter 7 involving Karl being interrogated by a policeman and scrutinised by the entire neighbourhood is an apt example); but the oppressive Kafkaesque elements that have become so familiar to us through The Trial and The Castle can still be detected throughout lurking beneath the surface of the absurd comedy. America ’s protagonist Karl Rossmann is an immigrant left to his own fate. Through happenstance, he manages to secure himself a position as a lift-boy at the Hotel Occidental, where he attends to his duties as he has been instructed – only to be disrupted on one ill-timed occasion as his ruffian acquaintance Robinson drops by to borrow money. Karl leaves his station for a brief moment, ...

In the nine “Voices” poems (“Die Stemmen,” 1902), we find Rilke speaking out for those who have suffered pain and injustice. He insists that in order for them to be heard, they need to “advertise” themselves, and this should be done through singing, or songs – like the castrati (referred to as “these cut ones”) who sing to God and compel him to stay and listen. This message is found in the “Title Leaf” – an introduction of sorts to the nine songs. It is tempting to read the nine songs (“Beggar’s,” “Blind Man’s,” “Drunkard’s,” “Suicide’s,” “Widow’s,” “Idiot’s,” “Orphan Girl’s,” “Dwarf’s,” “Leper’s”) as a collection of poetic pleas for social awareness. This is due to Rilke’s “casting choices”; he has selected society’s most conspicuous outcasts as the main speakers of his poems. When, for instance, the beggar in “The Beggar’s Song” says, “I go always from door to door/rain-soaked and sun-scorched,” we are induced to sympathise with his downtrodden fate. The same can be said for...

Insanity is never too far away when the modern man discovers to his shock and horror that the forces of the universe are never on his side. He may attempt to reconcile himself to this harrowing fact, but with every botched attempt he loses a piece of his sanity, up until that point of absolute inevitability where things must fall apart because the centre cannot hold. The French Nobel Prize winner of 2008, J.M.G. Le Clézio, shows us exactly how insanity and the failure of communication go hand in hand in the impressionistic The Interrogation ( Les Procès-Verbal, 1963). Following in the footsteps of the other French giants, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, Le Clézio created a resonant piece about a man, aptly named Adam, who has lost his sanity and attempts to re-interpret the world on his own terms. Adam's world view is fragmented and irrational (to everyone but him); it is one that is predominated by destruction and death, by godlessness. He envisions a world where people l...

Once every few years, a motion picture would come along and show us the ugly truth of being human.  For 2011-2012, it is undoubtedly the challenging, NC-17-rated Shame by director Steve McQueen, a  psychological drama about sexual addiction that pulls no punches. The subject matter, needless to say, is unpalatable to the ordinary moviegoer; but if you are one constantly in search of thought-provoking materials and are unfazed by uncompromising directors such as David Lynch and Lars von Trier, then you will do well to give yourself over to Shame . Stigmatised from the start and labelled by the press as the “sex addiction movie,” Shame must overcome its unsavoury image before it can even begin to convince its audience that it contains within its sordidness a message so universal any man living in an urban jungle in the 21 st century could relate to. The good news is the film is elegant and captivating right from the opening shot (we get to see a naked Brandon – a ...