The Outsider by Colin Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

if all men were aware of it, there would be an end of life. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. But his kingship is kingship over nothing. It brings no powers and privileges, only loss of faith and exhaustion of the power to act. Its world is a world without values.
    This is the position that Barbusse ’ s Outsider has brought us to. It was already explicit in that desire that stirred as he saw the swaying dresses of the women; for what he wanted was not sexual intercourse, but some indefinable freedom, of which the women, with their veiled and hidden nakedness, are a symbol. Sexual desire was there, but not alone; aggravated, blown-up like a balloon, by a resentment that stirred in revolt against the bewilderment of hurrying Paris with its well-dressed women. ‘ Yet in spite of this I desire some compensation. 5 In spite of the civilization that has impressed his insignificance on him until he is certain that ‘ he has nothing and he deserves nothing ’ , in spite of this he feels a right to ... to what? Freedom? It is a misused word. We examine L’ Enfer in vain for a definition of it. Sartre and Wells have decided that man is never free; he is simply too stupid to recognize this. Then to what precisely is it that the Outsider has an inalienable right?
    The question must take us into a new field: of Outsiders who have had some insight into the nature of freedom.
     

 

     
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
    WORLD WITHOUT VALUES
     
    T he outsider tends to express himself in Existentialist terms. He is not very concerned with the distinction between body and spirit, or man and nature; these ideas produce theological thinking and philosophy; he rejects both. For him, the only important distinction is between being and nothingness. Barbusse ’ s hero: ‘ Death, that is the most important of all ideas/
    Barbusse and Wells represent two different approaches to the problem. Barbusse ’ s approach can be called the ‘ empirical ’ . His hero is not a thinker; he accepts living; it is its values he cannot accept. Wells goes much further in rejection; his conclusions have been pushed to nihilism; his approach is, like Hume ’ s, rationalist.
    In Roquentin ’ s case, the conclusions are reached through an interaction of reason and experience. Again, it is the rational element that pushes him into nihilism; his only ‘ glimmer of salvation ’ comes from a level of experience untouched by discursive thought, from a Negro woman singing ‘ Some of These Days ’ . Reason leads into an impasse. If a solution exists, it must be sought, not in reasoning, but in examination of experience. We must keep in mind the logical possibility that a solution may not exist. In any case, it is the empirical approach that must be examined now.
    Albert Camus ’ s Outsider is even more of an empiricist than Barbusse ’ s. He thinks even less; he has ‘ no genius, no unusual feelings to bestow ’ ; in fact, he has hardly any feelings at all.
    “ Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I can ’ t be sure. ’ 1
    This tone of indifference persists throughout the novel L’Etranger . Like L’Enfer and La Naus é e, it observes the convention that the hero is keeping a diary. Meursault is an Algerian. The first page establishes his character. When he asks his employer for time off to attend his mother ’ s funeral, he says:
    ‘ Sorry, sir, but it isn ’ t my fault, you know. ’ Afterwards it struck me that I needn ’ t have said that ... it was up to him to express his sympathy and so forth. 2
    If Meursault had ‘ felt ’ his mother ’ s death he wouldn ’ t have apologized. As the reader soon discovers, he feels very little.
    This is not to say that he is disillusioned or world-weary. His type of lightheadedness bears more relation to P. G. Wodehouse ’ s ‘ Young men in spats ’ . He enjoys eating and drinking, sunbathing, going to the cinema. He lives in the present. He tells of his mother ’ s funeral, objectively