home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- ENGLISH
- The Priest(Kafka vs Camus)
-
- The Outsider, written by Albert Camus, and The Trial, written by Franz
- Kafka, are two books that have been critically acclaimed since the time
- that they were published. There are critics that claim that The
- Outsider is a dull book, and is not even a read-worthy book. Other
- people claim that it shows us how society actually acts upon people who
- do not want to be like the rest of society. The Trial falls under the
- same kind of criticism; but both books, although written by different
- writers in a different Θpoque, fall under the same kind of genre:
- Imprisoned Lives. In both The Outsider and The Trial there are many
- people who influence the protagonists in a positive and in a negative
- way, but none of those characters are as important as the priest. The
- priest, being of the same profession in both books and trying to
- accomplish the same kind of tasks, have a totally different effect on
- the two protagonists. In The Outsider the priest changes the whole
- attitude that Meursault has to life, whereas in The Trial the priest
- tells Joseph K. how his life actually is.
-
- "Why do you refuse to see me?" This question was asked by the priest
- and was meant for Meursault. Normally, if a person is convicted to
- death, he will see a priest before the sentence is executed. Meursault
- did not do that. He profusely refused to see the priest and why should
- he? He "did not believe in god." Meursault did not care, as he did not
- care if his mother died, or if someone proposed marriage to him. This
- of course went totally against the rules and ethics of society, which
- cannot permit such kind of behaviour. But why does Cam·s characterize
- Meursault like that? Why did he create such kind of an outsider to
- society? Cam·s created such an outsider because he wanted to show
- people how life actually is. Society does not accept people who do not
- bend the truth a little and lie. Society wants to make life as easy as
- can be, making up lies so that everything can run smoothly because truth
- can hurt sometimes, and Cam·s knows that. Cam·s implements the priest
- not just as another character in the novel, but as a person who wants to
- tell Meursault how society expects him to behave. Meursault did not
- want to know how he has to act to make the society happy, as a matter of
- fact, the priest was "beginning to annoy" him. Meursault was not even
- following what the priest said but rather gazed out of the cell into the
- sky.
-
- Cam·s wants to show us actually how uninterested Meursault is in the
- priest. But all this is about to change because Cam·s adds an
- unexpected twist. The priest mentions how even the hardest of criminals
- stare at something at one point in their life and imagine a divine face
- in it. Meursault did not see the face of Jesus Christ in it, but he saw
- the face of Marie, the girl who proposed the marriage to him. But this
- was the turning life in MeursaultÆs life. All of a sudden he starts to
- care about things and take some interest in things, and that explains
- the outrage he suddenly got against the priest. Meursault knows that he
- his going to die, and he cannot accept that. His whole attitude all of
- a sudden changed. Cam·s shows us that a person cannot go against
- society and that society and the majority, be it good or bad, will
- always win.
-
- KafkaÆs priest however was different. He did not tell to change Joseph
- K.Æs life but rather told Joseph K. how his life is and how unjust
- society actually is. The setting that Kafka creates is pretty
- phenomenal. The cathedral is dark and gloomy, only lighted by some oil
- lamps which have a small illumination radius. "It is a rainy day",
- which gives it an even more sad and depressing feeling. As time passes
- by, the inside of the cathedral gets darker and darker, which creates a
- sort of evil foreshadowing of what will happen at the end of the book.
- Then the priest comes to the altar, which is humorous because there will
- be no sermon right now. It is rainy, a weekday and nobody showed up at
- the church. But that is the illusion Kafka wants to create. The priest
- is not there to preach, he is there to talk to Joseph K. During the
- talk the priest has with Joseph K., Kafka uses the analogy with the
- doorman.
-
- But why did Kafka use this? Kafka used this analogy because he wanted
- to show us how unjust and corrupt the court and justice system actually
- is. Yes, the government states that the law is there so everybody can
- benefit from it; "justice is there for everybody" and that anybody can
- access it with no difficulty. But later Kafka writes that everything is
- accessible to man, except the law. "The law is closed to him", which
- means there will be no justice because the law cannot be accessed, and
- without the law there cannot be any justice. Through this scene Kafka
- also foreshadows that Joseph K. has been played the fool, and that the
- court is actually unjust and that he was convicted unjustly. Now,
- Joseph K. did not know this. He thought that everything was well, and
- that his appeal has already been processed and that he would be free in
- a few days. But that is why Kafka put in the priest, so that he can
- clarify to Joseph K. how and in what situation the life of Joseph K.
- actually stands.
-
- Both books make profound impact on the readers; some reject the novels
- and regard them as absolute trash because they do not want to accept
- that society actually is how the two authors, Albert Camus and Franz
- Kafka, portray them to be. They both carry a lot of hidden messages and
- meanings and how the authors actually feel about the society they live
- in. They criticize society because the society is corrupt and unjust,
- and that is what the authors wanted us readers to find out ourselves
- because one person alone cannot make any changes. It has to be many
- persons, perhaps even a whole society. Many critics have criticized
- these books, trying to bring down their popularity because they
- themselves have been a part of the corrupt and unjust society and they
- do not want to admit that they belong to one of these societies. These
- books portray the truth of what kind of world we live in today and that
- we should think about ourselves and what our ethics in life actually
- are.