Literature: themes, works, and critical analysis

¶ … Song of Solomon," by Toni Morrison, "The Stranger," by Albert Camus, and "Siddhartha," by Hermann Hesse. Specifically, it asks fundamental questions about the meaning of guilt and responsibility.

Using these three stories, show the difference between guilt and responsibility.

GUILT AND RESPONSIBILITY

The Stranger" is probably the most unsettling of the three novels, and Meursault is the most interesting and controversial character. Some people see him as simply cold and unfeeling. Others see him as a symbol; he stands for truth, because he will not cover up his feelings in order to conform to what society wants or thinks. He is a 30-year-old shipping clerk in the city of Algiers, during the 1930s. His main interests are swimming, his work, and watching the people of Algiers from his balcony.

In the first part of the story, his mother has died, and he attends the funeral, but is so unemotional about it, that the doorkeeper and warden of the nursing home where she lived are aghast at his indifference. This will come back to haunt him later in the story. He says, "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know," and that pretty much sums up his feelings (or lack of them). He reacts the same way with the other characters in the story. There is no love, passion, or caring about them, he interacts with them simply because they are there, and he has nothing better to do. Before he kills the Arab on the beach, he says to himself, "To go or to stay, amount to the same thing." That is how he looks at everything around him, with great indifference, and this is the key to his total lack of guilt and remorse. He feels nothing, and so he has no reason to feel guilty or responsible for anything.

Now we know that he has looked inside himself, and found as much as he is ever going to find. Meursault is an interesting and unsettling character. He really is a "Stranger" to himself, and to those around him, until he embraces the absurdity of life.

By the end of the novel, he becomes an existentialist hero. He has discovered the meaning of life, and it is the indifference of the world, which means there really is no meaning to our lives. If our lives are to mean anything, we have to create the meaning in ourselves. When he finally realizes this, he knows he has been happy in his odd life, and does not want to die, but it is too late for him. For him, guilt and responsibility have no meaning, and this is one of the reasons he is such a tragic character. Guilt and remorse exist when one feels something, and Meursault feels nothing, he is empty and therefore he is nothing.

Toni Morrison's novel "Song of Solomon" follows a character with the incongruous name of Macon (Milkman) Dead III. He is the total opposite of Meursault, for he is as responsible as Meursault is not.

Milkman's ultimate task is to achieve "a strong and centered sense of self, a self that accepts responsibility for his past and reaches out in love for others." As Morrison told Mel Watkins, "If there is any consistent theme in my fiction, I guess that is it - how and why we learn to live this life intensely and well" (Morrison and Bloom 6).

Morrison's entire book is about responsibility and guilt. Milkman has it, but his father does not, and he is the "villain" in the piece, placed there to show the opposite side of responsibility, total apathy. In one scene, he is collecting rent, and totally unconcerned his tenant wants to commit suicide. "Put [the gun] down and throw me my goddam money!' he hollers. 'Float those dollars down here, nigger, then blow yourself up'" (Morrison and Bloom 10). Morrison portrays him as the total opposite of responsibility, and because of this, he is always a bitter and unhappy man, never fulfilled in his life. Guitar is also diametrically opposed to what Milkman has to become. Guitar also kills without guilt or remorse, and Milkman must learn from him if he is to create a more meaningful life for himself. In the end, Milkman's quest for his past gives him the enlightenment he needs to become a fully responsible human being, able to love and able to recognize right from wrong, so he can feel guilt, remorse, and the opposite, joy and rebirth. The ability to feel is what is lacking in those who have no guilt or responsibility, and that is one of Morrison's lessons in this novel. Because he has learned to take responsibility for his actions, and understands guilt is part of feeling, he is the opposite of Meursault, he is something, a thinking breathing man, where Meursault is nothing.

Siddhartha, both the novel and the character, are perhaps the ultimate in guilt and taking responsibility. It is also the ultimate book on quest and finding oneself, somewhat like "Song of Solomon" but on a much larger scale, for Siddhartha learns to look inside himself through the teachings of Buddha. Siddhartha goes through many stages in life before he finds his own pure happiness. "After a while, however, he realizes that this life of indulgence is just as pointless as a life of denial, that both luxury and asceticism are extremes that clutter rather than clear the path to spiritual illumination"

Whissen 210).

Siddhartha is happy and at peace by the end of the novel because he has learned how to feel, how to think, and how to see the good in the world. He tells Govinda, learned through his body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it" (Hesse 146).