Misanthrope- Honesty in One of the Best

¶ … Misanthrope- Honesty

In one of the best plays of Moliere, The Misanthrope, we come across honesty as the main theme, which has been carefully incorporated to show the adverse effects of tactless honesty and the consequences of complete lack of honesty. The play was written in the 17th century and the society it depicts is the one that prefers flattery to honesty and conceit to modesty. Despite the fact that the play was meant for audiences of 17th century, it amazingly retains a universal appeal because of the treatment that Moliere extends to the central theme of honesty in the play.

The play revolves around four important characters, Alceste, Celimene, Philinte and Eliante. It is through the characters of Alceste and Celimene that the author conveys his views on honesty. Philinte serves the important purpose of balancing honesty and deceit by adopting a middle path, which is both sensible and practical. Alceste is the protagonist of the play who is a man of rather unfriendly disposition and t5his unfriendliness emerges from his desire to be complete and even bluntly honest about everything.

While honesty is much appreciated everywhere, it is important to use tact while being honest or else a person risks alienation from society. This is the message of the play and Alceste has been used to show that a person's obsession with honest can backfire if it is not covered with certain degree of tact and diplomacy. A man needs to handle truth delicately but this is what Alceste refuses to understand. The result is a disaster as during the course of the play, he wins more enemies than friends because not everyone can see him as an honest person and most consider him an insensitive misanthrope. On one occasion, he expresses his views on the society that thrives on deceit and conceit in these words:

All are corrupt; there's nothing to be seen

In court or town but aggravates my spleen.

A fall into deep gloom and melancholy

When I survey the scene of human folly,

Finding on every hand base flattery,

Injustice, fraud, self-interest, treachery....

Ah, it's too much; mankind has grown so base, mean to break with the whole human race.

I.i.p.20)

Although honesty is what Alceste desires and promotes, the man is incapable of mixing honest opinion with a little tact and doesn't realize that his honest views are seen as insensitive remarks that actually hurt others. To call Alceste a misanthrope would be utterly wrong because he is not 'an enemy of the mankind' in any sense of the word (Rousseau, 37). He doesn't hate others but only detests the evil in them. His only flaw is that he is les tolerant of other people's shortcomings than Philinte who fortunately understands that there exists a delicate line between honesty and rudeness.

Rousseau asserts that Alceste's brand of honesty is grounded in a sincere desire to remove evil from the society. Alceste is an honest man who is disliked by many because the society doesn't want to embrace honesty in the way Alceste does. Rousseau further explains that Alceste is simply a "good man who detests the morals [manners] of his age and the viciousness of his contemporaries; who, precisely because he loves his fellow creatures, hates in them the evils they do to one another and the vices of which these evils are the product. If he were less touched by the errors of humanity, if he suffered less from indignation at the iniquities he sees, would he be more humane himself?" (p.37) His brand of honesty suffers from an inherent flaw i.e. passion of undisguised truth. "The character of the misanthrope is not at the poet's disposal; it is determined by the nature of his dominant passion. This passion is a violent hatred of vice, born from an ardent love of virtue and soured by the continual spectacle of man's viciousness. It is, then, only a great and noble soul which is susceptible to it" (p. 39).

Alceste is simply an absolutely honest human being who abhors flattery and often becomes insensitive in his desire to be completely truthful. Unlike Philinte, Alceste is of the view that to 'honesty handled delicately' is 'honesty destroyed'. But even with all his flaws, he is a man of integrity and strong character as Eliante once says:

His conduct has been very singular lately;

Still, I confess that I respect him greatly.

The honesty in which he takes such pride

Has -- to my mind -- its noble, heroic side.

In this false age, such candor seems outrageous;

But I could wish that it were more contagious.

IV.i.p. 104)

The play is interspersed with numerous examples of honesty that have only mostly backfired, leaving Alceste with greater number of enemies. On one occasion, for example, the poet Oronte seeks Alceste's approval of his verses. However Alceste didn't like his poetry and was absolutely honest about him saying that Oronte's verses made him sick. Such honest opinion was however uncalled for and Alceste ends up with one more enemy.