Free The Outsider by Colin Wilson

Strowde had had a love affair sometime long before the war—who represents for him the clearest vision of certainty that he ever achieved—leans on the parapet of the loggia and stares at the moon:
    Joan: I must pray now to the moon ... as one burnt-out lady to another, to teach me to order my ways. 21
    She has lost her two sons in the war. More recently, her home was destroyed by fire. She leans, staring at the moon, as the guests leave; from inside float snatches of the Second Act of Tristan —the love duet. The curtain descends on the first scene.
    The fact that the play has no ‘ clear centre of dramatic interest ’ makes it difficult to summarize. Certain conversations stand out as being important to the exposition. There is the long scene between Strowde and Joan, when Strowde ’ s sister Eleanor is in London and they have spent the day together. They pick up the threads of their old romance, and Joan admits that she is still in love with Strowde; nevertheless, she insists they were right to separate instead of marrying. She could not have lived her love for Strowde; it would have killed her. Now she asks him the question which also puzzles Oliver: why is he not a success? Why is he not in power instead of these bungling, well-meaning politicians? His answer is the essence of the play:
    Strowde: Save me from the illusion of power! I once had a glimpse—and I thank you for it—of a power that is in me. But that won ’ t answer to any call.
    Joan: Not even to the call of a good cause?
    Strowde (as one who shakes himself free from the temptations of unreality) : Excellent causes abound. They are served—as they are—by eminent prigs making a fine p arade, by little minds watching what ’ s to happen next. ... Search for their strength—which is not to be borrowed or bargained for—it must spring from the secret life. 22
    He scouts Joan ’ s suggestion that perhaps it would have been better if they had never met:
    Strowde: No, that ’ s blasphemy. At least don ’ t join the unbelieving mob who cry: Do something, anything, no matter what ... all ’ s well while the wheels go round— while something ’ s being done.
    Joan (with ... irony): But seek first the kingdom of God, and the desire of all other things shall be taken from you?
    Strowde (very simply) : It has been taken from me. I don ’ t complain and I don ’ t make a virtue of it. I ’ m not the first man who has found beliefs that he can ’ t put in his pocket like so much small change. But am I to deny them for all that?
    This passage shows Strowde ’ s affinity with the other Outsiders we have considered. There is the ‘ glimpse of power ’ , of contact with some reality, awareness of a new area of his own consciousness, that came in a time of emotional stress (as with Corporal Krebs and Camus ’ s hero). There is the constant searching of motive; analysis of other people ’ s and his own driving force (politicians are ‘ little minds ’ etc.; Roquentin: salauds). In one passage he even speaks with the accents of Wells ’ s pamphlet:
    Joan: Evan—stir yourself out of this hopelessness of unbelief.
    Strowde {grimly) : When the donkey ’ s at the end of his tether and eaten his patch bare, he ’ s to cut capers and kick up dust, is he? 23
    It is motive that has collapsed. The Outsider has glimpsed a higher form of reality than he has so far known. Subsequently he loses that glimpse and has to accept a second-best. But the ‘ first-best ’ is known to exist. Joan admits that she accepted marriage to a civil servant and ‘ housekeeping in odd corners of the world ’ because the strain of living on the level of ‘ first-best ’ would have been too much for her. Strowde has not given up the aspiration to the first-best, but he has preferred to do nothing when it seemed out of reach.
    When, at the close of the scene, Eleanor returns with the news that Joan ’ s husband has died of a heart attack, the full implication of the scene