Free The Outsider by Colin Wilson Page A

has been hammered home. It was Joan who accepted second-best; now she has lost even that.
    In the Second Act, Strowde decides to return to politics; Oliver wants the job of his secretary, and when Strowde refuses, he automatically turns to the woman they are both in love with, Joan Westbury. There is an important scene between Oliver and Joan. He explains to her the reason he wants the close contact with Strowde. He wants to know why Strowde has failed. Joan points out that Strowde can hardly be said to have failed as a politician; but Oliver was not referring to that kind of success:
    Oliver: Nothing ’ s much easier, is it, than to make that sort of success if you ’ ve the appetite for it. ... But Evan set out to get past all tricks, to the heart of thingsIs it a stone-dead heart of things, and dare no one say so when he finds out? 24
    Oliver has a symbol for this state of moral emptiness:
    A shell missed me outside Albert and did for my watch. I could shake it, and it would tick for a bit, but the spring was gone. I ’ ve an idea I don ’ t grow any older now, and when I come to die, it ’ ll seem an odd, out-of-date sort of catastrophe. 26
    This is Keat ’ s ‘ posthumous existence ’ of the last letter to Brown. Oliver ’ s solution to the question is simple: destruction.
    Oliver: Save me from weary people with their No More War. What we want is a real one.
    Joan: And where ’ s the enemy?
    Oliver: If I knew where, I shouldn ’ t be sitting here helpless. But we ’ re tricked so easily. 28
    In spite of this, certain notions still have value for him: courage and discipline. When Joan asks him: Tell me how one soberly hates people—I don ’ t think I know. ’
    Oliver: Well, you can ’ t love a mob, surely to goodness? Because that ’ s to be one of them, chattering and scolding and snivelling and cheering—maudlin drunk if you like. I learned to be soldier enough to hate a mob. There ’ s discipline in heaven … 27
    Both Oliver and Strowde are obsessed by a Pascalian world-contempt, an insight into ‘ the misery of man without God ’ . But for either of them to accept God would be bad faith; the Existentialist must see and touch his solution, not merely accept it.
    Strowde ’ s problem is not a dramatic problem; it can produce none of the violent emotions and make ‘ good theatre ’ . And with the problem fully set out in these two important conversations, Granville-Barker has very little more to do than devise further situations that will show Oliver and Strowde in their characters of world-contemners. Strowde begins electioneering, with Oliver as his secretary; in America, Joan Westbury is dying. It remains for Strowde to throw over the politics and sail for America; renounce the meaningless and turn towards his symbol of meaning. He leaves London on the eve of the election. But Joan Westbury is dead before he gets to Southampton. The reader is left feeling oddly ‘ up in the air ’ about it all. No happy finale, no dramatic tying up of loose ends.
    The last scene of the play recalls echoes of the first. When Strowde has gone, Oliver talks to the millionaire businessman, Lord Clumbermere. Clumbermere is another symbol of material success, like Salomons. But his philosophy is not so brutal; he is a vague, rather shy idealist, as well as a vastly successful businessman:
    Clumbermere: You think you ’ re all for truth and justice. Right—come and run my pen factory and find out if that is so.
    Oliver: If I ran your pen factory, I ’ d be for the pen, the whole pen and nothing but the pen.
    Clumbermere: Then you ’ d be of little use to me. If we want a good gold nib, it ’ s religion we must make it with …
    Oliver: But are you a devil then, my lord, that you want to beat the souls of men into pen nibs?
    Clumbermere: I hope not, Mr. Gauntlett, but if I am,
please show me the way out of the pit … 28
    Afterwards Oliver and the American girl Susan argue about whether to recall Strowde with