Free The Outsider by Colin Wilson Page B

the news that Joan is dead. Oliver finally gives way, with a bad grace. And when Susan tells him that he doesn ’ t know what he wants, he summarizes:
    Oliver: There ’ s a worse mischief with most of us, Susan. What we want doesn ’ t count. We want money and we want peace ... and we want our own way. Some of us want to look beautiful, and some want to be good. And Clumbermere gets rich without knowing why ... and we statesmen puzzling the best way to pick his pocket. And you want Evan to come back to the middle of it all.
    Susan: He belongs here.
    Oliver: If he ’ d come back, he or another, and make short work of the lifeless lot of us. ...
    Susan: Why didn ’ t Joan marry him? They ’ d have had some happiness at least, and that would have helped.
    Oliver ( a last effort) : Why doesn ’ t life plan out into pretty patterns and happy endings. Why isn ’ t it all made easy for you to understand ?
    Susan: Don ’ t mock at me any more, Oliver.
    Oliver: I ’ m sorry. I only do it because I ’ m afraid of you. 2 9
    And the closing cadence of the play is not a real ending:
    Susan: Wouldn ’ t you want to be raised from the dead?
    Oliver: No, indeed.
    Susan: You ’ ll have to be, somehow.
    Oliver: Do you wonder I ’ m afraid of you, Susan? {He goes out.) 30
    There is no prospect of anyone being ‘ raised from the dead ’ , for that would mean new motives, new hopes and a new belief.
    Earlier in this chapter, I used the phrase ‘ near-religious terminology ’ , and it is now time to elucidate it. At the beginning of the Third Act, Strowde asks Oliver to check a quotation for him:
    Strowde: Get me the Bible, will you? I want to verify I think it ’ s first Kings, nineteen. ...
    Oliver: What ’ s the quotation?
    Strowde: Now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers. Very modern and progressive and disillusioned of Elijah! Why ever should he expect to be? 31
    But that is the whole point. Strowde does expect to be, and Oliver expects to be ... and they are not. There is an appetite for ‘ progress ’ in all Outsiders; and yet, as Strowde knows only too well, not primarily for social progress. ‘ Not better than his fathers ’ —that is to say, not wiser than his fathers, not less futile, being a slave to the same weaknesses, the same needs. Man is as much a slave to his immediate surroundings now as he was when he lived in tree-huts. Give him the highest, the most exciting thoughts about man ’ s place in the universe, the meaning of history; they can all be snuffed out in a moment if he wants his dinner, or feels irritated by a child squalling on a bus. He is bound by pettiness. Strowde and Oliver are both acutely sensitive to this, but not strong enough to do anything about it. Human weakness. When Joan tells Strowde she cannot marry him (at the end of Act II), Strowde, left alone, murmers: ‘ Most merciful God ... who makest thy creatures to suffer without understanding ... ’ 32 But he is not praying to God, he is only wondering at the pain he feels, his vulnerability, human weakness. And Hemingway ’ s early work, up to the short story about the Major whose wife died, is a long meditation on human vulnerability. And meditation on human vulnerability always leads to ‘ religious thinking ’ , to Hemingway ’ s ‘ He must find things he cannot lose ’ ; to a development of an ethic of renunciation and discipline. It leads to a realization that man is not a constant, unchanging being: he is one person one day, another person the next. He forgets easily, lives in the moment, seldom exerts will-power, and even when he does, gives up the effort after a short time, or forgets his original aim and turns to something else. No wonder that poets feel such despair when they seem to catch a glimpse of some intenser state of consciousness, and know with absolute certainty that nothing they can do can hold it fast. And this theme, implicit in Sartre, Camus, Hemingway, and even more