5. “Lastly … so as to avoid contagion . . . each of you is ordered to keep permanently in his mouth a pad soaked in vinegar. This will not only protect you from the disease but teach you the art of silence.”
Each statement sets into relief the life being suppressed and the new order being established. Not merely a social order but a transformed conception of rights and values is at stake. As The Plague observes: “I am the ruler here; this is a fact, therefore it is a right. A right that admits of no discussion; a fact you must accept.”
The problem of total justice has thus been posed—in such terms as to
make humans be seen as guilty. “Certificates of existence” must be drawn up:
“The whole point of our government is that you always need a permit to
do anything whatever” (CTOP, 175). Bureaucracy is but the organizational expression of the individualist application of the demand for totality. If total justice is insisted upon, and if the state takes the responsibility for achieving it, then no private life is possible. “What interests us is your public life and that as a matter of fact is the only one you are allowed by us to have.”
Further, there can be no standard of value beyond the public, the existent.
The entire movement of thought implied in this totalization and rationalization of existence comes to a head in the encounter with The Fisherman, who is asked for his “reasons for existing.”
“Make a note,” responds The Secretary, “that the undersigned admits that his existence is unjustifiable. That will simplify matters when the time comes to deal with him. Also, that will bring it home to you, the undersigned, that the certificate of existence granted you is temporary and of short duration” (CTOP, 177).
No wonder that nihilism and total rationality, seemingly opposed phenomena, can join forces and work so well together. Camus suggests that they complement one another, representing the same negation of the meaning of daily life and its spontaneous offerings. “Nada: . . . the more one suppresses, the better things are. … So let’s annihilate everything, I say. . . . God denies the world, and I deny God. Long live nothing, for it’s the only thing that exists.” This he will achieve by drinking, to which The Secretary responds: “A clumsy way of going about it. We have a better one. . . . We’ll find you a job in our administration” (CTOP, 179). And what is that better way? “We start with the premises that you are guilty. But that’s not enough; you must learn to feel yourselves, that you are guilty. And you won’t feel guilty until you feel tired. So we wear you out, that’s all. Once you are really tired, tired to death in fact, everything will run smoothly” (CTOP, 180).
Revolt Emerges
A basic theme of Camus’s thought has thus been brought into relief, clearing the path that leads from the demand for total rationality to the denial of life. Ultimately, human existence is unjustifiable, and humans are ontologi-cally guilty. Further, the attempt to establish a new pattern for existence based upon total justice seems inevitably to lead to mutilation and destruction— whether in the logical ecstasy of Caligula, in the bureaucratic depersonalization of our human plagues, or later in the duplicitous dialogue of our “judge-penitents.” All start with the assumption of total culpability, based upon different forms of metaphysical revolutions, and end in the legitimation of enslavement and terror. They begin from a fundamental inability to come to terms with life as it is offered—to find within it areas of innocence, of direct value, and the grounds for what Camus calls in The Rebel a “reasonable culpability.” None is capable of loving, whatever the effort to force a relation, Oppression is only the testament they pay to the human need for dialogue!
“Execution,” says The Plague, “that puts it in a nutshell. And the man who is to die is expected to collaborate in his own execution” (CTOP, 18). Since all are guilty, the only acknowledged rights are those granted by the authorities. The transformation thus effected is succinctly summarized in Nada’s remarks to The Woman: “You will not be given accommodation because your children are homeless. You will be given it if you supply a certificate. Which is not the same thing” (CTOP, 185).
It is only “natural” that such oppression stir revolt in Diego and muted whispers from the chorus. Diego challenges The Plague with an assertion of innocence. But fear breaks the back of his naive rejoinder and he flees. The Chorus, forlorn, seeks to adapt to a stifling and degrading condition.
Diego takes refuge in The Judge’s house, only to find the disintegration inevitably spawned by self-righteousness and self-sufficiency. Unable to make common cause with another human on the level of equality, The Judge brings forth the disintegration implicit in a household built on appearance and hypocrisy. Diego enters as The Judge is about to kick out the servant, who has “loyally . . . served you all your life.” She is infected. And so is Diego. He must leave. The Judge will submit to any order, accept any fact, to protect himself. He will not jeopardize his position to preserve a common value. This judicial posture, with its consequent abdication of responsibility, is nothing but pure positivism.
Ironically, The Judge’s position turns against him: The house is quarantined owing to Diego’s presence, and the collective force of our common condition strikes home. As Diego notes,
“The law’s infallible as you pointed out just now… so here we are, all on the same boat—judge, accused, and witnesses. Brothers all!” (CTOP, 190). One cannot remain above the battle. We are all implicated. Either we acknowledge this, and make common cause with the hope of constructive achievement, or we condemn ourselves to atom-ization and an increasingly self-destructive self-seeking. When The Judge, rejecting solidarity, chooses recrimination and blame, his family disintegrates. His marriage is revealed to be built upon hypocrisy and self-righteousness. I spit on your law,” says The Judge’s wife. “I have on my side the right of lovers not to be parted, the right of the criminal to be forgiven, the right of every penitent to recover his good name. . . . Justice … is on the side of the sufferers, the afflicted, those who live by hope alone” (CTOP, 192).
Diego and Victoria have left. They struggle to come to grips with the collective disaster that threatens to drive them apart as their love draws them together. It would be so simple to forget all, to limit the universe to them-selves. But Diego feels a wider bond: “I’m too proud to love you if I can no longer respect myself” (CTOP, 195). He is infected and the thought that he will
die and she will survive torments him. He loves life; nothing beyond has any meaning for either of them. Yet there are conditions under which he cannot continue to live. The conflict between private happiness and collective responsibility threatens to tear Diego and Victoria apart. “What do I care for your love,” he cries, “if it doesn’t rot along with me?” (CTOP, 196). Victoria speaks of the demands and fulfillments of love. Diego sways between opposed commitments, then says, “Let me go my own way. I cannot stand aloof with all this suffering around me” (CTOP, 197). The transition from a sense of pity to the realization of solidarity emerges in agony.
But Victoria’s rejoinder challenges revolt’s legitimacy from another angle:
When it’s the utmost I can do to bear the weight of my love, how can you ask me to take on my shoulders the burden of the sorrows of the world as well? No, that’s . . . one of those futile, preposterous crusades you men engage in as a pretext for evading the one struggle that is truly arduous, the one victory of which you could be rightly proud (CTOP, 198).
Once again, Rambert’s question: Can one love and be happy alone?
Honor Triumphs
The problems involved with the emergence of rebellion have thus been set forth, and the limits that make it worth the effort have been suggested by Victoria. Diego states the other side:
“To die is nothing. But to die degraded …” (CTOP, 202). The ground of his solidarity, upon which his revolt is based, as well as the limits it imposes on action are becoming clearer: “The men of my blood belong to the earth and to the earth alone” (CTOP, 202). Camus’s faith in revolt finally achieves full articulation in Diego’s encounter with The Secretary.
You have imposed on men the pangs of hunger and bereavement to keep their minds off any stirrings of revolt. You wear them down, you waste their time and strength so that they’ve neither the leisure nor the energy to vent their anger. So they just mark time. . . . Each of us is alone because of the cowardice of the others. . . . [But] there is in man … an innate power that you will never vanquish, a gay madness born of mingled fear and courage, unreasoning yet victorious through all time. One day this power will surge up and you will learn that all your glory is but dust before the wind (CTOP, 206).