The Common Unity

A Chapter by Angelface

Literature Essay

From outer space, our planet Earth looks like a shiny new marble - swirling with the deepest blues and flecked with white clouds; it almost inspires a child's envy of the coveted cat’s eye. Silently and gracefully, she spins along her elliptical pirouette, dancing from light to dark over and over again to warm her entire face to the sun. From so far out into the frozen, black universe, she looks like a garden oasis in a lonely desert scattered with the skeletal remains of dead stars. The azure water, the greens of the foliage, the fertile brown of the soil – these are the colors of health and nurturing – of life. With a comet’s-eye-view, one can witness precisely how her tiny, intricate elements operate independently, yet function as a whole.

From down here, however, rooted in sand and gravity – one is able to see everything in horrific detail - the sheer immensity of it instilling intimidation, the sheer diversity confounding the logical mind into dizzying confusion. Perhaps it is the animal instinct buried deep in human nature that instills aversion to the unfamiliar – places, ideas, even other people - seem to threaten the cohesion of individuality. Thus, the human race invents xenophobia and prejudice, both diseases of the mind, as excuses to avoid tolerating each other. In this sorrowful state, it often takes something terrifying, even cataclysmic, to remind people that they are of one kind – humankind – and that in the face of tragedy, strength may be drawn from the innate sense of community that is evident even from the broad vantage of the cosmos.

Religion is a cornerstone of society, the birth of myth from inexplicable circumstances to entertain and distract from the blank face upon the universe to the human appeal: why? Spirituality offers something to believe in when what is “real” is too immense to label. Community relies upon institutions like organized religion to be the commonality, the adhesive, and the bond between individuals who otherwise feel so detached from those around them. Ironic though, that for most people caught up in the clockwork of everyday life, religion plays such a peripheral role. This is, of course, in the times when they do not need anything to lean their weary minds upon; when the question “why” is quiet and they focus on the means of “how”… how to make the rent, how to ensure a comfortable retirement, how to relieve the symptoms of the most common social disease: boredom. Yet existence is a spinning wheel of life and death, a place where happiness turns to old, gray sorrow as naturally as green leaves to brown with the cool breath of autumn. So when joy has evaporated and certain events threaten to shatter the hope within belief; or situations present themselves which are momentous enough to break the hypnosis of monotony, religion is suddenly “found”.

Albert Camus is famed for his depiction of human emotion - the strength and depth of his characters within aberrant situations created by the author explicitly as literary tools to evoke the intense pathos that are the watermark of his work. In his novel The Plague, Camus uses the Black Death in its most classic role as the shrouded paradigm, which haunts every man throughout his life until he must succumb to his own end as is the spontaneous succession. Finding themselves quarantined and completely isolated from the rest of the world, the citizens of Oran must have felt as if they were locked in a tiny room with a mass-murderer. When confronted with a killer lacking any remorse, any judgment or mercy, the citizens lack a criminal to blame for their helpless feelings of victimization. The question “why” is resurrected in their minds. Since the focus of religious myth is to offer an explanation for those things, which seem so inscrutable, it is not surprising that “the Cathedral was practically always full of worshippers…” (Camus 89). Father Paneloux saw the plague as an opportunity to reach the people, since they were now so amenable and inclined to listen once stripped of all other prospects. Unfortunately, he abuses his suddenly powerful leadership opportunity; he acts as a zealous outsider to the tragic effects of the plague; too quick to place blame that in reality has no justifiable objective - shaming those who were faultless. Following his first enthusiastic sermon the reaction of the people was his most damning criticism.

The congregation, it must be admitted, was sparser than on the first occasion, partly because this kind of performance had lost its novelty for our townsfolk. Indeed, considering the abnormal conditions they were up against, the very word “novelty” had lost all meaning. Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naïvely with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replaced normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions. (205)

The survivors of the epidemic, however, evolved through their interaction with the sick and dying to a self-actualized level of being able to create their own hope from which to draw the strength necessary to go on. Collaborating an effort to help the plague victims gave the volunteers permission to have faith in themselves and to belief that they were doing the best they could within not only strenuous, but also mournful circumstances. The result was a new sort of spirituality which none could categorize as a denomination, for it was nearer to the idealized human condition itself rather than the politics of religion. Even Father Paneloux could not help but be changed by the experience of standing by impotently, watching a child die.

He spoke in a gentler, more thoughtful tone than on previous occasion, and several times was noticed to be stumbling over his words. A yet more noteworthy change was that instead of saying “you” he now said “we”. (206)

Death and isolation are very powerful catalysts to the souls of men. Yet death is so inevitable that it looses its impact in one’s mundane life and isolation is so often self-imposed. When imprisoned against his will, Alyoshka – the Baptist clung to his religion above all things within his limited grasp as his lone tie to a world long lost to him. In fact, his relationship with Christ became his only reason for surviving in the face of his twenty-five year sentence; an entire life-span for the men in the gulag: “What good is freedom to you? If you’re free, your faith will soon be choked by thorns! Be glad you’re in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul.” (Solzhenitsyn 177) He was not alone; he found brotherhood, formed a “Baptist club”(175), with others of the same faith and was able to draw vigor in order to survive the harsh conditions of a Siberian gulag. Even Shukohov was able to respect his capacity, though he was unable to share his belief.

The captain would have obliged, only he hadn’t the strength. Wasn’t used to it. But Alyoshka said: “Right, then, Ivan Denisovich. Just show me where you want them.”

Never says no, that Alyoshka, whatever you ask him to do. If everybody in the world was like him, I’d be the same. Help anybody who asked me. Why not? They’ve got the right idea, that lot. (109)

The Baptist’s ability to trust in his beliefs so fervently made him trust-worthy and reliable to his fellow prisoners. “He had no sense at all, Alyoshka, never earned a thing, but did favors for everybody.”(181) So all of the prisoners were kind and sharing to Alyoshka because they knew that “if we’re without, we can always earn something.”(181)

Some would say boastfully that it is the high morals instilled by religious faith or perhaps human empathy for the sufferings of others that places our race so far removed from the other indigenous animals of our dear planet. Yet, as suggested above, atypical predicaments have a way of testing, buckling, warping or even breaking into splintered halves those straight and narrow measuring sticks by which most people gauge themselves and others.

Although he first tried to manipulate the epidemic of illness into a divine plague striking down with furious vengeance upon the sinners of Oran, Father Paneloux, through his own transformation, came to the conclusion that sometimes bad things are just unfortunate rather than evil.

There was no doubt as to the existence of good and evil and, as a rule, it was easy to see the difference between them. The difficulty began when we looked into the nature of evil, and among things evil he included human suffering. Thus we had apparently needful pain and needless pain; …(207)

The morality of the entire town is seen to emerge like a hedonistic butterfly from its sequestered cocoon as if incubated by the fever pitch of the rising death toll. Opportunists, profiteers, looters and lovers actually thrive among the corpses like graveyard flowers.

Sometimes Tarrou and Cottard would follow for some minutes one of those amorous couples who in the past would have tried to hide the passion drawing them to each other, but now, pressed closely to each other’s side, paraded the streets among the crowd, with the trancelike self-absorption of great lovers, oblivious of the people around them. (183)

In fact, Cottard, who had be suicidal before the plague, started “’blossoming out. Expanding in geniality and good humor.’ For Cottard was anything but upset by the turn events were taking.”(180) Cottard had found his true calling in an unconventional way as a smuggler and nouveau riche.

In the harsh prison atmosphere of the gulag, death may not have been the morose marauder apathetically slaying hundreds in a day as the plague was, but it’s shadow certainly hung over the men to remind them of the subzero weather and near starvation that was their existence. The men are forced to adapt, unusual characteristics of survival develop: bartering, favors, brown-nosing, thievery, even scavenging. Moreover, most of these practices have become common, if not acceptable or even expected behaviors in the gangs. The one exception is scavenging, which is the sole vocation of Fetyukov, the “bowl-licker”. He is the only one reviled by the zeks, who see no pride or even witty guile in his scrounging.

Fetyukov the scavenger had picked up a lot of butts (he’d even tip them out of the spittoon, he wasn’t squeamish). Now he was taking them apart on his lap and sprinkling the half-burnt tobacco onto a single piece of paper. Fetyukov had three children on the outside, but when he was jailed they’d all turned their backs on him, and his wife had married somebody else, so he got no help from anywhere.

Buynovsky kept looking sideways at him, and suddenly barked: “Why do you pick up all that foul stuff? You’ll get syphilis of the mouth before you know it! Chuck it out!”

Prison “manners” included odd superstitions and ritualistic mannerisms that each inmate practiced in order to remind himself that he was still an individual beyond the number emblazoned on his jerkin. Yet despite the zeks’ ability to withstand conditions that most would find intolerable; perhaps fatal; an unspoken system of moral values remained.

The backbone of ethical values upon which religion is based naturally gives rise to classes of individuals as they find they are judged by those standards and in turn, have the power to adjudicate. In order to ensure predominant influence and thus prosperity and support from the citizenry, the church must indoctrinate its followers to hold its own standards and values as the highest and therefore the superlative and most righteous. Thus the stage is set for a system of societal classes, for how can there be the best without having the worst for comparison?

Although most of the incarcerated men of the gulag knew full well that no God could reduce their sentence, it was just that sense of inevitability that made the prison a microcosm of the communities they had been removed from. They had come to terms with their fate as it was lain out before them and had settled into a rhythm of life within their situation that was ironically similar to the life they might have lived as free men: eating, drinking, working, sleeping, and counting the endless stream of days as they flow into the river of eternity. Also, as on the outside, the men began to recognize the differences in personalities; almost had to in order to maintain their individuality in the gangs. The tyranny of the warders, corruption of the guards and the favoritism of the cooks forced the gangs to pull together like small families for protection and security. Shukhov was a highly adaptable character and due to this, lived what he considered a comfortable life. He had learned what behaviors he could get away with and which ones he could not, he had learned who to trust and who to gain favors from. He recognized that the prison life is meant to make one meek and played the part. The character of the Captain however, was not able to acclimate as well and had trouble hiding the spark of his personality, for that he was thrown into solitary confinement. As Shukhov said of him: “The quick louse is always first on the comb.” (Solzhenitsyn 166) Tsezar represents the opulent cap on the pyramid of the jail nation. He receives parcels from the outside and is therefore the best person to earn favors from. On the opposite end of the spectrum, of course, is Fetyukov, reproached for his unabashed greed and foraging.

Whereas the penal colony reflected a microcosm of community, including every striation of class hierarchy from the affluent to the beggar, the plague it seems plays no favorites.

The plague is no respecter of persons and under is despotic rule everyone, from the warden down to the humblest delinquent, was under sentence and, perhaps for the first time, impartial justice reigned in the prison. (Camus 159)

Hence, the sense of social class that may have reigned in Oran before the outbreak was now completely destroyed by plague as easily as the lives touched by the disease. Everyone in the city realized that either they were dying or waiting to die.

Strange, perhaps, to read the pervious sentence as it inclines one to think that this is true of every creature creeping on the face of the earth, we are all dying or waiting to die. Yet this truth appears to those with vitality in their blood almost as distant as the fictions we read. Reality is a sad truth and events in life reflect that sorrowful portrait of ephemeral permanence. Yet to know the truth, to know that it is universal, metamorphoses those tragic events into precious opportunities for contemplating the common unity.

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