Big I, Eye, Aye.

I can format! Yes I can!
 (Sir, the above document has all the correct formatting, but a few of my text/quote corrections aren’t included in it. Please read the blog-post text, but look at the pretty pretty formatted one in the downloadable file)

By: Ilayda Williamson

For: Mr. Murray

ENG4UE-02

December 15, 2008

“Hell is the place of those who have denied;
They find there what they planted and what dug,
A Lake of Spaces, and a Wood of Nothing,
And wander there and drift, and never cease
Wailing for substance.”
-W.B. Yeats, The Hour Glass

Hell. The word evokes clear images for all, no matter if the person is religious or not. Lakes of fire, eternal agony, spending forever in the waiting area of an airport terminal are all situations considered hellish. There are then the more personalized versions of Hell, based on a person’s own tragedies and experiences. Author Clive Barker proposes that there is one universal Hell, however – one which terrifies all of humanity. It is meaninglessness and nothingness brought to life, existing eternally in a place that is the essence of emptiness. He proposes this while weaving a tale around Marty Strauss. Marty is chosen from prison to work for Joseph Whitehead, a very wealthy man. He then encounters those around Joseph. Most importantly, he meets his future lover and Whitehead’s daughter, Carys, and Mamoulian. Mamoulian is the master of Barker’s depiction of Hell and pivotal to the nature of Hell. Through the eyes of philosophy, psychology, and the narrative of Barker’s story, The Damnation Game, one can see that the ultimate Hell to imagine is in fact, nothing – it is the void.

One must consider the portrayal of Hell in The Damnation Game on its own before relating it to the psychological and philosophical. The Hell portrayed in the book is a grey, nondescript place. Being damned is much like being both deaf and blind, but it is not a mere absence of these senses. It is the complete oppression of them, to the point of extermination. To take this torture one twisted step further, Hell even drives it’s mantra home with a forceful use of the damned’s own voice, uttering Nothing is essential. It has certain other features that appear before this murk. Joseph Whitehead first encounters this pre-Hell horror in bombed Warsaw as a young thief. “[...] [He] walked on a little way, and rounding the corner into the Square itself discovered the ghost of a tree, prodigious with blossom, hanging in the air. It seemed unrooted, its snow-head lit by starlight, its trunk shadowy.” (Barker, 15). Beneath this tree, the soon-to-be-damned catch glimpes of someone whom they admired, or loved, or was in some way significant in their life. This seems horrific enough as it is, and indeed each character that witnesses this is disturbed. That which comes after is even more terrible, though. Marty is the unfortunate character in the book whose experience in this Hell is most exposed to the reader. His thoughts as he enters it are as follows:

Arms spread before him like a blind man on a cliff-edge, he reeled, looking for some point of security. His wasn’t the adventure he’d thought it would be; it was nothing. Nothing is essential. Once stepped into, this boundlessness nowhere had neither distance nor depth, north nor south. And everything outside it – the stairs, the landing, the stairs below that, the hallway, Carys – all of it was like a fabrication. A dream of palpability, not a true place. There was no true place but here. All he’d lived and experienced, all he’d taken joy in, taken pain in, it was insubstantial. Passion was dust. Optimism, self-deception. He doubted now even the memory of senses: the textures, the temperatures. Colour, form, pattern. All diversions – games the mind had invented to disguise this unbearable zero. And why not? Looking too long into the abyss would madden a man. (Barker, 381)

With no senses to guide him, he is utterly lost spatially. Following this disorientation, all else loses meaning. This is due to the fact that one goes through life by sensing things – seeing, hearing, touching – and then interpreting the information. Without this, Marty loses touch with reality as there is nothing to interpret. Such is the power of Mamoulian’s Hell.

Carys’ and Whitehead’s feelings towards this Hell is very telling as well. It should be noted that Carys must be considered seperately from the norm, as she has certain advantages over the average person in relation to Mamoulian and his Hell. Carys was taken care of by Mamoulian as a small child. As a result, some of him was passed onto her and she became a ‘sensitive’; she has no fear for his Hell because of this familiarity. Instead, she welcomes it, invites it in by escaping through the use of heroin. “She wasn’t prone to believing that the world was all in the mind. That’s why she’d gone to H: the world was too real.” (Barker, 384) While this shows that Carys is unusual, it also shows the quality which makes this Hell terrible – it’s unreality. It forces the world to become unsure, fuzzy, pushing the damned into their mind. Their mind is equally as unsure and fuzzy because of sensory deprivation. This vicious cycle continues as time elapses in Hell. Carys’ father, Joseph Whitehead, is also unusual because of a close relationship to Mamoulian. Like Carys, he has a lesser fear of Hell, although it is shown that the fear exists still. At first he says that he does not fear it at all. In fact, he is quite in defiance of it. “There is no Hell, the old man thought, putting the boudoir and its charred Casanova out of his mind. Or else Hell is a room and a bed and appetite everlasting, and [he's] been there and seen its rapture and, if the worst comes to the worst, [Joseph] will endure it” (Barker, 336). His behavior and the unease exhibited in the novel prove otherwise, however. He confesses early in the novel that

[He] can bear the night itself. It’s not pleasant, but it’s not unambiguous. It’s twilight [he] can’t deal with. That’s when the bad sweats come over me. When the light’s going and nothing’s quite real anymore, quite solid. Just forms. Things that once had shapes…
It had been winter of such evenings: colourless drizzles that eroded distance and killed sound; weeks on end of uncertain light, when troubled dawn became troubled dusk with no day intervening. (Barker, 57)

This fear, although he does not relate it to Mamoulian and his Hell directly, bears a striking resemblance to it. The ambiguity and eradication of purposeful environmental input are similar. Perhaps Carys can avoid fear of Hell because of her nature or upbringing, but Whitehead is just as susceptible as the rest of humanity. These two characters, who unlike Marty, have some kind of experience with Hell and it’s maker, help to further illuminate the nature of the horror.

To truly understand this manifestation of Hell, a definition and understanding of the contrast between meaning and meaninglessness must be found. Many philosophers have theories on this subject, the first of which to be examined in this essay being Sartre’s existence precedes essence theory. Sartre postulates in this theory that meaning, or essence, must be found – that it is not innately known or owned as soon as a ‘thing’ comes to existence. To create this meaning, Sartre says a person must interact with their surroundings and self. For example, a baby is born without essence. As they play with toys, figure out what furniture is, and move through life exploring their personality or self, meaning begins to form. The implication of this theory to The Damnation Game is that Barker’s Hell is without a concrete environment. Relate this to Sartre’s theory. Meaning is not given, it’s gained, and it is gained through interaction with a person’s surroundings. Now consider what this would mean if finding one’s meaning is a lifelong process. One would still be in the process of developing one’s essence prior to landing in this Hell. The damned then find themselves in an environment devoid of input. Meaning evaporates in this place, so their essence evaporates as well.

The above concept would be useless if the need to find meaning is unimportant to humans. Many would disagree with this concept entirely. An entire branch of philosophy, in fact, is devoted to this idea, called existentialism. This branch of philosophy centers around the notion that the most important thing in life is the fight for meaning. An essay written by Albert Camus, author and philosopher, called The Myth of Sisyphus furthers this idea. It tells the story of Sisyphus, who is damned and sent to hell. There he must roll a formidable rock up a hill. Once this task is completed, leaving Sisyphus exhausted, the rock rolls back down the hill. Sisyphus then walks down the hill and rolls the rock up again. He repeats this for eternity. This certainly sounds like damnation, a terrible punishment. Camus thinks otherwise. “This universe henceforth without a master seems to [Sisyphus] him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.” (http://dbanach.com/sisyphus.htm) In having his task and completing it, Sisyphus is not tragic. This is important to The Damnation Game as Barker’s version of Hell has no tasks whatsoever. Nothing to complete, strive toward, or build a palpable world from. Perhaps initially the thought of a grey world in which one languishes is better than an eternally useless and laborious task. To an existentialist, this is false – having the task is much, much better than having none at all. The plight makes hope possible, and therefore restores will. Without this, only despair can be felt.

Another aspect that makes Barker’s Hell terrible is it’s nothingness. Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher, offers some meaningful insight on the subject. A quote of his in particular is of great interest. “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if [one gazes] for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into [one].” (http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26964.html) This perhaps explains the horror of Barker’s void most completely. Nietzsche is effectively saying that when one battles something evil, one risks becoming what one is battling. If one looks into nothingness, one absorbs some of that nothingness. Barker’s Hell submerges one in nothingness, and thus one eventually becomes nothingness. Drowning in non-existence, one starts to ‘non-exist’ as well. It may be that humanity’s fear stems from this notion.

A more scientific, empirical outlook may be taken on this idea of Hell as well. Certain studies have been done on humans that underscore their need for meaningful input. Take, for example, the situation of a prisoner in solitary confinement. This prisoner is locked in a cell without entertainment or fellow prisoners. They are kept in there for the majority of the day. With such a deprivation of environmental stimulation, prisoners often have mental and emotional crises. A medical paper explains a loss of touch with reality thus:

When inputs are all coming from the same place, parts of the unconscious experience the same inputted information differently because they are all interpreting the information with different randomness. The randomness helps us make connections between sets of inputted information and our own prior knowledge to ultimately create a story that explains our situation and surroundings. [...]

In an environment with very minimal stimulation [...] the randomness with which the unconscious explores the environment continues, although it is unclear whether randomization increases when fewer stimuli are reaching the brain. [...] [When] the brain is not receiving much input from the environment, there is little information based in reality that the unconscious can focus on or try to interpret.

(http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1898)

The above relates closely to Marty’s first few moments in Hell. As all mental inputs vanish, so does his grasp on reality because there isn’t the continual flow of information being given by his environment. Reality stops being verified, so reality begins to look false, unstable. Another medical journal worth noting is one written by Stuart Grassian. It outlines the effects of solitary confinement in prisons. The effects range from psychosis to depression to suicide attempts to hypersensitivity to stimuli. Some inmates also cease to care for appearance and surroundings. This relates much to Marty’s experience in Hell once again. After a short period of time, he simply gives up. “No need to go, he thought; nothing to lose if [he stays] here and the grey comes again.” (Barker, 387) Taking into account that this Hell does not even involve the input of 4 walls and a light, as one would find in the solitary confinement cell of a prison, the possibility of the ensuing torture to the damned is incredible.

A second example of a situation involving sensory deprivation and humans is that of the soundless room. Researchers for Microsoft have created an entirely soundless room so they may improve teleconferencing and auditory technology. Every aspect of the room has been controlled – the walls, the air ducts, even the distance from the room to the other rooms in the building. What is created is a room with the most minimal amount of auditory stimuli – not even vibrations from other activity can be felt. The effect of this room on a person placed in it is, as seems to be the pattern with sensory deprivation, a hallucination. People begin to hear things which do not exist or they tune into the minute sounds of their own body. Some even experience dizziness. One of the engineers, “Tashev noted that [the participants’] brains were simply hungry for information. As pattern deciphering machines, [humans] crave input — even when there is none.” (http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/03/inside-microsof.html) Imagine now this coupled with the above situation of solitary confinement. The idea of this utterly complete oppression of sensory stimuli is even to the bravest of hearts terrifying. Marty’s mind and will in this situation disintegrates in a matter of minutes.

He had fallen to his knees; what was left of his self-preservation was a tattered and hopeless thought, grey on grey. Even the voice had stopped now. It was bored with the banter. [...] Nothing is essential, it had said, and shown him the why and how; or rather dug up that part of him that had known all along.[...] He lay down, not certain if he was alive or dead, if the man who would presently come would kill him or resurrect him: only certain that to lie down was easiest, in this, the emptiest of all worlds. (Barker, 383)

Clive Barker presents his readers with an interesting picture that goes against the conventional. The usual representations of Hell – a fiery place under the world’s feet where the damned endure eternal agony – is quite opposite to what he proposes. The Damnation Game paints an image of the damned stumbling through a fog, utterly alone and without his senses. Perhaps, as Barker explains, this is more fitting. Historically, the void was considered heretical as there was no God to be found in it. Being a book not set in the context of religion, there is no God mentioned in this void. Nor, for that matter, is anything else. This highlights very effectively the profound fear that humans have of complete solitariness and meaninglessness. When Nothing becomes essential, as the novel’s favourite adage goes, a person to their core is proven to be without a reason. And this, unarguably, is Hell.

Bibliography

Print:

Barker, Clive. The Damnation Game. London: Sphere, 2007.

Polarizations and Conflicts
(just words below, proper formatting in .doc above)

Literary Criticism Take Home Test

Polarizations and Conflicts

By: Ilayda Williamson

For: Mr. Murray

ENG4UE-02

October 28, 2008

The fastest, the strongest, the richest, the rarest. The human society is one obsessed with the ultimate best. Humans strive to perfect their bodies and careers to ‘come out on top’ – and then compile lists of records of the furthest they could push. It is not surprising then that human society has an infatuation with mythical superhuman figures – be they gods, spirits or comic book super heroes. They represent an extreme – the perfection in some area.

The movie Unbreakable, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, reflects this obsession with comic book super heroes in particular. More than this, it looks into the cause and effect of conflicts because of polarization of human ability, and how being at polar opposites affects a relationship with society. The movie features two characters – one who sustains injuries from a simple fall, and one, as the title suggests, who cannot sustain injuries in almost any situation. Because the movie is an insight on human conflict, the literary criticism mimesis and scapegoating can easily be applied to de-construct this movie. Acquisitive mimesis, the traditional theory of mimesis in art, and scapegoating can all be isolated and examined in the film Unbreakable.

Mimesis has many definitions, all pertaining to different fields of knowledge. The definition Plato and Aristotle devised in Ancient Greece is that it is an imitation of life in art. It is the opposite of diegesis, which is the perfect retelling of what actually occurred. To clarify, diegesis is to mimesis as history is to art, as a newspaper article is to a poem. Both have their uses, although some people are wary of life represented mimetically in art. What they do not realize is that reality may be ‘shown’ just as accurately as it is told. The artful additions do not take away from the truth, merely draw a thin veil over it which one may still see through. This has been seen through history in cave-drawings, pottery and sculpture, for example.

This applies directly to the movie as Elijah believes something along the lines that the components of comic books – the heroes, villains, and conflicts – are in fact real. Elijah explains as so: “I believe that comics, just at their core now… have a truth. They are depicting what someone, somewhere felt or experienced. Then of course that core got chewed up in the commercial machine and gets jazzed up, made titillating – cartooned for the sale rack” (Shyamalan). This correlates to Plato and Aristotle’s theory because what Elijah is saying is that what one sees in a comic is real life, but it is altered. Perhaps instead of a half-man half-spider hero swooping in to save a day, it was actually an agile young man running in. But one can still see the core of what happened – the problem, the rescue, etc. In effect, it is ’showing’ reality through story-telling and images, rather than telling it through a list of facts. This, explained once and once again, is the purpose of mimesis in art.

Acquisitive mimesis is, fundamentally, the want to acquire something that someone else has. It occurs when there is a discrepancy of power, real or imagined, between one individual and another individual or group. This discrepancy of power can manifest itself as a need to acquire ‘things’ that the more successful individual or group has – cars, houses, significant others, gadgets. This need can be felt by both parties involved, or the more affluent party may be completely unaware of this yearning. The latter is the case of Unbreakable. Both Elijah and David feel acquisitive mimesis towards the general population for the normal person’s purpose. Elijah and David are both outcasts. They lack purpose because of the reason that makes them different. In the case of Elijah, it is because of his biology – he has a condition which makes being a normal person extremely difficult. He cannot function normally in society, and he cannot have a true purpose other than to keep himself from death. David on the other hand can utilize his purpose but feels he cannot. He should use his talents to protect others and bring ‘justice’ but this would, to his mind, forfeit the illusion of normalcy for him and his family. He explains his turmoil well in the following to Elijah Price.

Did you know that this morning was the first morning I can remember, that I didn’t open my eyes and feel that sadness… Do you know what I’m talking about? That little bit of sadness? (beat) I thought the person that wrote that note had an answer for me. For why I survived that train. For why my life feels so out of balance… (Shyamalan)

The mimetic tension, which has existed from birth for both, builds to a breaking point as these two characters cannot acquire what they desperately want.

The mimetic tension formed by this long-harbored acquisitive mimesis is dispelled through the assignation of a scapegoat. The point of a scapegoat is to place the blame on something or someone concrete, rather than a hard to grasp, abstract idea such as world famine or a corrupt government. Who receives the title of scapegoat? It is usually an arbitrary victim, and this victim is usually completely innocent and removed from the situation. In Ancient Greece, scapegoats traditionally were cripples, or beggars – helpless citizens that were blamed simply because they were helpless citizens. Helpless, so they were unable to retaliate, and a citizen, so that the anger felt because of a tragedy may be purged through one of their own. This is true of the scapegoats in Unbreakable. David Dunne’s scapegoat is close to home – he chooses his wife as his scapegoat. The evidence found in the movie is their failing marriage and Dunne’s consideration of moving out. He blames his wife for making him choose to fake his injury so that he would be ‘normal’ for her, normalcy in this case not being a football star as a career. And the faking of the injury covered up any of his talents that he may have used later in life. His resentment is illustrated in a key piece of dialogue.

MEGAN Do you knowingly keep Jeremy and me at a distance? Beat.

DAVID Yes.

Megan’s face tenses. She’s on the verge of getting upset.

MEGAN

Why? DAVID

I don’t know Megan. MEGAN

It’s like you resent us David. Resent the life you have.

(Shyamalan)

When the need to cover up his ‘power’ is defeated and he finds his purpose, helping a victimized family, the scapegoat is no longer needed and his marriage recovers.

Elijah Price’s choice of scapegoat is further reaching. He scapegoats the regular populace. This is proven at the end of the movie, when it is revealed that he himself had been creating all the tragedies that were featured on the news. He desired purpose, he desired a place - and he played out his feelings of poor chance by killing others ‘in search of a hero’. While he may have been committing murder for some twisted ideal of good, the fact that he still killed these people without batting an eye remains true. He feels no guilt, because he places no blame on himself. It had been placed on the backs of his victims long before they fell into his disastrous rat-trap. And this scapegoat-ing helps ease his pain. He says, speaking of seeing Dunne’s miraculous escape from harm, “[when] I saw it this morning. I felt a part of the world again.” (Shyamalan)

The fastest, the strongest, the richest, the rarest. These all exist on the ‘best’, the ‘most coveted’ end of the spectrum of Western society. But what happens when one begins including normal citizens on this spectrum? Most find themselves in the middle – average people. Those who do not, who like Dunne find themselves at the strongest end, or like Elijah who find themselves at the weakest end, face a sometimes unending battle with society. A true pressing of the eye to the keyhole of the human’s love of bests and worsts, and the conflicts spawned from this love is offered through the application of mimesis and scapegoating to the movie Unbreakable.

Westley, disguised as the Dread Pirate Roberts in the movie ‘Princess Bride’ uttered to his true love, “[life] is pain. […] Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.” Based on this comment, Westley may very well be an existentialist or a nihilist. Franz Kafka’s short novel, The Trial, embodies this idea of struggle and the principles behind both nihilism and existentialism. Existentialism, pioneered by Soren Kierkegaard in the early 1800s, postulates that it is imperative that a being attempt to find meaning and identity in the everyday toil of a chaotic, empty world. Nihilism, initiated by the words of Friedrich Jacobi in the late 1700s, is similar but takes the notion further. Nihilists stand by the fact that life has no meaning whatsoever – no higher power; no morality; no truth. They also support the emptiness that existentialists apply to the world, but add to it futility, and that ‘death’ (not only physical, but moral and emotional) is inevitable. The Trial emulates these principles and shows a slow progression from existentialism to nihilism in the life and legal trial of protagonist Josef K.

Existentialism dominates the beginning of the book. As the story opens Josef K is accused and arrested early in the day. To add insults to injury, so to say, this is carried out in his own home and his jailers refuse to disclose the nature of his arrest. This represents the “[society] is unnatural and its traditional religious and secular rules are arbitrary” (http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/existentialism.htm) clause as it seems as if he arrested on a whim. The chaos dictated by existentialism is present in K’s perception soon after of the legal world -which essentially becomes his entire world during the proceedings. K’s aim to articulate, reason, and fight the ridiculousness of the trial further typifies the first portion of the book as existentialist. The setting of the sprawling court which is overrun by children, washing, and nonsensical architectural choices reflect these commonalities as well.
K. turned to the stairs to find the room for the inquiry, but then paused as he saw three different staircases in addition to the first one; moreover, a small passage at the other end of the courtyard seemed to lead to another courtyard. He was annoyed that they hadn’t described the location of the trial more precisely; he was certainly being treated with a strange carelessness or indifference, a point he intended to make loudly and clearly. (Kafka, pg 39)
The final sentence is of importance because Josef K.’s wanting to complain as well as the floor plan of the court is what make this scene existentialist. The important thing is that K. recognizes this, and will not stand for it.

As one can see, Josef K. sets boundaries for the irrelevancies of the system. He revolts, in small ways, and cuts his swathe in the sea of defendants. He passionately rejects the court, standing firmly behind his innocence. The existentialist principle of finding purpose and a sense of strength in being is what he earnestly chases. This can be seen as early as when he encounters his arresters. “”What sense?” K. cried out more, more startled than annoyed. “[They] ask what sense it makes, while [they] stage the most senseless performance imaginable?”" (Kafka, 45) Josef K. does not grudgingly settle down and accept the fact that a higher authority is exercising its power over him. He does not accept that he is, essentially, powerless by himself at his first trial. In fact, he considers the trials entirely arbitrary, saying “”…they [were] only proceedings if [he recognized] them as such.”"(Kafka, 15) K. was, to begin with, a nuisance, but also the essence of existentialism.

Differentiating between existentialism and nihilism may be difficult at first. Both concepts are anchored in the thought of anguish. The defining belief that identifies each is that, respectively, this anguish allows one to come to some meaning, or it does not. The middle section of the book, in which K. is in the thick of his legal proceedings, is tinged by a blending of the two ideologies. As Josef K. begins to slow down and sink into the mire of doubt and inept lawyers, his confidence in his beliefs slips. Coupled with the fact that both existentialism and nihilism are present during this period of time in the novel, the feeling of turmoil a reader experiences is explained. This is truly where the progression is obvious. One hint that existentialism still remains is his attempt to fashion his own petition.

To accomplish this K. would obviously have to do more than simply sit in the hall with the others and place his hat beneath the bench. He, or the women, or some other messengers, would have to besiege the officials day after day and force them to sit down at their desks and study K.’s petition, instead of staring through the grille into the hall. […] He recalled how one morning…he had suddenly shoved everything aside and taken out his notepad to have to try at drafting the general outlines of such a petition and perhaps making it available to his slow-witted lawyer. (Kafka, 126)

While unsuccessful, his attempt to ’swim’ instead of ’sink’ is evident. Not only this, but the act of taking matters into his own hands and placing the responsibility of his defence on his own shoulders keeps with existentialism. Both motions that Jacobi would have been proud of.

Despite this, nihilistic qualities are present in Josef K’s doings. Remember, nihilism states that morality is nonexistent in the world. One supporting example of this is K.’s inaction or inability to save two of his coworkers from the brutal flogging they received because of him. The offense was minimal, a mere few harsh words from K. pertaining to their behaviour. And yet, it was taken so seriously as to receive corporal punishment. K. has the chance to rectify the wrong done to the two boys but he in the end decides not to as it would endanger his ‘reputation’. At first, K. attempts to release the boys and explain honestly what had occurred but the flogger could not be swayed, and he soon abandons the two underlings excusing himself with the explanation: “the moment Franz started screaming, it was all over of course. K. couldn’t permit the assistants, and perhaps all sorts of other people, to arrive and catch him negotiating with this bunch in the junk room. No one could really demand such a sacrifice of him.” (Kafka, 85) This is in the very least unjust, perhaps even immoral. As Josef K. struggles between nihilism and existentialism, he sometimes falls and cowers at the feet of the immense task at hand. His own morality and truth begin to match that of the court – which is nihilism.

The culmination of the book completes the change in ideology. As the court consumes Josef K. nihilism overtakes existentialism, and his attitude is altered. This portion of the book exemplifies some nihilistic principles. One of the foundations of nihilism and existentialism is the lack of a higher power. The defining difference is that whereas existentialism relates godlessness with freedom, nihilism unites it with immorality, etc.. Josef K. takes a trip into a dim cathedral at one point and has an exchange with the priest, who also is the prison priest. This exchange cannot be seen as freeing, but rather as ominous. During this exchange K. never renounces God, but neither does he fully give himself over to the priest’s sayings. Finally, Josef K. gets restless and requests to leave, to which the priest asks: “”Do you want to leave already?” and “[although] K hadn’t been thinking of it at the moment, he said at once: “Of course, I have to go.” (Kafka, 223-224) The priest in the dimly lit cathedral realizes K. is losing faith. Alarmed he asks Josef K. if he “[can’t] see the two steps right in front of [him]. … it was the cry of someone who, seeing a man falling, shouts out in shock, involuntarily, without thinking.” (Kafka, 214) What these steps could lead Josef K. up towards is never explained, but assuming that height is usually correlated to light, truth and a Heaven-like place, K. is falling away from these. At the bottom? Darkness, godlessness, and untruth – the concepts of nihilism.

Nietzsche, one of the most famous writers on nihilism and existentialism, proposes that “[nihilism] is … not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but that one actually puts one’s shoulder to the plow; one destroys.” (http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm). The denouement of the book consists of what K. had been trying to evade throughout the novel – his final arrest and sentencing. It does come, in the form of two overly polite men in suits on the day of his thirtieth birthday. While they are debating who will do the honour of killing K, Josef K. has a revelation. “K. knew clearly now that it was his duty to seize the knife as it floated from hand to hand above him and plunge it into himself. ” (Kafka, 230) Although K does not seize the knife and murder himself, the shift in his frame of mind is quite evident. He is thinking as a nihilist would. Finally, as the knife is plunged into K, his death has come. He is unable to fight for his life anymore and this signals the complete death of existentialism.

Kafka’s The Trial is a tragic tale recounting a man’s journey from ignorance of himself as a being to ignorance of morals, truth and value. Placed against the backdrop of an elaborate court system, his trials and tribulations to remain alive and whole are underscored. With concepts drawn from both existentialism and nihilism, the journey is illustrated for readers in relation to truth, morality, death, and many other themes. A final quote from Nietzsche encapsulates the battle of The Trial perfectly: “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If [one tries] it, [one] will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning [oneself].” (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/friedrich_nietzsche.html)

WARNING: Following content is/has

• tirelessly naive and hopeful
• written personally (uses I, we, etc.)
• enthuisastic
• only 6paragraphs (and not in properTREEREEREEC form)I need to get it out there so I can step back and tone it down.

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               The three greatest humans who have ever or never lived, have no names for me. To tie down that title to one person, one face, one identity is too great a task for my Taurus-born-Gemini mind. The three best people to have lived, or never lived, are nameless characters. Those who have been, and those who will be. And mostly, those who bring life and truth. These three people expose humanity for all it’s ugliness. To bring man’s folly and triumph to light, and thus truth to light is a gift to everyone. My choices 
do not do the following, they embody it.

              The first is the writer. To capture life and put it on paper was man’s greatest achievement. A writer can catch the philosophical churning of a mind, the swift rising of a chest during a moment of passion or the full-blooded flush of rage. They can take these emotions, settings, and characters into a person’s mind and enable a reader to live as if they were there. It is great that we are able to escape as fully as we are able in a story, and that we may glean strength from characters as a cat gleans heat from a patch of sun. A writer is not a writer of just letters. A writer wrangles the soul and harnesses it to do their bidding, if only for a short while. Whether the writer is a published author or a closet scribbler is inconsequential to me. The brave undertaking of the act of creating art is enough to make them an admirable person in my eyes. So I name the writer one of the three greatest humans to live.

               The next greatest person is a person that will be in 15, 20 or 30 years from now. I think they will be the greatest because of what they will have to face, and in turn what they will do. Today’s world is brimming with problems, especially when one considers new global dilemmas such as the energy crisis, animal extinction, and exploding human populations. A future person will have to face these. Through my thick naivete and optimism, I know that some end will come, but I believe it won’t be an entire tragedy. Disaster will strike, maybe there will be deaths, famine, war. That the world will be changed is a fact. But through that sometimes comes profound understanding. The human ability to find love and light in times of tragedy is astounding. I think that because the possible tragedy is so enormous the findings will in turn be on an even larger scale. In short, a future person will fail. But they will tumble blazing with truths. In the very least, they will blaze with humanity – something which seems to be sorely lacking in today’s world.

                  The third person of my choice bends the image of a ‘greatest person’. They are not great, per se, but greatly influential. This person is the objector of change and acceptance. These are the religious extremists, the traditionalists, and the scared little people. I will not include the infamous (the Crusades, Hitler, etc.), because at a certain point human suffering is entirely needless and cruel and no positivity that may be gathered from the tragedy in retrospect outweighs the pain the victims were put through. I include the small objectors who steadfastly cling to the mast of their ever quicker sinking ship, serving as a necessary kick in the pants of society. 

                   Without conflict we would lack the fuel of revolutions. Revolutions not as an overthrowing of government, but an overthrow of prejudice and misconceptions. Revolutions need, essentially, passion. Passion in the form of anger, despair or hope. If there was no opposition, what would there be to lose? There would be passion, but the quantity and quality would reduce. Without these ‘great people’, we would have no foe to fight. The edges of our battles would become unfocused and slowly our battle against ignorance, cruelty, greed would become undefined, diluted. In 1984, Big Brother held meetings centered on intense emotion against the ‘enemies’ of the moment. Without these meetings, would 1984’s society function properly? No, for there would be no drive ((justification?)). Our situation need not be so extreme, no government-induced convulsions are needed, but our society is a dystopia as well. Without some aim, revolution will flounder, and necessary changes will never be made.

                   Let me ask any of my blog visitors three questions. One, has a piece of writing affected your life, significantly or otherwise? Two, did the generations before Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Susan B. Anthony dream for them? And finally, would you play hockey against an empty net? It has, I hope, and I would not. This, simply, is why these three figures are the greatest people who have ever (or never) lived.