The theme of the World Literature text is 'the outsider'. Compare the ways in which Mersault, Antigone and Gregor may be defined by that term
The theme of the World Literature text is ‚the outsider’. Compare the ways in which Mersault, Antigone and Gregor may be defined by that term
In every society there is an outsider, a person who stands out amongst the crowd, someone who does not fit in with the norm. Most of the time it is obvious who the outsider in a group is, but sometimes it takes a deeper look into the personality and characteristics of a person to see the traits that make the person an Outsider. The characters that will be compared are Mersault from Camus’s “The Outsider”, Sophocles's Antigone and Gregor Samsa from Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Each of these characters is portrayed as an outsider in their own society. In some of the texts it is obvious which ways make the characters an outsider, in others there are more subtle ways that influence the reader into seeing the character as an outsider. The authors combine their own writing techniques, the characteristics of the characters and the norms of the society to define the characters as outsiders. To compare the ways in which Mersault, Antigone and Gregor can be defined by the term, the outsider, we must first look at the writing techniques that their creators use, then the personal characteristics that define their personalities and actions and last of all the depiction of the societies in which they live and how they impact the reader’s perception of characters.
The writing techniques differ throughout the texts especially since Sophocles’s Antigone is a play. One of the common techniques that the authors use is contrasting their main characters with minor characters in the texts showing the reader/ audience, the extent to which the character is an outsider. This happens in “The Outsider” when Camus confronts Mersault with two very different and strange characters, Raymond who is emotional and irrational, and the man with the dog who is slightly insane and suffers deeply when he loses the dog, which he says he hates. The characters confront Mersault and give a greater look into the personality of the antagonist. Sophocles also uses this technique; he contrasts Antigone to her sister Ismene. It is only possible to this via dialogue; “Antigone” is a play therefore all the message the playwright wants to bring across must be in dialogue or actions. These contrasts show us how Antigone and Mersault differ from the people around, and it also allows the author to show us the deeper personalities of the outsiders. In Metamorphosis Kafka uses other techniques to give us the impression that Gregor is an outsider. He makes it obvious Gregor is different by changing him into a bug, but he also writes about certain minor changes that make Gregor different and less human. At the beginning of the book when the reader first discovers what has befallen Gregor, Kafka writes it as if there is nothing absurd about this change, he gives us no reason for the change therefore giving the impression of indifference on both his and Gregor's part. Camus’ Mersault also conveys this indifference. Kafka makes it seem as if Gregor's metamorphosis is not the actual highlight of the story and that is just a fact that needs to be mentioned.
