Coping with Guilt

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer discusses that, in the work 'The Fall' by Albert Camus and 'Waiting for the Barbarians' by J.M. Coetzee, there is a consistent theme of guilt. The writer notes that guilt pervades the minds of the main characters in the novels as a pervasive conflict of character. The writer maintains that each main character attempts to reconcile his guilt with regard to his inner desires and outward actions and does so with ruthless self-loss. The writer discusses that each of these novels is contentious of the human condition and the main characters range between absolution for inaction and action in a corrupt human system and the allowance of guilt and punishment for the same. The writer concludes that neither character truly comes to or even really seeks true forgiveness, even from himself as both go about their daily lives realizing over and over how cruel the human system is and how each one of us knowingly and unknowingly becomes a cog in the wheel of human cruelty and destruction.

From the Paper:

"The Magistrate is seeking self resolution and absolution by choosing not to witness the bloodthirsty destruction of these prisoners at the hands of the imperialists. He has decided to save himself the grief and absolve himself from further blame by refusing to allow the spectacle to burn into his memory the nature of the system he supported and aided for so long. The magistrate is the purest example of the imperialist "going native" as has occurred in so many other real and imagined situations, where the innocent and ambitious person is blindly led by the convictions of their corrupted system to seek out fortune in a foreign land and then comes face to face with the more similar than different faces of the "natives" he is bound to expel, kill and control.
"His ideas pervade him as he endures the public humiliation of torture and thinks about the ways in which he and his administration will be remembered. The resolution is that there is not great memory for the man and he wonders why he objects to public spectacles, like that of his own public hanging, which he is currently enduring."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Camus, Albert The Fall. New York: Vintage, 1991.
• Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for the Barbarians. New York: Penguin, 1982.

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