V-2 CROSS DAMON
ln The Outsider, Cross Damon expresses in a much
articulated manner the same sort of rage and dread felt by Bigger. ln Native
Son, Richard Wright takes the lid off social sewers of prejudice and
exploitation; but in The Outsider he takes the lid off the sewer of a
human mind. It is useful to approach the novel with
existentialism clearly in mind, for Cross Damon seems a clear
embodiment of the existentialist hero, if not its achievements. For the most
part, Damon is content to
let the implications of his blighted and futile existence speak
for themselves.
Damon exposes the myth by which men irrationally live. Some
sections of the novel are little more than existentialist jargon. Damon equates
freedom with power; while exercising his unbridled freedom he murders four
human beings and is partially responsible of the death of two others. Damon
casts aside almost aIl societal codes of behaviour only to realise in the end
that human restrictions help humanise man. The Countey Attorney is a kindred
spirit who shares Damon's sense of metaphysical revoIt but instead of violence
against society, he chooses to support the legal system. Unlike Houston, Damon
refuses to accept social norms. Neither man nor society can accommodate
completely free individuals, for they are threats to human existence. If Damon
is a victim of social abuse, he is so only by implications; but by graphic
demonstration he is himself an arrogant and
thoughtless animal, and nothing in the novel convinces the
reader that this is a fault of society. Damon is no left-wing stereotype of a
good man; he and society match each other in crude nastiness. It is absurd that
he is a match for those social forces
that produces him. ln short, Damon is a traitor not a martyr.
The Outsider is a clear formulation of Damon's worldview
during the 50's, as he observes unrestricted industrialism becoming the
criterion for aIl values. The
diatribe transcends personal level, however, attacking the
methods of totalitarism, the press campaign, the calumnies, and the ceaseless
fights setting one leader against another in the struggle for power, and
actually outlines the subject of the nove 1-a denunciation of the tyranny.
bywhich one man arbitrarily decides to play the role of God and control the
destiny of others. Damon symbolises the explosion of the social unit, the civil
anarchy that results from the growing concentration of power, the weakening of
faith, the secularisation of man, the advent of the Nietschean who has become
his own "little god"-all characteristics of the crisis in the hero, a crisis so
serious that it is debatable whether Damon is undergoing the throes of an
evolution or the agony of a decline. When Damon assumes the position of an
outsider he condemns himself to a lasting spiritual isolation. It has shown him
problems are never sold except through non-violent action and that the
individual is held responsible for creating his own values. That is the
metaphysical liberation he accomplishes with so much difficulty. Damon achieves
a
Dostoïevskian liberation, but he commits a fatal error in
trying to bec orne God and buming the bridges that link him to mankind. Man is
a promise he must not breakhumanism is the only solution. We deplore Cross'
moral weakness and irrational behaviour. Violence is in the centre of the
action aIl the time : there are
four murders, a suicide, an ambush murder, which ought to be
enough blood. There is a kind of love story in the nove 1, but a rather seark
and tortured one. His ideas are sometimes incoherent, and that detracts from
the substance and power of the book. It is in carrying out actions, especially
violent actions that Damon excels
making the reader see and compelling him to participate. That
sustains the reader's interest as does the longest and most obscure of Cross'
philosophical discourse. A clear reflection makes us feel that Cross Damon is a
monster! Murder is Damon's
most valiant and successful effort to corne to terms with his
feelings about the human condition. Cross Damon's feelings are thus obscure and
his behaviour implausible.
Damon despises the will of power that drives men such as Gil
Blount and Hemdon, but he becomef)ike them a little God playing with others'
lives. His multiple murders do not free him. The ideal of univers al freedom
demands the discovery or creation of norms that will protect the freedom of
others. Cross Damon fails in his effort to live auth~ntically. He dreams
ofbecoming one ofthose "men who were outsiders.. .because they had thought
their way through the many
veils of illusions", but the new life he creates and his
relationship with other characters are based on deception. Damon wishes that he
"had some way to give
the meaning of his life to others", but he fails in his effort.
It is true that bad faith of some degree is an indigenous part of his living.
The existential hero explores the question of freedom but provides no hopeful
answers, and the possibility of creating a meaningful sense of freedom seems
remote. He finally discovers that the egotistical exercise of freedom destroys
those around him, induding the one
person he loves.
Through the novel, Damon is trying to show his crimes are part
and parcel of the everyday life of man and that some men know this.
But that is not true. It seems that Damon is mocking us with a ghastly joke. ln
fact, he is driven by no
discemible motives-racial, political, or religious-even though
the author will have us believe that he is a rational person. There is no
sufficient motivation for Damon's violence. Actually, he is not an
existentialist hero but what is described as
the psychological man. A postman imprisoned by his milieu and a
bold, intelligent murderer can exist in one man but thë transition from
the first to the second (which Damon coverts in only few days) should have
taken months or years. The novel opens with the description of Cross Damon's
life in Chicago, his work at the post- office and his colourful conversation
with his colleagues. Then Cross makes his existential choice. Although the
suspense increases, the story is now lacking in
substance and human atmosphere, for which the hero's ideological
dissertation are no substitute. Not only is there ambivalence between Cross'
first and his second
life, but also between the chronological account of Cross'
action, which is restricted to conceal episodes, and rus sometimes verbose
theoretical argument.
The Outsider puts forth an unrelieved pessimism; it is a
kind of "treatise on despair". The hero seems to mark the lowest point of man's
pessimism, for he lacks
'.
humanitarian feelings and does not believe in social change. He
is wrong to apply the Dostoïevskian "tout est permis". He must choose
justice to remain faithful to
the earth. Even if the world has no meaning in itself, there is
something in it which has meaning : that is man. We do not condemn Damon's
revolt, but what we condemn is that his revoIt lacks humanitarian hope. Why is
he revolting if he has nothing to preserve? By revolting to preserve his
freedom, he shouldn't attack the freedom of any other human being. Otherwise,
he betrays the nobility and the purity of his revoIt. So Cross Damon's
metaphysical revoIt goes astray when it leads him to murder and evil. Neither
Bigger nor Damon's attitudes provide permanent solutions. Violence results
usuaIly in the victimisation of oneself or the others. Violence engenders
violence in an endless circle. Through nowadays experiences, violence does not
bring lasting solutions. The example of Martin Luther King's satisfactory
Montgomery peaceful demonstration results to the suppression of the segregated
buses. Nobody can justify the realisation of a moral end by immoral means. Such
a conception is dangerous. Violence appears the easiest means. Moreover, we
must not forget that the immorality of means influence necessary the end
itself. AlI in aIl, the use of violence and murder is the
avow of powerlessness of the person to incarnate real values.
Wright' heroes are obsessed with the ideas of transgression of
convention and the effects resulting from the breaches of these conventions.
None of them
ever has the least remorse of his act of violence. The heroes
find themselves in the violation, either through the operation of will or often
through circumstances. After their deeds, they may feel free of constraints,
fearful and guilty or indifferent. Then the immediate solution is flight :
Bigger flees as well as Damon. Whatever they do, they face the possibility of
retaliation. But Wright's heroes do not mind morallaw. They always stand on the
verge of violent responses to their problems. It is a sense of isolation and
apartness. As outsiders, they hover in No Man's Land between the
world and themselves. They are not guided by moral law or legal
implication of their misdeeds. For example, Dam°n. flees out of his free
will for a better life. It seems that he resorts to escape to show that it is
the only means left to men to solve their problems. Damon's tragic experiences
have led him to retreat into a state of pessimism, whereas the hope for a
better future and for progress prevail. Damon could have stayed in Chicago to
fight in order to solve his problems. He seems to dis cards and avoid the
danger.
ln Bigger and Damon, we see the prototypes of the heroes who are
ever to be angry, bitter, revengeful and violent. Out of their memories have
evolved a vision
of a hostile world. The design of viol,ence in the heroes may
be explained this way : their sense of the dignity inflicted upon them might go
so deep as to drive them to challenge the society by a whole series of murders,
symbol of their revoIt. But this compels them to practise a terrible
brutalisation upon others, and their portrayal confirms the image of the wild
man in civilised society. We discem in them a high frustration, a tendency of
aggression, an emphasis on physical insecurity and safety and a doubtful
identity. The heroes are often unable to overcome their helplessness and
bittemess. After their misdeeds, they consider their cause lost and prefer
to
flee. Only rarely do they resist, fight and die with dignity,
beaten in an unequal struggle.
Besides, closely related to their fear is a deep sense of
alienation from the society in general. The identity cri sis in them constitute
a dual alienation. Their
singularity, the height of their aspiration cut them off from
the world. The situation results in de~pair, psychic and physical instability.
Aggression is innate, an instinctual force that must be channelled properly to
ensure the individual's survival. Bigger is not an existential hero as such. He
is guided by pulsional violence, not a deliberate and well-thought decisions :
he responds to impulses. A real existential hero thinks out before acting. As
for Damon, he thinks his violence, but man's actions must be directed toward
beautiful values rather than monstrosity. He must affirm positive values that
make society progress. We thus reject these
protagonists who violently hurl themselves against the walls that
bar them from a life, they know is better life.
ln Damon, the bridge from Bigger Thomas to nihilistic man is
traversed. But it is Damon, not Bigger, who is the real monster upon human
kind. As a matter of fact, Bigger blunders into murder, Cross skiifully
executes it. Bigger's motives are guided by urges beyond his control; Damon's
are premeditated, each step weIl
calculated. Bigger desires to create a new identity; Cross
desires no less than to create a new world. Bigger wants to share in the
Protestant Ethics; Cross will settle only for an ethic devised by himself~
Bigger is the disgruntled reformer; Cross is closer to being a nihilist in the
Camus' sense. 1
1
To my opinion there should be limits and a meaning to our
revoIt and actions. There is for man a possibility for an action and a revoIt
up to his personal level. Any other enterprise much ambitious reveals
contradictions. The Absolute cannot be invented by a single man through
History. It is a common achievement of the whole humanity. Màn is able
to readjust anything which is wrong in
Creation. ln his highest effort, he can only reduce
arithmetically the evils in the world, but injustice and sufferance will always
remain and be scandaIs for men.
The "why" of Damon is an everlasting question to be asked by
every generation of men. RevoIt will stop with the last man on the earth.
Hence, we must leam how to live and die, how to be a man. Otherwise, we are
proclaiming a total dereliction for man in a world there is no God to lead his
actions. How can we conceive a world where everything is permitted to man? ln
this way, it is clear that each man would
make his law and would impose it on the others. Henceforth,
humanity would become a tragic theatre where the strongest one devours the
weakest one.
Existentialism is an humanism, and our revoIt must help
humanity.
é~ 1- "A nihilist is not one who believes in
nothing" writes Albert Camus "he simply does not believe in what exists at
the
moment"
CHAPTER VI
WRIGHT'S AMBIVALENT EXISTENTIALISM
Literature is the conscious or unconscious expression of the
author's choices, obsessions and problems. It is a search for a certain inner
solution to existence. The heroes are thus chosen according to the views that
the writer wants to express; their creation defines and qualifies his
originality. Therefore, the heroes usually mirror the experiences of their
creator; his scar can be found on each of them. ln the
creator to creature relation, the author appears himself in the
front rame
Throughout the illustration of existentialism in Native Son
and The Outsider, we wonder how closely the author identifies with
his protagonists or whether they only exist in his imagination. To what extent
Bigger Thomas and Cross Damon represent Richard Wright himself? We will find
out some similarities and differences between them so as to define Wright's
ambivalentI existentialism.
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