Colin Wilson was only twenty-four when he wrote The Outsider. This fascinating blend of literary criticism, philosophy and psychology displayed an astonishing range of reading: Herman Hesse, Sartre, Camus, GBS, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Proust, Gurdjieff; some of these he would have been forced to read in the original languages.
He suggests that an Outsider can be highly intellectual, or highly emotional, or highly physical. They feel themselves set apart from, and superior to, the common herd of ordinary men. They recognise the futility of life: “The Outsider ... is the one man who knows he is sick in a civilization that doesn’t know it is sick.” This isn't a comfortable feeling, an Outsider will often long to be part of everyday humanity. But they can't. They feel rejected by the world, in turn they withdraw from it. They see that we all live futile lives in a prison, but most of can't see the walls; the Outsider can. An Outsider "thinks too much. Thinking has thinned his blood and made him incapable of spontaneous enjoyment. He envies simpler, stupider people because they are undivided.”
An example is Hermann Hesse's narrator in Demian who recognises that there are two worlds: "the world of a warm glow, clarity and cleanliness; gentle, friendly speech, washed hands, clean clothes, and proper behaviour ... This was the world to adhere to if one's life was to be bright and pure, lovely and well-ordered ... The other world ... was altogether different, smelled different, spoke differently, made different promises and demands. In this second world ... there was a motley flow of uncanny, tempting, frightening, puzzling things, things like slaughterhouse and jail, drunks and bickering women, cows giving birth, horses collapsing, stories of burglaries, killings, suicides.” Demian explains to the narrator that some people are different from others but that "People with courage and character always seem weird to other people.” But what can you do? “You shouldn't compare yourself with others; and if nature has made you a bat, you shouldn't try to turn yourself into an ostrich.”
In How the Light Gets In by M J Hyland the narrator suffers from insomnia. She would love to be able to sleep, like other people, but she can't; she wanders round the house at night watching others sleeping. This is a brilliant metaphor for the Outsider and it is hammered home: she is an Australian in the US, commenting on the fakeness of the society she observes ("There are so many healthy, good-looking teenagers, that a few crooked teeth, or short, fat fingers, suddenly take on the proportions of deformities.") whilst at the same time wanting to be part of it; she is from a poor family who has been placed with a rich one and struggles to understands the new rules of behaviour; her friends are all misfits (the sin-loving Mormon, the drug-addled millionaire's son, the Russian chess prodigy); when she gets the chance to be part of the school musical (ironically, her audition piece is 'Anything you can do I can do better') she cannot perform without alcohol.
An example is Hermann Hesse's narrator in Demian who recognises that there are two worlds: "the world of a warm glow, clarity and cleanliness; gentle, friendly speech, washed hands, clean clothes, and proper behaviour ... This was the world to adhere to if one's life was to be bright and pure, lovely and well-ordered ... The other world ... was altogether different, smelled different, spoke differently, made different promises and demands. In this second world ... there was a motley flow of uncanny, tempting, frightening, puzzling things, things like slaughterhouse and jail, drunks and bickering women, cows giving birth, horses collapsing, stories of burglaries, killings, suicides.” Demian explains to the narrator that some people are different from others but that "People with courage and character always seem weird to other people.” But what can you do? “You shouldn't compare yourself with others; and if nature has made you a bat, you shouldn't try to turn yourself into an ostrich.”
In How the Light Gets In by M J Hyland the narrator suffers from insomnia. She would love to be able to sleep, like other people, but she can't; she wanders round the house at night watching others sleeping. This is a brilliant metaphor for the Outsider and it is hammered home: she is an Australian in the US, commenting on the fakeness of the society she observes ("There are so many healthy, good-looking teenagers, that a few crooked teeth, or short, fat fingers, suddenly take on the proportions of deformities.") whilst at the same time wanting to be part of it; she is from a poor family who has been placed with a rich one and struggles to understands the new rules of behaviour; her friends are all misfits (the sin-loving Mormon, the drug-addled millionaire's son, the Russian chess prodigy); when she gets the chance to be part of the school musical (ironically, her audition piece is 'Anything you can do I can do better') she cannot perform without alcohol.
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