Skip to main content

The Rebel



A warning before we start: Albert Camus’s The Rebel is not a work of fiction; it is a philosophical essay, the first of its kind that I am bringing in this series. Let me make a confession too: Camus is the only author who found a second place in this A2Z series. It is not only because of my admiration for the author but also because I couldn’t get a good novel whose title starts with the letter R. And a disclaimer: This book will put off readers who are not interested in philosophical and literary themes as well as style.

A rebel is a person who says ‘No’ to the prevailing situation or system. But that would be mere teenage rebellion. Camus’s rebel is a person who simultaneously says a loud ‘Yes’ to his personal set of values with which he would replace what he doesn’t want to accept.

Rebellion is not a negation, in other words. It is an affirmation of your own values which you know will promote the welfare of the human race. Rebellion is an act of forging a better society. A better society can only be formed if its old gods and icons are decimated. Jesus was a rebel; he replaced the whimsical and vindictive god of the Old Testament with a loving father. Karl Marx was a rebel who sought to replace the entire capitalist system with an egalitarian community.


Rebellion is not revolution, however. Revolutions are political processes which replace one dictatorship with another. We have plenty of examples in history, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution being two glaring ones. Rebellion is more like trade unionism than revolution. It is a correction of wrongs, not just decimation of the evil as anarchy does or a facile replacement as in revolutions.

The rebel is not a yogi; he doesn’t fall for the seductions of abstentions. The rebel is not a commissar either; he is not bloodthirsty. The rebel is more like the artist who questions our values and beliefs and suggests better alternatives.

The rebel forges better alternatives. So long as there is injustice, oppression, violence and so on, the rebel is required. The rebel’s dream is a better world for you and me. His mantra is: I rebel, therefore we exist. We – yes, the rebel is not a solipsist. He is not advocating the rights of any particular sect or community. The entire human race is what he wishes to hold in his embrace.

Let the rebel rise within you. Say a resounding No to the evils you see around. Say a louder Yes to the profound values that struggle to emerge from within you. It is only the rebels who can create a better world.


PS. This is part of a series being written for the #BlogchatterA2Z Challenge. The previous parts are:
1. Arms and the Man
2. The Browning Version
3. The Castle
4. A Doll’s House
5. England, My England
6. Freedom at Midnight
7. The Grapes of Wrath
8. The Hungry Tide
9. Illusions
10. Jude the Obscure
11. The Karamazov Brothers
12. Lord of the Flies
13. The Moon and Sixpence
14. No Exit
15. The Old Man and the Sea
16. The Plague
17. Quixote
Tomorrow: Siddhartha

Comments

  1. Sonia DograApril 21, 2020 at 7:56 AM

    Camus was brilliant. The moment I read the title I understood how fond you are of the writer. I haven't read The Rebel but I do hear what both Camus and you have to say. As you said a rebel has a better vision for the entire humanity. They are not of a caste or religion.

    ReplyDelete
  2. DashyApril 21, 2020 at 11:46 AM

    Rebels are the reason the world is being reformed slowly. But a rebel's life is tough. Most of us would rather recline in our comfort zone than get out there to fight the system.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 21, 2020 at 12:35 PM

      It's always easy to go with the herd and most people do that. To rebel is to embrace the cross.

      Delete
  3. Jyoti JhaApril 21, 2020 at 12:27 PM

    How well you have defined Rebel and Rebellion. Neither positive nor negative but what is essential to a select few. Great to know about Camus and his philosophical essay.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 21, 2020 at 12:36 PM

      The definition also belongs to Camus, another Nobel laureate in this A2Z series of mine.

      Delete
  4. Anagha YatinApril 21, 2020 at 6:50 PM

    Had Gandhiji not been a rebel of sorts, India of today would have been different, isnt it? Humanity needs rebels who let it breathe peacefully by pulling it out from under the weights of the dogmas of the prevailing system. Some rebels succeed while others perish, but not without lighting the lamp of hope in the hearts of many.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 21, 2020 at 8:42 PM

      "Some rebels succeed while others perish." You said it.

      Delete
  5. Shilpa GargApril 22, 2020 at 9:02 AM

    Thoughtful and thought-provoking book. Not my fav genre and havent read Albert Camus as yet!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 22, 2020 at 9:40 AM

      Camus's novels are fantastic, especially The Stranger and The Plague. I wrote about Plague in this series, under letter P. The Rebel is an essay which may not appeal to many. Myth of Sisyphus is more readable; that's an essay too.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand
6 comments
Read more

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af
12 comments
Read more

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv
10 comments
Read more

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation
4 comments
Read more