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

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
12 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
19 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
15 comments
Read more

Octavian the Guru

Octavian was one of my students in college. Being a student of English literature, he had reasons to establish a personal rapport with me. It took me months to realise that the rapport was fake. He was playing a role for the sake of Rev Machiavelli . Octavian was about 20 years old and I was nearly double his age. Yet he could deceive me too easily. The plain truth is that anyone can deceive me as easily even today. I haven’t learnt certain basic lessons of life. Sheer inability. Some people are like that. Levin would say that my egomania and the concomitant hubris prevented my learning of the essential lessons of life. That would have been true in those days when Octavian took me for a farcical ride. By the time that ride was over, I had learnt at least one thing: that my ego was pulped. More than 20 years have passed after that and I haven’t still learnt to manage affairs in the world of people. That’s why I admit my sheer inability to learn some fundamental lessons of life. Th
8 comments
Read more