Comparing the Characters of The Stranger (The Outsider) and The Trial :: comparison compare contrast essays

Characters ofCamus The Stranger (The Outsider) andKafkas The Trial The characters of the chaplain, in Albert Camus The Outsider, and the priest, in Franz Kafkas The Trial, are quite similar, and are pivotal to the evolution of the novel. These characters serve essentially to bring the question of God and religion to probe the existentialist aspects of it, in novels completely devoid of religious context. The main idea macroscopic about these two characters is that they are both the last ones seen by the protagonists, Mearsault and K., both non-believers in the word of the lord. Whereas the chaplain in The Outsider tries to make Mearsault believe in the mankind of god, the priest tries to warn and explain to K. what will happen to him. The reason the chaplain is the last one to see Mearsault is becasue its his job to let the prisioners rescue a last-place shot at redemption before they are executed. The reason that K. meets with the priest is out of advice given to him by someo ne, and he is the last character that he shows K. interacting with (although it magnate be true that K. meets and interacts with other people after the meeting, but they are neither mentioned nor seeable later on). The priest doesnt try and make K. avow or anything of the sort, he is mainly there to converse with the character, his religious position is almost put to no use. The existentialist view of religion is that humans have been alienated from god, from each other, and so forth. In the novel Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the christian idea of salvation through suffering is omnipresent throughout the novel. What is visible with The Trial and The Outsider is that they dont touch on the aspect of religion much throughout the story (The Outsider has bits and pieces of it appearing in his screw up examinations but they are used more to mock than in an analitical sense). The presence of these two characters at the end of the novel serves to cover all the existentia list areas cognize to existemtialists (although it is doubtful whether the authors consciously attempted to make the characters present because of any existentialist rules they had to follow). The characters are required to structure the novels, beside the obvious existentialist areas.