Priest And Chaplain Essay, Research Paper

Priest and Chaplain The characters of the chaplain, in Albert Camus The Outsider,and the priest, in Franz Kafka s The Trial, are quite similar, and arepivotal to the development of the novel. These characters serveessentialy to bring the question of God and religion to probe theexistentialist aspects of it, in novels completely devoid of religiouscontext. The main idea visible about these two characters is that theyare both the last ones seen by the protagonists, Mearsault and K., bothnon-believers in the word of the lord. Whereas the chaplain in TheOutsider tries to make Mearsault believe in the existence of god, thepriest tries to warn and explain to K. what will happen to him. The reason the chaplain is the last one to see Mearsault isbecasue it s his job to let the prisioners have a final shot atredemption before they are executed. The reason that K. meets with thepriest is out of advice given to him by someone, and he is the lastcharacter that he shows K. interacting with (although it might be truethat K. meets and interacts with other people after the meeting, butthey are neither mentioned nor visible later on). The priest doesn t tryand make K. confess or anything of the sort, he is mainly there toconverse with the character, his religious position is almost put to nouse. The existentialist view of religion is that humans have been

alienated from god, from each other, and so forth. In the novel Crimeand Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the christian idea of salvationthrough suffering is omnipresent throughout the novel. What is visiblewith The Trial and The Outsider is that they don t touch on the aspectof religion much throughout the story (The Outsider has bits and piecesof it appearing in his cross examinations but they are used more to mockthan in an analitical sense). The presence of these two characters atthe end of the novel serves to cover all the existentialist areas knownto existemtialists (although it is doubtful whether the authorsconsciously attempted to make the character s present because of anyexistentialist rules they had to follow). The characters are required to structure the novels, beside theobvious existentialist areas. The characters are there to let theprotagonist s blow off some steam. In all the beaurocracy, confusion,and incompetence these two remain as the only ones that understand thepredicament of the protaganists. They actually seem to understand whatthe protagonists are going through. The priest is more direct, yetsymbolic, with K., telling him a story laden with symbolism and tellinghim what he s about to go through. The chaplain tries to take advantageof what he understands about Mearsault, and take control of his ideas inhis final moments.