Step 5: Don't Let It Burn

“A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so” (Camus 34).

The most unsettling thing about Albert Camus’ The Stranger is its lack of emotion.

The story opens with Meursault, our main character, receiving a telegram informing him of his mother’s death. Instead of emotion, instead of grief, Meursault does the unthinkable, and shows no reaction. He goes through the motions of traveling to his mother’s home, attending the funeral, and leaves immediately after. Meursault has no sadness, no anger or happiness, just an emotionless state of being.

Furthermore, while he’s numb to his surroundings, he holds no room for love. Meursault forms a relationship with his co-worker, Marie, but once again, the reader is struck by his emotionless reaction. It’s discomfiting to watch Meursault’s life displayed as devoid of love, uncanny as everything seems to be meaningless to him.

Camus juxtaposes Meursault’s blank state of living with normality. When Meursault shoots a man, his lawyer is disgusted with his lack of remorse, his lack of grief, his lack of any feeling, that which separates us from the inanimate. Meursault is not immoral he is amoral, simply without the ability to distinguish right from wrong.

This idea of “right” and “wrong” relates to love verses fear. Each emotion within itself is not wrong, yet what humans choose to do with each feeling can spin out of control, whether for the better or the worse. Is having neither emotion better than taking the risk of feeling something?

This I believe: no. We were created to feel, we were made to love, and fear can work in wondrous ways.

Theme: Fear and love may be hazardous, but it is far more dangerous to feel nothing at all.

Step 4: Set the Timer, and Step Back

“He thought of his family with tenderness and love. In this state of vacant and peaceful meditation he remained…” (Kafka 393).

Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is a controversial piece, each scholar offering a different interpretation. A metaphor is taken to the extreme as Kafka makes a point. Yet, what is this point he makes? What is he trying to plead, inform, ask of his readers?

Which is more powerful, fear or love? In such a mysterious piece, it’s difficult to find the trail of fear and love, as they intermingle, sometimes seeming to be one.

Taking a step back from the story, and looking at the bigger picture, one element seems emphasized to me: Kafka’s motif of transformation. Shocking his reader with the physical transformation in the opening sentence of his story, Kafka does not stop there. As the reader walks through Gregor’s eyes, we watch his family become forced to take on bigger roles, holding their fate upon their shoulders instead of their previous constant reliance on Gregor as financial supporter. Although at first they seem frustrated by the insect on their hands, Gregor’s family ultimately becomes stronger through their endurance. Yet, in the end, they seem to be devoid of love for Gregor, pushing him to his death.

But Gregor’s death is not a sad ending! Quite opposite, in fact, as he dies, his family becomes liberated and Gregor himself is freed from the burden of failing his family and constantly being oppressed. He encounters death with a quiet acceptance, dying in peace.

Conclusively, this is a love at the end. Maybe fear ruled his life, but the ultimate transformation was of Gregor’s fear into love, until he becomes so fulfilled that is life seems complete.

Theme: Fear empties our being, but love satisfies, forever.

Step 3: Put Your Work in the Oven

“Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites with the secret cause…” (Joyce 199).

Do we ask, what is love? Do we wonder, what is fear?

Joyce takes a step into modernism as he writes about Stephen, an man attempting to find himself, through overcoming obstacles, experiencing indulgence, and finally discovering his true question: what is my soul?

The reader experiences Joyce’s writing through a stream of consciousness style; instead of retelling Stephen’s emotions and thoughts, he causes the reader to live them. And so, we walk along with Stephen in his journey, stumbling alongside him as he travels, learns, and makes mistakes.

So what does he discover about love? I believe that it is foreign to him. He searches for the romantic love, even succumbing to the temptation of sex, but finally, he becomes afraid of the unknown. He fears fear itself, and as he runs, trying to avoid it, fear overcomes him until love falls into that which he does not know.

And finally, as an artist, Stephen discovers his need to take flight. To break this grip of fear, to embrace his soul, and hopefully, maybe along in the distant future, to love himself.

Theme: Neither fear nor love can be avoided.

Step 2: Finish the Ingredients--Take a risk

“We misread the landscape when we think it pastoral or pretty, there's a darker side to it.” --Andy Goldsworthy

Goldsworthy’s motivation lies in the beauty of nature—each day he works, he discovers new miracles. Simple delights, like the smooth, weathered surface of the river stones, or the unique colors of the leaves are his artistic muse.

He does the unthinkable. When we first started watching the movie, a few of us muttered, “Who would think of that?!” Goldsworthy would string about twenty feet of leaves together, then allow them to float along a river. This was his “art,” and furthermore, a company had made an entire video about his work.

So what is his purpose?! This question plagued me as I watched the movie, he took seemingly random objects, and we watched him try to pile them on top of each other. Bewildered, we watched him try time and time again to stack these oddly-shaped rocks. Minutes pass, silence endures, and the rocks tumble again and again. Goldsworthy’s persistence defines perseverance: his passion drives his desire to finish his artwork.

Fear is all over the plate. What if things break, die, catch fire? How much money could he lose?

In the end though, his love for his work trumphs his fears and his “what ifs.”

Theme: Love takes risks.