The classical character’s pattern of life: born, live, die. If they lived well, they went
to a peaceful paradise. If not, they suffered for eternity. That is not enough anymore. In
our modern world of literature, people are seeking a deeper meaning, purpose, and
satisfaction in life. They are not content with the ordinary and will not be bugs.
Individualism triumphs, or at least tries in this new world of chaos and uncertainty.
Everyone is scurrying about, trying to find a place for themselves, to be understood, and to
leave their own mark upon the world. That is the difference between new and ancient
classics. The characters become more important than their setting. Yet, society seems
locked in the dark ages, rejecting this change fiercely. Expanding minds are crushed
beneath the yoke of what should nurturing their imaginations. Dejected explorers retreat
into themselves to escape the torture of suppression. Many go insane seeking their
happiness. A contemporary paradise seems to be one where people find satisfaction, are
understood, and leave something behind when they go, unlike the fluffy white clouds and
golden angles in heaven after death classical idea.
If the world is allowed to turn and people just go with it, following the rules
because they are rules, nothing happens. No great sorrow is experienced, but neither is any
great joy found. They might as well be rocks, for all the meaning their lives hold. These
are the people from Room Four- Those Who Never Sought At All. They live and die and
nobody cares, least of all them. They never felt happy, sad, or anything, really, except for
a vague feeling of missing something. Real life is not as controlled as the Warder’s world.
Some trick of chance intervenes and stirs the stew. In Gregor’s case, he woke up as a bug.
His metamorphosis was quite a second chance to catch his humdrum life while he was still
young. Unfortunately, Gregor never saw the light. In fact, he never even wondered that
he was a bug, or tried to do anything about it. He died and nobody really cared. Modern
philosophy finds it outrageous that anyone could be that self-ignorant. Yet, people are.
They don’t know what they really want, they don’t know how to find it, and they haven’t a
clue when they’ve arrived. The questions and answers of life are cloudy, whereas before,
people expected the answer, at least, to be the equivalent of Heaven, with the Bible to
guide them. Now, people are just floating through space, clinging to anything they can
take hold of.
Humans seek an identity beyond their name. The need to express themselves is
terrific. The easiest way to go about that is to find a group of others like themselves that
people already recognize. The Prospectors were known to be treasure-hunting, ruthless,
and slick speculators. If that’s what someone wanted to be, they became a Prospector.
The struggle of self-expression is over. That’s the easy way out, taking someone else’s
name and using it for yourself. It is a time honored tradition, passing names and
reputations down to our offspring. As we ignore our personal heritage more and more, we
are forced to carve a new character from stone, completely independent of the past.
Neither Garcin, Estelle, or Inez blame their ancestors for their lives. Indeed, they never
mention them, accepting full responsibility for all that they are. They are modern
characters, each with a distinct identity and hazy goal. The Countess also refuses to follow
the accepted behavior practices. She, like the No Exit characters, finds her personal life
style to be futile in the direct method of execution. The difference is that the hotel guests
never find a way to just ‘be themselves,’ and the Countess finds a rather unusual one. She
goes mad.
All humans strive to express their souls, but few societies allow the necessary
opportunities for people to fulfill this need. The Countess cannot change herself to suit the
world, so she changes her world to complement her. To the vagabonds, Chaillot is more
real than Earth. It’s citizens are happy because they belong to a joyful world. The
Countess cannot make the outside world definitely happy, so she keeps her contact with it
in the realm of the predictable past. Living in an imaginary world is frequently known to
be a characteristic of lunacy, even when it is in self-defense against the cruel, mad world.
The world is mad. Information floats about and random events occur, known as
accidents and luck. People have three basic choices of how to handle this phenomenon.
They can ride the waves and do the best they can with what they get. A passive role can
be taken. Strategic retreat may occur. Withdrawal from the outside world in the forms of
solitude or insanity are spurred by fear, fear of the unknown, fear that everything they
believe is a lie, fear that it’s all pointless. Those who take this route are ridiculed, or simply
forgotten. It is not a respectable path, hiding from harsh reality, but, for some, it is the
only road to happiness.
Society would prefer that we ants march along, doing our assigned jobs and
gratefully die. Such waste is insanity. A single life, spent with no emotion, is a waste of
time. People only have one now. It will never come again. They will only once be 33
years, 11 months, 6 days, 7 hours, 12 minutes, and 8.987 seconds old. Therefore, when
dreams are put aside for later, it is sheer madness to assume that later will come. Yet,
people still wake up at age 89 and say, “What have I done?” They have few true friends,
no accomplishments, and are not proud of themselves. In this crazy world of chaos, it is
rare that anyone is remembered, and even rarer that they are worth remembering..
Instead of the old order patterns holding back chaos, routine and chance are now
swirled together in a delicate balance that allows for a fuller life, albeit a more hazardous
one. The happy are happier and the sad are sadder. It is a contemporary world of
extremes and cooperation. All of the Residents of Room One found freedom each in their
own hard way, but working together. They truly know what it means to be alive. That is
the satisfaction personages seek, the name, and the legend. They will never be forgotten,
so long as some human spirit strives to live in that mad place we call home.