MORAL DISQBEDIENCE:
THE THEME AND ITS: USE IN FOUR PLAYS
(3F THE I’OSTvW'W IE AMERICAN YHEATRE

Thesis ft}? $516 Degrees ef M. A.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

8. james AIexander

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Michigan Stan
University

 

 

MORAL DISOBEDIENCE:
THE THEME AND ITS USE IN FOUR PLAYS.

OF THE POST-WW II AMERICAN THEATRE

By

B. James Alexander

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Speech

1966

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION. C» O c l‘ 0 C O Q t C c 0
Chapter
Ic THE ISSUE OF MORAL DISOBEDIENCE o .

II. DEICIDE: THE RENUNCIATION OF AN UNSATIS:
FACTORY IDEA OF GOD: J.Bc e c . a o

IIIc REACTION AGAINST SOCIAL MORES: CRAWLING

ARNOLD AND THE PRODIGAL o o c o o o.

 

IVO RENUNCIATION OF CIVIL STATUTES: INHERIT
THE WIND O C O C C O C C O O 0

V0 CONCLUSION o c c o o c o c o c o _

BIBLIOGRAPHYB O O O O G O O O O O I 0

ii

Page

INTRODUCTION

I

U

I have a dual purpose in writing this thesis. I wi~h
to examine the development of an idea of moral disobedience
and then show how that idea works thematically in four
modern plays. There has not been a thesis done which
directly concerns the growth of this theme from social roots
to a fruition in modern dramatic literaturc. Related

critical works such as Brustein's Theatre of Revolt and

 

Wellwarth's Theatre of Protest and Paradox, dwell upon the

 

individual nature of the revolt cf specific writer

(0

, giving
less emphasis to the society in which these writers live
and work. In this thesis I consider moral disobedience as
an aspect of contemporary thought with four plays written
since 1945, showing how an artist's intellectual climate
may affect his work and how a significant, specific element
of today's thought is reflected in today's theatre.

While the interpretative function of a director may
not depend greatly upon his knowledge of the social climate
which fostered the script upon which he is working, it is
very important that he is able to find the single element
in the play from which he can abstract enough principles to
lend unity to his entire production. This discussion of
moral disobedience may be of interest to practical theatre

I

workers for this reason. The plays I have chosen are all
held by a single spine--the struggle of a man to establish
a higher good. In each case the elements affecting the
man's methods were different, and each play exemplifies
one of the possible areas in which the morally disobedient
man can assert his sense of higher good. I included

Orestes because the discussion of Crawling Arnold seemed

 

superficial due to Arnold's extreme self-conviction. I
felt that approaching the discussion from the vieWpoint
of a man who was less sure of his motives and less
capable of carrying them out would add a depth that had
been lacking.

I have tried to retain an objective attitude with
regard to the ideas presented in this thesis but my
sympathy lies with the man who is willing to be morally
disobedient for his ideals, and this becomes apparent from
the tone of the work. The terms and principles discussed
in this thesis have been used by Hitler and others who
have defined a good man as a murderer, but I feel that
there are elements in the nature of man which though not
quantitative are for the most part constant; thus I can
say that in the measure of ordinary men, the morally
disobedient man is a good man.

I define moral disobedience as an individual's
reasoned, positive reaction to an event or situation

which he considers unjust. I use the words "moral

disobedience" rather than the more common ”revolt" or
"civil disobedience" because the term "moral," implying
that which guides man's actions toward his idea of
universal justice, is more comprehensive and, in context
of this thesis, more definitive. I have consistently
used the term "justice" with J. S. Mill's understanding
that "justice implies something which it is not only right
to do and wrong not to do, but which some individual person
can claim from us as his moral right."1 Moral disobedience
is a positive act, an assertion of an answer or solution to
the perceived injustice. It follows the rejection of the
injustice with an appeal to an idea of a higher or more
satisfying justice. I have chosen plays which I feel make
use of this principle as a theme in the development of
their action. Only plays written by American playwrights
are discussed, so that the social framework in which they
are set is more immediately and thoroughly understood.
Only post—World War II plays are considered, because of
the unique impact which the events of that war had upon
the formation of subsequent ideas.

After giving a definition and discussing moral
disobedience in the first chapter, a distinction is made

between what I consider to be the three principle divisions

 

1J. 5. Mill, quoted by William K. Frankena, "The
Concept of Social Justice," Social Justice, ed. Richard
B. Brandt (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice—Hall, Inc., 1962),

p. 7.

 

of the concept. Analysis of each of these three divisions
and the plays which illustrate them makes up the subject
matter of Chapters II through IV. These three divisions
are: reaction to an idea of God which has in some way
failed the individual, reaction against mores imposed by

a society, and a reaction against statutes imposed by a
society.

The hypothesis upon which the thesis is based is
that moral disobedience exists as a strong current of
reaction to the events of today, and that it is reflected
in the work of certain American playwrights. The interior
logic of the thesis is directed toward the illustration or
elaboration of the initial hypothesis. The analyzed plays
are related by a theme common to all, and their authors
are related by the turbulent environment in which they
work and which provides occasion for moral disobedience.
This environment of unrest is not specific to America;
such writers as Sartre,!hunfldli Beckett, Bolt and Osborne
have considered the same theme. By using Sartre and
other Europeans as well as Eastern writers for reference,
I have attempted to broaden the base of my original
hypothesis. The final criteria used for the selection of
research materials were the strength and interest of their

supporting statement, as well as their aptness.

CHAPTER I
THE ISSUE OF MORAL DISOBEDIENCE

From the fall of Lucifer to the crime of Leopold
and Loeb, a premeditated act which denies a belief of a
given society incurs the most acid censure of the group
against which it has been committed. But if such an act
results from an adherence to an individually conceived
principle of "ought," or ideal right, then the accrual of
pain or alienation resulting from the transgression may be
justified and endured. The concept of disobedience for
moral cause has been discussed in literature from Plato's
Critg to the writings of contemporary philosophers. Persons
such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mao Tse—Tung, and M. K.
Gandhi have made much use of it in active social reform.
Contemporary thought and attitudes on the subject are
also reflected in the work of twentieth century artists.
From the polemics of these men we may form an idea of the
causes of moral disobedience, and also determine the
principles involved in a morally disobedient act. Since
an idea of disobedience infers dissatisfaction with an
existing order, we may begin by defining discontent and

its cause.

The perception of divergence between the perceived
real value and the ideal value of any important psycho-
logical variable--that is, of any variable which is
strongly related to utilitg or general satisfaction-—
may be labeled discontent.

 

If the ideal value which is sought is believed to be
within the existing framework of reality, then contentment
may be found in adjusting to the status quo. It is
possible that a higher value may be placed on agreement
than on the disruption of an entire system over a minor
point; however, that discontent which breeds moral diso-
bedience is more than a struggle to attain a compatible
position within an existing system. Rather, it is dis—
satisfaction with the justice of the structure, social or
philosophical, as the disobedient person sees it. Leaving
for the moment the discussion of the structuring of
personal philosophy and considering only the social system
in which the individual Operates, we see that

The concept of social justice is quite fundamental

. . . (to discontent) for it presumably represents

an ideal state of society from which the existing
state is perceived as a significant divergence. It

is this divergence between the existing and the ideal
state (regardless of whether it is individualistic or
collective totalitarian) of society which is perceived
as the motivation for . . . change.

As an individual becomes aware that he lives in an

unsatisfactory state, he may become more anxious in his

 

2Kenneth E. Boulding, ”Social Justice in Social Dyna—
mics," Social Justice, p. 78.

 

3Ibid., p. 81.

search for personal harmony with others in his society.
Eventually, since his ideal values forbid him to act
within their structure, he can only act outside it in
isolation and attain satisfaction from asserting his sense
of ideal right. In this way his ideals may compliment
his mode of living, for

This sense of justice is a product of the mind and

not of the heart. It is the result of reason's in—

sistence upon consistency.”

When the morally disobedient man analyzes the justice
of his society and finds it wanting, the quality which
drives him to seek out and affirm a higher justice may be,
as Reinhold Niebuhr points out, his sense of obligation
toward the good as his mind conceives it.

. . . this moral sense does not give content to moral
judgments. It is a principle of action which requires
the individual to act according to whatever judgments
of good and evil he is able to form. . . . Reason
provides the Opportunity for its expression by creating
the possibility of conflict between immediate impulses
and the inclusive objectives of reason.

When the disobedient man justifies his act in terms
of an ultimate good, he affirms something in the place of
that which he denies. This affirmation is the positive
concretion of his motives into a statement of a possibly

more just or ideal situation than that which originally

spawned his dissatisfaction. His sense of good was

”Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 29.

51bid., p. 37.

violated and he reacted in a rational manner. By asserting
an ultimate good, the morally disobedient man may be
reacting not only against a specific injustice, but also
against the absurdity of his life, as defined by Camus--
a life without hope in traditional values. He gives
himself hOpe by giving himself an answer to injustice.

In absurdist experience . . . the malady experienced

by a single man becomes a mass plague . . . this

evidence lures the individual from his solitude. It

founds its first value on he whole human race. I

rebel--therefore we exist.
In revolting for an ideal he is not rising from underneath
tyranny to establish a new political order, thereby paying
a tribute to his dignity in a struggle in which he is de—
feated in advance, all political orders being equally a
absurd in the sense that they generally are restrictive
of a large segment of the population. Instead, the dis-
taste of the morally disobedient man for absurdity results
in his seeking good--in this case the non-traditional, the
non-absurd--and denying the nihilism of the absurd. In
other words, he asserts his individual, intellectual ideals
over the politically-oriented ideals of his society.

It is possible that the reaction of the morally dis-

obedient man may result in the assertion of a sense of good

or higher justice which is universal in application.

 

6Albert Camus, Trans. Anthony Bower, The Rebel (New
York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1956), p. 22.

 

. . we note that rebellion does not arise only, and
necessarily, among the oppressed, but that it can
also be caused by the mere spectacle of oppression
of which someone else is the victim. In such cases
there is a feeling of identification with another
individual . . . (it is not) a question of the feeling
of a community of interests. Injustices done to men
whom we consider enemies can, actually, be profoundly
repugnant to us.

The idea of identification with another individual
to the point where an act of "sympathetic" moral disobed—
ience takes place has been dramatically illustrated by
two important, relatively current news stories. The
protest suicides of the Buddhist monks in Viet—Nam in 1963,
and the civil rights "Selma to Montgomery walk" in 1965,
are both instances of reaction by individuals to their
violated ideals of universal justice.

Though many of the Alabama demonstrators and the
Viet—Namese monks had not been direct victims of the in-
justice they protested, their personal sense of good was
inclusive enough to cause them to act. But even in these
cases true idealism or the total disassociation of the
ego was, by definition, not possible; the morally dis-
obedient act is one of individual conscience seeking
satisfaction by asserting its idea of the good.

This insinuation of the interests of the self into
even the most ideal enterprises and most universal
objectives, envisaged in moments of highest ration—
ality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable by—product of

all virtuous endeavor. It is, in a sense, a tribute
to the moral nature of man as well as a proof of his

 

7Ibid., pp. 16-17.

 

10

moral limitations; for it is significant that men
cannot pursue their own ends with the greatest de-
votion, if they are unable to attribute universal
values to their particular objectives. But men are
no more able to eliminate self-interest from their
nobler pursuits than they are able to express it
fully without hiding it behind and compounding it
with honest egforts at or dishonest pretensions of
universality.

In discussing the degrees of universal sympathy
possible in an act of moral disobedience, it is important
to remember the fundamental fact that the

. . . defiance of a community, which is in control

not only of the police power but of the potent force

of public approval and disapproval, in the name of

a community, which exists only in the moral imagination
of the individual (as the community of mankind for
instance) and has no means of exerting pressure upon
him, obviously points to a force of conscience, more
individual than social.9

Moral disobedience in the structure of a community
is important for several reasons. The first of these is
implied; it has nothing to do with actual physical or
moral change in the social order, but only with the
possibility of change occurring. Due to the viability of
human relations, no social structure can be absolutely
immutable or perfectly controlled, and if a man sees
injustice in his society, then his society must in some

way have failed to accomodate his individual intellectual

growth, for as D. W. Harding tells us, societies "may fail

 

8Niebuhr, pp. 45-46.

91bid., p. 36.

11

the members they produce."10

These failures of society
may be seen in matters of economic or prestige inhibition,
but an even greater failure is the inability to supply

and adhere to an equitable idea of universal justice or
good.

The disobedient acts performed by the members which
society has failed also have an importance apart from
their reflection of the inadequacies of their society.

The objector may frequently function as a catalyst for
social change. The truly morally disobedient person is an
individual who not only sees and speaks of what is to him
an undesirable state of affairs, but announces an appeal
to a "more satisfying" or "higher" justice. He is
asserting an ideal of higher good or absolute justice,
ideas which most peOple are aware of and would endorse.
Few peOple have the courage, will or interest, however, to
act upon their beliefs. Those few who will do so become
the morally disobedient men of this thesis. Because the
act of the morally disobedient man may be a reaction
against a tenet held by members of a given society, it

may attract other adherents who hold a strong common
interest with him, and who may have their attention
focused, by his act, upon the same injustice he deplored.

The act, in its capacity of defining an idea of a more

 

10D. H. Harding, Social Psychology and Individual
Values (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1953),

p. 67.

 

l2

equitable form of justice is very likely to attract sup—
porters from the ranks of the discontented in the society,
though not necessarily intended to do so. Circumstances
concerning the nature of the injustice protested, and the
particular intent, justification and methodology of the
act itself, will also determine the degree to which the
act remains homeostatic. If, however, approval is given
to the act by others it may become a social and perhaps
political movement, changing the attitudes of the society
and possibly its formal structure.

Since World War I, and the advent of what is called

by some the "Age of Violence"ll

and by others the familiar
"Age of Anxiety,"l2 the practice of moral disobedience has
taken on new dimensions, being given increased cognizance
by contemporary society as a means of social change. With
the deveIOpment of the level of education of the world's
people, for example, moral disobedience may be used more
than ever as an expression of dissatisfaction, for "a
growing rationality in society destroys the uncritical

acceptance of injustice."13

The disobedient man of today
is fostered by an age which has "a heightened awareness

of and an unusually deep pre-occupation with those uneasy

 

llTheodore Ropp, War in the Modern World (New York:
Collier Books, 1962), p. 236.

12Joseph Wood Krutch, The Measure of Man (New York:
Charter Books/Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1962), p. 17.

 

 

l3Ibid., pp. 16-17.

l3

convictions which are to some extent characteristic of all

n14

times. Not since the Middle Ages has "eschatology

been so popular a subject of discussion."15
World War I, with its horrors of unrestricted methods
of scientific warfare and its painful revelation of the
incompatibility of dated, romanticized ideas with modern
reality, occassioned the first significant instances of
moral disobedience in this century. In the course of the
war, reactions against injustice became not only common
but favorably recognized and emulated by men and some
officers in the Allied armies. These revolts were brought
about by "the cult of the reckless offensive,"16 or
suicidal attacks ordered on virtually impenetrable posi—
tions. The French infantryman was the first to refuse
the order to attack, finally bringing to an end this method
of waging war. More than a hundred cases of this "col-
lective indiscipline"l7 affected fifty—four divisions in
the allied armies' general assault on the German lines in
1916. Half of these divisions were French. Nearly

twenty-five thousand men were courtémartialed, several

hundred were sent to penal colonies and fifty—five were

 

 

shot.18 Fifty-five morally disobedient men, mutinous for
lulbid., p. 17. 15Ibid.
l6ROpp, p. 263. 17Ibid.
18

Ibid.

14

the sake of principle, chose the certainty of death at

the hands of their superior officers, rather than the
possibility of a senseless death at the hands of the enemy.
It is possible that some of them felt their protest
against an unjust order gave meaning to their deaths.

The events and attitudes which followed World War I
have a great importance in connection with our theme, for
they have imposed disturbing traits onto the personality
of modern man. The First World War had the effect of
cheapening human life:

. it taught man to take no thought for human life
and personality, to consider them as means and in-
struments in the hands of the fatality of history.

And since the war, humanity (has) remain(ed) mobilized
plunged to the depths in external things:
society, the state, nationality, class. Man (was)
made part of the objective world, and (was) no longer
permitted to remain himself, to have his own inner
being, to define from within himself his own attitude
toward the world and toward other people.19
This was of course not a complication new to mankind. For
example the situation of post World War I society was a
clear echo of the Middle Ages when the Catholic Church
dictated man's innermost thoughts. ,At that time, too, the
end of the world was always with man, graphically in his
art and literally in his death. Over and over man's
individuality has been captured and directed by an outside
force: in the Middle Ages it was his religion, at the end

of the First World War it was disillusionment and

 

19Nicolas Berdyaev, The Fate of Man in the Modern World
(Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1961), pp. l3-lA.

 

15

industrialization, cheapening his life and emptying his
soul. This situation of exterior direction for man's
interior ideas, while existing before 1918, was concen-
trated by the universality of the World War into an all-
encompassing characterization of the society of that time.
Enforced social involvement, and its reaction, that is
alienation, was more prevalent as an attitude in 1918,
among the world's educated peoples, than ever before.
While attitudes of the post World War I individual

were guided by externals, the individual himself was
categorized by an increasingly analytical age. He was
characterized by psychiatriasts, and grouped into
statistics and trend indexes by industry, government and
institutions of higher learning.

. . . rationalism can pervade a whole civilization,

to the point where the individuals in that civiliza-

tion do less and less thinking, and perhaps wind up

doing none at all. . . . Technology is one material

incarnation of rationalism, since it derives from

science; bureaucracy is another, since it aims at the

rational control and ordering of social life; and

the two--technology and bureaucracy-~have come more

and more to rule our lives.4

The more technologically sophisticated a society

became, the more impersonal became the inclusion of its
members, and its provisions for them. Jean-Paul Sartre,

in an essay written after a visit to America, observes

how

 

2OWilliam Barrett, Irrational Man (Garden City:
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1962), p. 269.

 

l6

. . . the machine (became) a universalizing factor.
There is generally only one way of using a mechan-
ical object, namely, the one indicated in the
accompanying leaflet. The American uses his mechanical
corkscrew, his refrigerator or his automobile in the
same way and at the same time as all other Americans.
Besides, this object is not made to order. It is
meant for anyone and will obey anyone, provided he
knows how to use it correctly.

Thus, when the American puts a nickel into the
slot in the tram or in the underground, he feels just
like everyone else. Not like an anonymous unit, but
like a man who has divested himself of his individuality
and raised himself to the impersonality of the
universal.2

Technical change became a fad, technology an end in
itself; and dialectical materialism became an accepted
philosophy even in non—communist countries (in the sense
that wherever values--in this case truths about the physical
world—-are found they are related to human interest, con-
sciousness or desire, and are therefore politically

neutral).22

In the more technically sophisticated countries
such as England and America, creative and philosophical
writing which first reflected twentieth century turn-of—
the-century optimism turned to middle-of-the-century

despair over the loss of individual values and self-
identity in a world of scientific generality. Joseph Wood
Krutch points out how this progression of thought is

illustrated in the work of George Bernard Shaw, who, with

 

21Jean-Paul Sartre, Literary and Philosophical Essays
(New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. lO9.

22Sidney Hook, Political Power and Personal Freedom
(New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. l9UT

 

 

17

Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, and then Back to Methu—

 

 

 

selah, informed us

. . . successively and after the intervention of
barely decent intervals: first, that all would be
well; second, that all might be made well; and, 23
third, that nothing could possibly be well. .

 

Literary and philosophical thought took two
different branches of the road to disenchantment in the
Western World after the First World War.

. . . now the exalted hopes gave way to deep and dark

despair. . . . The words decay and decline now came

readily to the lips of people who before had talked

about the heights of mankind. Seldom has history

seen such a sudden turn.cLI
This attitude was exemplified in the German expressionist
movement, which relied on an anti-war theme after World
War I, and became the first literate, widespread statement
of dissatisfaction with the world condition. European
thought became keyed to an important note struck by
Expressionism: subjectivism, or a personal interpretation
and expression of the basis of reality. Ludwig Rubiner
wrote that all that "mattered" was the "transformation of

"25

inner images into public facts, and Ivan Gold spoke

of the "final struggle" being "imminentz"

 

23Krutch, p. 19.

2“Ernst Breisach, Introduction to Modern Existentialism

(New York: Grove Press, Inc., l962), p. 72.

 

25Ludwig Rubiner, "Man in the Center,” An Anthology
of German Expressionist Drama, ed. Walter H. Sokel
(Garden City: Anchor Books/Doubleday and Company, Inc.,
1963), p- 5.

 

 

18

. . . Man's struggle with all that is thinglike and
beastlike around him and within him. He has penetrated
into the realm of shadows which cling to everything
and lurk behind all reality. . . . The poet must learn
again that there exist worlds guite different from
the world of the five senses.2
The depression years in post World War I America
interrupted a literary movement which was parallel in its
subjectivisms to that taking place in Europe. However,
the effect of the First World War was not felt in the
United States to the degree that it was felt in Europe.
There was not a sudden disillusionment of the entire
populace, nor was the majority touched economically, except
in a positive fashion by war-time industry. With the
coming of the depression, labor problems centered at—
tention on economic survival. Artists became known through
their concern for social reform with economic ends, rather
than for the search for individual identity. Subjectivism
became irrelevant in America and those artists whose
major concern was the individual's search for identity
expatriated themselves, going to European countries where
the philosophical climate was a closer reflection of their
own way of thinking.
The idea of exile, like the idea of the religion
of art, grew out of their need to sustain the emotions

which the war had aroused in them, to keep up the
incessant movement, the incessant search for

 

26Yvan Goll,"Two Superdramas," An Anthology of German
Expressionist Drama, ed. Walter H. Sokel (Garden City:
Anchor Books/Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1963), p. 9.

 

 

19

excitement, and to find another faith to replace the
one they had lost in the war.

Thus, while (others) were still discovering the
banalities of life back home, the young men who had
acted on their indictments and fled to Europe were
discovering a new language which would express
themselves and their own unique experience.27

While the seeds of discontent planted in America

by World War I remained comparatively fruitless for the
society as a whole, the effect of World War II was the
opposite. The Second World War, like its predecessor,

was in part a collapse of neutrality brought about by
American diplomatists for the purpose of maintaining di-
plomatic and economic alliances with the "Western Allies."28
What was at first a relatively non-ideological conflict
had to be "sold" to the American public as a popular
cause—-the suppression of an aggressor, rather than support
of economic policy. When the all-encompassing horrors of
the war were brought to light by its magnitude, both
geographic and technical, and by the inconceivably power-
ful weapons of general destruction developed for use

within it, disillusion inundated the American people.

Genocide as a national policy was one of the final blows

to the idealistic View of human nature being unquestionably

 

27John W. Aldridge, After the Lost Generation (New
York: The Noonday Press, 1959), pp. 12-14.

28Samuel Flagg Bemis, A Diplomatic Historyof the United
States (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1951), pf'850—
851.

 

 

20

good. For the first time in modern history a cumulative
effect of world tension was seen throughout the Western
World.
One horrible, unbroken line led from the trenches of
the First World War to the barbarism of the modern
concentration camp with its deliberate extinction of
millions of human beings. Instead of the expected
better world man found one where he was confronted
by the combined threats of atomic devastation and the
totalitarian state. In place of a just world order
there came "the brotherhoods with the aim of robbery
and exploitation of the non-brothers" which Nietzche
had predicted decades before.2
Portraits of Hitler in public urinals lost their
humor and rational judgements of this failure of history
became not merely possible but inevitable. The negative
results of the war were
. . . evident in national, political and economic
life. They (were) evident in spiritual culture as
well, in literature and philosophy, for even here
the true image of man (had been) disturbed, the
integrity of human existence (was) threatened.30.
World War II marked the first moment in history when each
human being was absolutely involved in the fate of all
human beings without regard to his will. Men became
aware that the events of the twentieth century if taken
as a progression could lead to the forced, total des—
truction of the world as it is known. The invention
of the atomic bomb and the incomprehensible horror of

genocide forced men, including the American artist, into

 

29Breisach, pp. 71-72.

3OBerdyaev, p. 21.

21

a concentrated search for self-identity.

to define the degree of universal guilt
himself. This community sense of guilt
the past over questions of slavery, war
and just as in post World War I Europe,

was again an idea of major concern. It

Each man sought
he carried within
has appeared in
and other causes,
collective guilt

was a re-application

of post World War I EurOpean thought, but with greater

emphasis upon the individual.

Probably, we will never be able to determine the
psychic havoc of the concentration camps and the

atom bomb upon the unconscious mind

of almost every-

one alive in these years. For the first time in all
of history, we have been forced to live with the
suppressed knowledge that the smallest facets of our
personality or the most minor projection of our ideas,
or indeed the absence of ideas and the absence of

personality could mean equally well

that we might

still be doomed to die as a cipher in some vast
statistical operation in which our teeth would be
counted, and our hair would be saved, but our death
itself would be unknown . . . a death which could
not follow with dignity as a possible consequence to
serious actions we had chosen, but rather a death by

deus ex machina in a gas chamber or

 

a radioactive city;

and so if in the midst of civilization . . . our
psyche was subjected itself to the intolerable

anxiety that death being causeless,
as well, and time deprived of cause
come to a stop.

0 0 O I O O Q I O O O I C O O O I 5

life was causeless
and effect had

(1‘ O O O 0 6 O O O C

. . . no matter how crippled and perverted an image
of man was the society he had created, it was none-
theless his creation . . . and if society was so
murderous, then who could ignore the most hideous of

questions about his own nature?

In post World War I societies, before "the most

hideous of questions about his own nature" became quite

 

31

Norman Mailer, Advertisements For Myself (New York:

 

Signet Books, 1960), pp. 303-3OA.

22

so important to the individual, the articulate man who
was troubled by seeming injustice sought universal
"justice" in universal organization, such as the Communist
Party or the I.W.W. "Wobblies."
Then we'll sing one song of the greedy master class,
They're Vagrants in broadcloth, indeed,
They live by robbing the ever—toiling mass,
Human blood they spill to satisfy their greed.
chorus:
Organize! O, toilers, come organize your might;
Then we'll sing one song of the Worker'sACommonwealth
Full of beauty, full of love and health.52
The period of disillusionment following World War II,
however, brought man to the discovery that "there is no
loyalty to any community or state or party or church which
absolves the individual from loyalty to himself."33 This
re—focus of emphasis from the group to the individual is
important to us in defining the difference between moral
disobedience before and after 1945. Thus far we have shown
that the principle of moral disobedience is a growing con-
cept closely related to technological trends and economic
and social events in the current history of the world.
After 1945, however, the phenomenon of philoSOphical change

gained greater importance and became a factor to be

considered in its own right, apart from historical events.

 

32Joe Hill, "We Will Sing One Song," Songs of the
Workers (Chicago: Industrial Workers of the World, 1956),

p- 33

 

33Hook, p. 222.

23

The strong response to writers from whom we have
quoted reflects in our view a growing contemporary
concern about man's isolation and alienation.

. . alienation is manifest in all realms of modern
life . . . its existence is not just the result of
certain accidents of recent history but exemplifies
one of the basic trends of our age.3
The contemporary world population, through increased
communicability brought about by war—time technology and
post-war scientific and economic advances, gained a
greater awareness of changes in societal thought and
attitudes. In the scope of this thesis, the most pro—
foundly effective philosophical movement to permeate the
intellectual atmosphere of this phase of the Twentieth
Century was existentialism. Though the grounds of
receptivity were prepared much earlier by Nineteenth Century
philosophers the greatest effect Of existentialism was
felt after World War II. Because of the growth of dis-
illusionment, alienation, the search for the self and
introspection of the intellectuals of this time, it
became true that
During the grim decade of the Cold War no intellectual
movement of comparable importance appeared. Exis-
tentialism is the best in the way of a new and creative
movement that these rather uninspired post war years
have been able to turn up. We have to say at least
this in a spirit of cool critical assessment, even

when we acknowledge all the frivolous and sensational
elements that got attached to it.

 

3“Fritz Pappenheim, The Alienation of Modern Man (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1959), p. 35.

2A

The important thing, to repeat, was that here was
a philosophy that was able to cross the frontier
from the Academy into the world at 1arge.35

The aspect Of this philosophy which concerns us most
is its assertion of the capacity and need of man for self—
determination. As we have seen, a knowledge of world events
was one of the elements which gave contemporary man the
impetus to reject tenets of society for moral cause. Ex-
istentialism gave his individual act of moral disobedience
a philosophical justification and rationale, particularly
suited to the solitary quality of his outlook.

Those singular men who have the capacity to recognize
the existence of a philosophically autonomous individuality,
which has the power of satisfying the need for justice
through self-determination, may recognize also the fear
Of modern society to confront the inner being or con-
science of the individual. Those who perceive this failure
on the part Of society also discover the resulting
dehumanization of all of man's conditions. They see that
"everyday life is imbued with a soulless spirit of pro-
duction in which work is robbed of its creative meaning
and man's soul withers.36

The formal existentialists ask for a society which

is concerned for the "soul" of the individual; a life in

 

35Barrett, pp. 8—9.

36J. P. Hodin, The Dilemma of Being Modern (New York:
Noonday Press, 1955), pp. 155—156.

 

25

which man continuously questions his purpose and accepts
responsibility for his actions, a life "which truly
reflects man's special position in this world.37 When
an individual has a sense of his own purpose and respon-
sibilities he is aware of making moral judgments upon his
actions and the actions of his society. The realization
that complicity with a given belief of his society may
perpetrate or extend what he considers to be an evil State
of affairs, impels him to disobey--if he has the self-
awareness which the existentialists propound. This
decision may have to be made in situations from the
Objection to a civil statute to a reversal of his own
habitual behaviour, for

Over against the organism with a passively accepted

super-structure of habits, which behaviourists call

man, the existentialists put the idea of the free

and responsible man . . . (who) . . . strives to form

himself in the totality of his life. He knows the

uniqueness of his exigtence and admits its over-

powering importance.3

Those basic theories of behavioristic psychology

which categorically placed man in files according to his
behaviour patterns were denied after World War 11 by

existentialist thinkers who asked for individual freedom

rather than unthinking conformity. Robert Lindner,

 

37Breisach, p. 5.

381bid., p. 189.

26

himself a prominent psychoanalyst was, until his death in

1956, a scathing critic of modern psychology. He wrote that

A few generalizations, a handful of suggestions, a
small bundle of tricks, a bag of catch—as-catch-can
techniques--these and little more comprise the
therapeutic arsenal of the psychologist.39

(Psychologists) . . . all, without exception, retain
as a tacit assumption the necessity for the individual
to adjust to the system they project and prescribe
they depart from what is presently the case with
society only by small degrees. . . . This is to say
that most such prescriptions or systems are predicated
upon, and unconsciously if not consciously sustain,
the status quo; they are ways not of changing

but of saving what exists.LIO

 

Neither Robert Lindner nor existentialist philoso-
phers per se ask that the individual inquiry into societal
behaviour begin with an attitude of rejection. "What the
existentialists aim at is certainly not superficial non-

Al but they do call on man to view conformity

conformity";
as a "necessary evil," because "personality forming is a
lonely affair which never should find its guiding patterns
outside."42 What the existentialists attack is conformity
as a fetish.

The existentialists . . . imply quite rightly that
although thoughtless conformity has been with man

 

39Robert Lindner, Prescription for Rebellion (New York:
Grove Press, Inc., 19627, p. 197.

 

uoIbid., p. 212.
ulBreisach, p. 190.
42

Ibid.

27

all through the ages, modern man can least afford
to make it an idol. On the contrary modern man
will have to fight such a conformity harder than any
of his predecessors did. First he lives in a
society which has at its disposal altogether too
powerful means of compulsion to enforce an unprec-
edented conformity. Second, those indifferent to a
truly human existence possess an enormous influence
on all of modern life. If no attempt is made to
recall each man to the duty of being free and
responsible, the result will be a society which is
a strait jacket of conformity and mediocrity.“3
It is precisely this attitude of growing concern
for the justice of certain values to which society conforms
that Lindner claims will work to save the individuals of
our civilization from an "illness in the sphere of ideas,
a plague in the realm of life style."1M Though he presents
a biting indictment of psychology which he feels seeks to
adjust the mind to a sick society rather than right
existing wrongs, he goes on to reveal how a radical re-
vision Of the foundation of contemporary psychological
studies could provide a useful science for the aid of the
individual in his search for the real inner self, which
exists in each individual. The method he advocates is
essentially a definition of moral disobedience:
reasoned rebellion. His procedure involves
withdrawing support from the adjustment fallacy

and declaring ourselves on the side of its alterna-
tive, rebellion; by rooting out from wherever it now

 

u3Breisach, p. 191.

uuLindner, p. 297.

lurks this false prescription for living that bars
the way to progress, and setting in its place the
evolutionary principle of protest; by exterminating
every vestige of this misconception by which the
powers of men are being drained, and basing the
science anew on the vigorous hypothesis of continous
affirmation for the vital forces of mastery rather
than static survival. 5
Thus, according to Lindner, if it is to become possible
for man to "affirm the vital forces of mastery" and over-
come "static" survival, he must, as post World War II
society began to do, seek to confront the self and "escape
history" through rebellion.

Because we have thus far tended to define a morally
disobedient person as a type whose sole interest in life
is centered in his acts of conscious rebellion, it is
important to remember what David Riesman says of any type
of generalized character analysis:

It is important to emphasize . . . overlappings of
the several types in part because of the value judg—
ments that readers are likely to attach to each type
in isolation.

. 0 C I I O I O O I O : O I O 0

Let me repeat: the types of character and society
dealt with in this book are type . . . .“6

Thus we must not forget that while intense singleminded-
ness may be a quality among significant rebels, there are

6

many peOple who attempt to maintain attitudes of rational

 

l451mm, p. 299.

“6David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (Garden City:
Doubleday Anchor Books, 19533, p. 48.

 

29

rebellion within attitudes of conformity. This is an
overlapping of type.

To expose the possibility that the issue of moral
disobedience is current within groups who are not given
to violent expression of their "private" ideas, we can
turn to the widely circulated essayists and philosophers,
as we have done, to reveal that man's position in his
society has become consciously or unconsciously combative.
The growing attitude that man is his own end and that if
"he aims to something it is in this life,")47 coupled with
the religiosity of modern existentialism which provides
him with a "life committed to the notion that the
substratum of existence is the search, the end meaningful
but mysterious,“8 gives a picture of a life which may be
lived only with profound conviction born of skepticism
and responsibility. Postwar artists presented a common
central theme: "against the ruin of the world, there is
only one defence--the creative act."l49 Since the end of
World War II was not seen as the end of the evil, another

attitude soon developed with the continued growth of

 

“7Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin
O'Bgien (New York: Vintage Books--Random House, 1961),
P. 5.

uaMailer, p. 307.

ugKenneth Rexroth, "Criticism and Commentary," The Beat
generation and the Angry Young Men, ed. Gene Feldman, Max
Gartenberg (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1959),
Do 352-

3O

contemporary thought and supplanted the first: "The most
beautiful (work of art) in the world will not redeem the
sufferings of a child. We cannot redeem evil, we must
combat it."50 Certain recreations of modern man hint at
his newly formed attitudes. Iconoclastic "pop" art, comic
strips that elicit critical response and analysis,
"absurdist" dramas and other forms of satire through art
have become the aesthetic representations or symptoms of
the mood of the age.

Within the last ten years . . . a generation has ap-

peared, writing in a different manner, with a different

purpose, from a different View of man in a melodram-

atically altered world. This new generation has by

no means taken over the whole of the theatre. It is

as yet mainly a force on the fringes. How long its

vogue will last and how abiding its influence will

be, no one can say. But its coming was needed and

its impact has been healthy.5l

As proof of the seriousness of the issue of moral

disobedience as it exists in actions of today's society,
a brief return to a view of specific events will reveal
Iseveral occurrences and trends currently in the news which
may be interpreted as instances of moral disobedience on
the part of individuals acting alone or collectively for
their ideals. After World War II, for instance, the
Catholic Church, for the first time in several hundred

years, began to experience voluble dissension within its

 

50Sartre, p. 188.

51John Mason Brown, "What's Right With the Theatre,"
Saturday Review, May 11, 1963, pp. l9-2l.

 

31

membership on questions concerning matters of ”individual
morality," such as birth control, abortion, and Judicial

authority.52

Conversely, the statute of limitations on
Nazi war criminals was lengthened, providing Opportunity
for further apprehension and retribution upon those who
did not choose, on moral or any other grounds, to disobey
or mitigate their orders regarding the disposal of a
race of people. Perhaps the most immediate examples of
the issue of moral disobedience being raised today are
the civil rights demonstrations under the direction of
men like Martin Luther King, Jr. Statements such as the
following from a nationally known organizer of protest
movements incorporates most of the tonal background of
this paper:
Like many radicals of my generation and unlike

the radicals of a generation ago, I have never been

particularly interested in theoretical politics and

the fine points of ideology. What moves me is a

sense of frustration at the specific abuses of power

and priviledge in American Society, especially the
curtailment of human rights.53

 

52"Religion--Roman Catholics," TimE, March 19: 1965,
p. 74.

53Phillip Abbot Luce, "Why I Quit the Extreme Left,"
Saturday Evening Post, May 8, 1965, p. 32.

 

CHAPTER II

DEICIDE: THE RENUNCIATION OF AN UNSATISFACTORY
IDEA OF GOD: J. B.

The practice of deicide has continued from pre-
historic cultures into our own time, and save for philo-
sophical embellishments has been little changed in
principle. James George Frazer tells us how man has the
tendency to refer to his god in human terms, creating an
unsatisfactory god tinged with mortality, visualizing his
god

. . . in his own likeness and being himself mortal he

(at first supposes) his gods to be in the same sad
predicament.

O C _. O O O G O O C: O O G C O c O O O 0 0 O O 0 0 O C

The danger is a formidable one; for if the course of
nature is dependent on the . . . god's life, what
catastrophes may not be expected from the gradual
enfeeblement of his powers and their final extinction
in death? There is only one way of averting these
dangers° The . . . god must be killed as soon as he
shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail,
and his soul mgit be transferred to a vigorous
successor. . .

Though in the latter statement Frazer refers to the human
embodiment of gods, his theme remains unchanged. An idea
of a god may be altered if it becomes unsatisfactory, and
another put in its place, or a totally different substi—

tution for a higher principle may be found.

 

5J4James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1935), pp. 26h-265.

 

32

33

When Nietzsche declared the death of God, he declared
the death of all traditional values as well. Man

could create new values only by becoming God: the

only alternative to nihilism lay in revolt. Nietzche's
arrogant I will was a desperate response to an absurd
universe. And all modern revolt, as Albert Camus

 

writes in his monumental study The Rebel . . . is "born
of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with
an unjust and incomprehensible condition." Con-

fronted with the same metaphysical absurdity, the
modern dramatist takes up Nietzsche's challenge,
assuming with the laws of modern necessity. Rejecting
God, . . . he adopts the posture of the rebel . . .55
It is not the purpose of this chapter to defend or
deny the existence of a god, but only to present more fully
the nature of a deity as it is seen by men who are prone
to either deny its reality or find the guiding impetus for
their actions in other concepts, rejecting an idea of a
god because it is for them an imcompatible, foreign "being”
without relevance in their lives.
Among those who follow a confrontation of an idea
of a god with a rejection of it, theology may begin with
one of three forms: the first is the acceptance of an
idea of a deity whose name is used as a poetic or
practical symbol because those persons who believe in it
"cannot stand a world without God, whatever this God may
be."56 The second form which theology may take for the

morally disobedient man is a theism which emphasizes a

 

55Robert Brustein, The Theatre of Revolt (Boston:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1964), p. 8.

 

56Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1952), p. 182.

 

3U

"personeto—person relationship with God," detailing the
conflict between "holy God and sinful man."57 While

theism in the first case may be transcended because it is
irrelevant, and theism in the second case may be trans-
cended because it is one-sided, the third form of theism
presents many difficulties for the man who would rationally
overcome it. In this form, the person-to-person encounter
with a deity is transformed "into a doctrine about two
persons who may or may not meet but who have a reality

58

independent of each other. This deity is supposed to

be beyond

. . the ontological elements and categories which

constitute reality. But every statement subjects

him to them. . . . He is a being, not being-itself.

As such he is bound to the subject- object structure

of reality, he is an object for us as subjects.

the same time we are objects for him as a subject. A59

If an attempt is made to transcend this third idea

of a god and at the same time retain a belief in the
existence of a deity, the experience known as absolute
faith is required. If absolute faith is present, moral
disobedience of the concept of a deity is impossible.
Paul Tillich defines absolute faith as

. . . the accepting of the acceptance without somebody

or something that accepts. It is the power of being-
itself that accepts and gives the courage to be.60

 

58

59Ibid. 60Ibid., p. 185.

57l§i§°: p. 183- Ibid., p. 18“.

35

Absolute faith reaches for a god above the theistic god
and is
. aware that if God encounters man God is neither

object nor subject and is therefore above the scheme
into which theism has forced him. . . .

The acceptance of the God above the god of theism

makes us a part of that which is not also a part

but is the ground of the whole. Therefore our

self is not lost in a larger group. If the self

participates in the power of being—itself it receives

itself back. For the power of being acts through

the power of the individual selves. It does not

swallow them as every limited whole every collec-

tivism, and every conformism does. 1
This concept of absolute faith can lead to moral disobed—
ience of the laws of an organization that is self-directed
to speak for a deity, as in the numerous cases in the
recent history of the Roman Catholic Church, previously
mentioned. In this example of moral disobedience,
however, the essential idea of a deity may be retained
while objections are made to the organization's pragmatic
application of the implications of a deity in everyday
life. Here the existence of a deity is asserted, not
denied, and absolute faith is not necessarily lost.

Deicide as such becomes possible only when absolute

faith does not exist; when the deity is first viewed not
as existence but as a being or object, i.e. the third

form mentioned above. This rebellion is Brustein's

"messianic revolt," which

 

611bid., pp. 187—188.

36

. . . occurs when the dramatist rebels against God
and tries to take His place--the priest examines his
image in the mirror.

By rebelling against his idea of a god, the morally diso-
bedient man characterizes himself in a very special way:

Conceiving the universe to be a projection of his own
personality, which can be altered or manipulated
through superhuman will, he imagines himself a Creator
superior to God, and destined to transform life into
something more ordered than the meaningless botch he
sees around him. As Strindberg puts it, through his
autobiographical character, the Stranger, in The Road
to Damascus, Part I:
And I feel my spirit growing, spreading, becoming
tenuous, infinite. I am everywhere, in the ocean
which is my blood, in the rocks which are my bones,
in the trees, in the flowers; and my head reaches
up to the heavens. I can survey the whole universe.
I gm the universe. And I feel the power of the
creator within me, for I am He! I wish I could
grasp the all in my hand and refashion it into
something more perfect, more lasting, more
beautiful. I want all creation and created beings
to be happy, to be born without pain, live without
suffering, and die in quiet content.
Here, where Strindberg imagines himself gigantic
and transcendent--assuming divine powers and re-
fashioning the world after hés own plan--is the very
essence of messianic revolt. 3

 

The Judeo-Christian God as a gging, who is therefore sub-
ject to denial in the manner described by Brustein, has
been psychoanalyzed by C. G. Jung. Jung's god-subject

is the God who is known through Biblically recorded words
and actions, and Jung's analytic emphasis is on the Book
of Job. He stresses the whimsical behaviour of the God

which causes Job, who "cannot give up his faith in divine

 

62Brustein, p. 16.

63Ibid., p. 17.

37

justice,"64 great difficulty in accepting "the knowledge

65 He charac-

that divine arbitrariness breaks the law."
terizes Job's God as amoral.
His incalculable moods and devastating attacks of
wrath had . . . been known from time immemorial.
His jealous and irritable nature, prying mistrust-
fully into the faithless hearts of men and exploring
their secret thoughts, compelled a personal relationship
between himself and man . . . (he ruled) instinctively
He needed (human beings) as they needed him,
urgently and personally. .66
Jung asserts that the Deity needs man because He can see
Himself and know of his own existence only as it is re—
flected in created objects; otherwise, he asserts, the
Deity is without identity—~alone. Jung sums up his analysis
by writing that he does not mean to say
. . . that Yahweh is imperfect or evil, like a gnostic
demiurge. He is everything in its totality; there—
fore, among other things he is total justice, and
also its total opposite.57
This is the God to which Job reacts, and to which the
existentialists and much of modern society, faced with
the inadequacies of the organized religions of modern
times, also react. The religions which speak of a deity
as a being, a father figure, cannot give universally

satisfactory answers to cruel questions raised by the age;

 

6“C. G. Jung, Answer to Job, trans. R. F. G. Hull

(Cleveland: The World Publishing Company——Meridian, 1961),
p. 28.

65

66Ibid., p. 29.

 

Ibid.

67Ibid., p. 33.

38

the seeming unreason of "the Monster that devours its

young."68

The disrepute in which modern religion is held by
large numbers of ethically sensitive individuals,
springs much more from its difficulties in dealing
with these complex problems (concerning the nature
of god) than from its tardiness én adjusting itself
to the spirit of modern culture. 9

The difficulties of submitting to a god as a being

are, however, more than the obvious struggle of a rational

mind submitting to unreason. With faith in a god as a

being, rather than all being, the acceptance of acceptance

begins to encompass not only unreason, but bad reason as

well:

God.

Job.
God.

68

As for the earth, we7O groped that out together,
Much as your husband Job and I together

Found out the discipline man needed most

Was to learn his submission to unreason;

And that for man's own sake as well as mine,

So he won't find it hard to take his orders

From his inferiors in intelligence

In peace and war--especia11y in war.

So he won't find it hard to take his war.

You have the idea. There's not much I can tell
you.

Rolf Hochhuth, The Deputy, trans. Richard and

 

Clara Winston (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 196“), p. 270.

69Niebuhr, p. 63.

70"We" refers to the devil and God together.

39

Job. . . 'Twas a great demonstration if you say so.
Though incidentally I sometimes wonder
Why it had to be at my expense. 71
When man realizes that he believes in a god as a

being and the vacillations and vagaries of living begin
to pall and he can find no consistent thread in his idea
of a deity to justify his existence, life becomes a "cold-
hearted drag of too solid flesh, too many slings and arrows,
and too much outrageous fortune.”72 The idea of a deity
is then cursed or forgotten; "just something placed in
your bureau drawer by the Gideon Society."73 The ultimate
ecstasy which is left after the denial of a god, in fact
the only emotion which could approach the religious
freedom through ”salvation" is when the heart is laid ”open

"7“ and either

to the benign indifference of the universe,
the self or other humans become the focal point of
independent philosophical affirmation.

When the god as a being is denied with an act of

moral disobedience, the appeal for an ultimate good may

 

71Robert Frost, "A Sequel to Job," The Voice Out of
the Whirlwind: the Book of Job, ed. Ralph E. HOne (San
Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, Inc., 1960),
pp. 266—267.

72Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion (New York: The
Viking Press, 1969), p. 72.

 

 

 

73Ibid.

u
7 Albert Camus, The Stranger, trans. Stua t Gilbert (New
York: Vintage Books, 1946), p. 154.

 

40

be made to the self, as the final judge of just behaviour,
or to principles of humanism. The appeal to the self is
probably the most natural course for human thought to
take, since "the best way to conceive of the fundamental
project of human reality is to say that man is the being

75

whose project is to be God." Jean-Paul Sartre states

this idea in detail, explaining how
If man possesses a pre—ontological comprehension of
the being of God, it is not the great wonders of
nature nor the power of society which have conferred
it upon him. God, value and supreme end of transcend—
ence, represents the permanent limit in terms of which
man makes known to himself what he is. To be man
means to reach toward being God. Or if you prefer,
man fundamentally is the desire to be God.76

When a man rebels against an "injustice" which he

feels has been imposed upon one of his ideals, he may find

that total awareness of the self develOps from his initial

act of disobedience. "The part of himself that he wanted

to be respected he proceeds to place above everything

else and proclaims it preferable to everything, even to

life itself."77 It becomes for him ”the supreme good

78

N

'All'. The rebel himself wants to be 'all'. However,

even with the total, egocentric awareness of the self

 

75Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, trans.
Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957),

p. 63.
76Ibid.

 

77Camus, The Rebel, p. 15.
78

 

Ibid.

41

which may result from rebellion, awareness of the "outside"
world, though not necessarily heightened, is not denied.

Of the outside world which is congruent with the self,

but apart from it, Sartre writes:

He existed, like other people, in a world of public
parks, bistros, commercial cities and he wanted to
persuade himself that he was living somewhere else
And then, after making a complete fool of himself,
he understood, he opened his eyes, he saw that it
was a misdeal: he was in a bistro, just in front of
a glass of warm beer. He stayed overwhelmed on the,
bench; he thought: I am a fool. And at that very
moment, on the other side of existence, in this other
world which you can see in the distance, but without
ever approaching it, a little melody began to sing
and dance: "You must be like me; you must suffer in
rhythm."
The voice sings:
Some of these days
You'll miss me, honey79

Once this harmony with the self as it exists in the ”other
world" is achieved, harmony with the "other world” outside
the self results.

He who lives in harmony with his own self, his demon,
lives in harmony with the universe; for both the
universal order and the personal order are nothing
but different expressions and manifestations of a
common underlying principle. Man proves his inherent
power of criticism, of judgment and discernment, by
conceiving that in this correlation the Self, not the
Universe, has the leading part.80

If the reflective needs of the individual are more

socially oriented than self—centered, that is if he can

 

79Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, trans. Lloyd Alexander
(New York: New Directions, 1959), p. 74.

80Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1963), p. 7.

 

A2

attain internal harmony only after working for universal
harmony, his denial of a god as a being will result in
the assertion of a form of humanism, which may be as
totally satisfying to its proponent as is the assertion
of the self to Camus and Sartre. In this event deicide
results in an avowal of the rational justice of humanism.
While a personalized god-with-grey—beard is denied, the
objective ontology of humanism may become no more than
another way of acknowledging the existence of the pre—
conceived ideas of the good and just god, while preferring
to overlook the evils of the world as unwilled accidents.

Thus he does not absolutely deny the existence of

God. He refutes Him in the name of a moral

value. . . .81
. . . a moral value which he previously attributed to his
idea of a god. A more essential act of moral disobedience,
however, is a total replacing of

. the reign of grace by the reign of justice

(this rebel) rejects the basic interdependence

between suffering and truth . . . (the most pro-

found utterance of this rebel) is his even if: "I

would persist in my indignation even if I were wrong."

Which means that even if God existed, even if the

mystery cloaked a truth . . . (this rebel) would

not admit that truth should be paid for by evil,

suffering, and the death of innocents . . . (this)

incarnates the refusal of salvation. 82

Even in this instance, however, the final leap is not

necessarily made into nihilism or even atheism. The

 

81Camus, The Rebel, p. 55.
82

 

Ibid., p. 56.

A3
assertion of humanistic ideals belies nihilism, but atheism
ig a possible result. The assertion is fundamentally that
in the face of existence
. . . creation being what it is, he claims the right
to free himself mggally and to free all the rest of
mankind with him.
The issue of man's concern for justice and order,
the desire to be free to move in an ordained system, which
does not await with unpleasant surprises around each corner,
in short his desire for justice and freedom within a
seemingly indifferent universe, is presented as a theme in
Archibald MacLiesh's play l;_§; This pOpular play reveals
in a fairly incisive manner several of the most important
questions surrounding the issue of deicide.
The play Opens with a characterizing of the God

figure as a mass of antinomies. For example, both the

God mask and the devil mask come from the box called

heaven:
Nickles: My mask!
You'll gind it where the other was--in
Heaven! A

It should be noted, however, that Mr. Zuss, the God figure,
does not think of himself as encompassing both good and
evil. He asks "what's so wrong with the world?", and
visualizes the scenes they are about to play as the

opposition of clearly defined forces:

 

83Ibid., p. 59.

81JArchibald Macliesh, J. B. (New York: Samuel French,
Inc., 1959). p- 22. All subsequent lines quoted are from
this edition.

 

uu

Mr. Zuss: Now

Listen! This is a simple scene.

I play God. You play Satan. .

Simple as that.

A friendly, benevolent atmosphere is established by

Mr. Zuss' confidence, and this warm tone is for the most
part continued through the introduction of J. B. and the
Thanksgiving scene, for J. B. reciprocates the warmth
which his god feels for him. J. B. feels kindly to his
God, for he credits his success in life to his faith.

Not for a watch-tick, have I doubted

God was on my side--was helping me.

It isn't luck when God is good to you:

It's something more.
J. B. attributes his successes to the fact that he is in
the graces of his God, though he does not mean that his
possessions are given to him by his God as a recompense.
He says "nobody deserves it, Sarah!” He finds security
primarily in being in the "favor” of his God, and this
sense of security, this purpose in life, is what brings
him, he feels, his success. He can feel confident because
he has faith in a just God.

I believe in it, Sal. I trust in it.

Because He's just .
. . . A man can count on Him.
Look at the world, the order of it,
The certainty of day's return . . .
To be . . . become . . . and end--are beautiful.

J. B. sees his God as a benevolent father figure.

His relationship to his idea of God is on the person-to-

85

person basis of Tillich's third form of theism. But when
his God-friend "deserts" him with the death of his oldest
son, J. B. is confused. The world as he had conceived
it, the idea of God in which he placed confidence, his
perfect order of things, is upset:

It never could have happened. Never.
Never in this world.

With the deaths of the next two children, J. B.'s
God becomes even less personalized, and a new order, semi-
religious in nature, begins to take form. He no longer
talks of his God in the old way, full of warmth. Now his
reaction is less personal than philosophical.

SHALL WE TAKE THE GOOD AND NOT THE
EVIL? We have to take the evil-—

Evil with good. It doesn't mean there
Ig no good.

We see that he makes an effort to retain the quality of
essential goodness which he once saw in his God. He offers
the explanation, a defense of his old ideas, that

Sticks and stones and steel are chances.
There's no will in stone and steel.

It happens to us.
With the death of his last child, J. B. ceases to

have even this small emotional commitment to his idea of
God. Still, as John Calvin tells us concerning Job:

When he says that God had given it, he shows that it
is reasonable that God should dispose of what He has
put in our hands, since it is His own. . . . For the
word "Creator" implies that He has done everything in
such a way that all power and sovereign dominion must
remain His. . . . He must always remain Lord and

46

master of them. Job, then acknowledged this, entirely
subjected himself to the good pleasure of God. . . .85

But J. B.'s acquiescence to the will of his God is no more
than an acknowledgment of true ownership; he no longer
loves his God, as can be seen by his omission of the stand-
ard laudation in the following exchange:

J. B.: THE LORD GIVETH . . . THE LORD TAKETH AWAY.

Mr. Zuss: Finish it! BLESSED BE THE.

Nickles: What should he
Finish when he's said it all?

Because J. B.'s original commitment to religion was
basically emotional, he pleads for understanding on the
simplest emotional terms. Because he had reasons for his
God's blessings before, he feels the need of reasons now.
He tells Sarah that "God is just!"

God will not punish without cause.

God is God or we are nothing--

God is unthinkable if we are innocent.

He can now do nothing except assume his own guilt. He
would rather be guilty than without God, but because he
forces this choice upon himself, his faith is not absolute,
in Tillich's sense. But since he does believe in a god,
he has "no choice but to be guilty."

In the opening of act two, J. B. still does not know

why he should feel guilty; he has done no wrong that he

knows, yet he remembers knowing of a divine recognition

 

85John Calvin, "On the Example of Job," The Voice
Out of the Whirlwind: The Book of Job, p. 133°

 

 

 

47

for his right-doing, at an earlier time. He cries
SHOW ME MY GUILT, O GOD!

O f O O O 0

Where is the wisdom of this world
That once knew answers where there were no answers?

While J. B. maintains responsibility for his own
guilt, only asking to know the nature of his transgression,
his counsellors urge him to abandon his sense of guilt.
These three are embodiments of several of the major thought
systems of our time: the inevitability and fatalism of
history, the statistical character groupings of modern
psychology, and inculpable results of original sin, with
its implied inevitability of guilt, of religion. They
maintain that "God created all men guilty" and therefore
"One man's guilt is meaningless." They attempt to "estab-
lish (J. B.'s) slavery to circumstance,"86 telling him
that the world has no time for individual, personal guilt
or introspection. They call him "a statistic! Like
another!", a "mortal, sinful, Venal man" without integrity,
a "case-history!" In Nickles' words, J. B. has been told

. . . that no reasoning on earth

can justify the suffering he suffers.
He knows that good is not rewarded.
He knows that evil is not punished.
He knows his life is meaningless.

But J. B. has believed too strongly to be answered by these

weak, inconclusive positions. When the Comforters exit,

 

86Henry P. Van Dusen, "J.B. and Job," The Voice Out of
the Whirlwind, p. 295.

 

48

J. B. asserts himself more strongly than ever before, to
find his own answers. For the first time he challenges
his God, demanding justice of his Deity. This is the
furthest in faith he can go.

GOD . . . MY GOD! MY GOD, ANSWER ME!

I CRY OUT OF WRONG, BUT I AM NOT HEARD!

I CRY ALOUD, BUT THERE IS NO JUDGMENT!
THOUGH HE SLAY ME, YET WILL I TRUST IN HIM-—
BUT I WILL MAINTAIN MY OWN WAYS BEFORE HIM.

O, THAT I KNEW WHERE I MIGHT FIND HIM!
THAT I MIGHT COME EVEN TO HIS SEAT!

I WOULD ORDER MY CAUSE BEFORE HIM

AND FILL MY MOUTH WITH ARGUMENTS. BEHOLD,
I GO FORWARD, BUT HE IS NOT THERE,
BACKWARD, BUT I CANNOT PERCEIVE HIM.

J. B.'s God at last responds, but there is no reproof of
past action, and no answers for J. B. "Instead, he comes

riding along on the tempest of his almightiness and

thunders reproaches at the half-crushed human worm."87

J. B. is naturally cowed in the aura of this absolute power
which he sees. He speaks to his god, saying

BEHOLD, I AM VILE: WHAT SHALL I ANSWER THEE?

I WILL LAY MINE HAND UPON MY MOUTH.

I KNOW THAT THOU CANST DO EVERYTHING . . .

AND THAT NO THOUGHT CAN BE WITH-HOLDEN FROM THEE.
WHEREFORE HAVE I UTTERED THAT I UNDERSTAND NOT,
THINGS TOO WONDERFUL FOR ME . . . WHICH I UNDERSTOOD
NOT. HEAR, I BESEECH THEE, AND I WILL SPEAK.

I HAVE HEARD OF THEE BY THE HEARING OF THE EAR

BUT NOW MINE EYE SEETH THEE, WHEREFORE

I ABHOR MYSELF AND REPENT.

 

87Jung, p. 41.

49

This Speech is the first step in J. B.'s soon to be com-
pleted act of moral disobedience. In the face of the
might which J. B.'s god displayed to him, it was natural
for him to fear death, or eternal damnation--certain1y to
fear the opposition of so mighty a foe. J. B. did not
repent, however, for sorrow generally requires some kind
of love first; instead, he ducked his head "to thunder,"
to the "bullwhip crackling at (his) ears."88 With his cry
of remorse J. B. begins to accept God without asking further
questions. He no longer challenges or rejects God as an
existence. He is forced to continue believing that God
exists, but his old idea of God is gone--God is reduced to
a functionless existence. J. B. commits his act of moral
disobedience when he rejects his old idea of a personal
god, a god characterized by Samuel Beckett as being
with white beard

quaquaquaqua outside time without extension

who from the heights of divine apathia divine

athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly . .

. . . and suffers like the divine Miranda with

those who . . . 89

are plunged in torment plunged in fire

John Ciardi points out another aspect of this

decisive moment in the play, indicating that J. B. is not
cowed intellectually as well as physically but submits

Secure in the new knowledge that he is right.

 

Ibid.

 

89Samuel Beckett, Waiting For Godot (New York: Grove
Press, 195A), p. 28+.

 

him
it.

50

. .*. Job emerges triumphant. Not Job-the servant,
but Job the world-offended and God-offended man.
Job cries for Justice in his misery and God

answers . . .:

Hast Thou an arm like God? Or canst thou
Thunder with a voice like Him?

And so on. But Job already knew that God was big.
He had asked for Justice and he had been answered
with Size. And Job triumphs in understanding at
last that he needs no forgiveness. Instead he bows
his head in its insignificance and forgives God. His
triumph is that he need feel guilty no longer: what
is monstrous is not of his doing and can therefore
be borne. He does not think again of his own great
line, ”God is unthinkable if we are innocent," but
it is there to be thought, and its implications are
clear.90

 

J. B. sees his innocence, and it only remains for

to act upon it. The first thing he does is speak of

Must I be
Dumb because my mouth is mortal?——
Blind because my eyes will one day.
Close forever? Is that my wickedness--
That I am weak?

Must my breath, my breathing be forgiven me?

J. B. follows this by rejecting both an emotional and a

spiteful denial of his god, when he refuses to agree with

Nickles. Then he takes the previously mentioned final

step, rejecting his God-—not as an existing thing, for

he "saw" Him--but as a function in life, a guiding prin—

ciple. He tells Mr. Zuss to

 

90John Ciardi, "J. B. and Job," A Voice Out of the

 

Whirlwind, p. 279.

 

51
Let me alone. I am alone.
I'll sweat it out alone.
The rejection is principally not one of spite of
emotion, but one of deep intellectual need.

I'll find a foothold somewhere knowing.

And neither will I weep among
The obedient who lie down to die
In meek relinquishment protesting
Nothing, questioning nothing, asking
Nothing but to rise again and

bow!
Neither the bowing nor the blood
Will make an end for me now!

Neither the
Yes in ignorance
the No in spite . . .

Neither of them!

--although
He kill me with it I must know.

With the rejection of his old idea of God, J. B. is
left without a direction in which to continue his newly
launched search for the knowledge of justice. He asks for
a "foothold somewhere knowing." He still retains a belief
in a being called God, but not in the efficacy of it. This
is his rebellion; the rejection of his God as potent, de-
termining force in his life. He no longer looks to God for
anything, including hope. Nevertheless he cannot turn to
an assertion of the self and nihilism or atheism. Ciardi
says that the implications of Job's innocence in the face
of a god who "is unthinkable if we are innocent" are clear:

The final position is humanism, and humanism is man-
centered.

52

And Job the humanist triumphs once again by re-
claiming himself from his losses in the name of human
love. So at the end when Sarah, his wife, returns:

Sarah: You wanted justice and there was none-—
Only love.

J. B.: He does not love. He Is.

Sarah: But we do. That's the wonder.

J. B.: Yet you left me.

Sarah: Yes, I left you. I thought there was a
way away.

But in the Universe of the humanist all ways lead us
either to one another or to the void. What Job learns
from the accident-strewn orbits is that we are one
another's only hope. And, by implication, that we

are somehow hope enough for one another if we can
learn our loves to live to.91

-Thus J. B.'s triumph over his adversities is complete, and
he finds his new goals in the realm of humanistic love.

J. B.: Nothing is certain but the loss of love.
And yet . . . you say you love me!

Sarah: Yes.

I have no light to light the candle.

J. B.: You have our love to light it with!
Blow on the coal of the heart, poor Sarah.

He accepts the existence of an inscrutable, impersonal
God, but human love has surpassed divine love in matters
of personal need.

God leaves before the final curtain to resume his role
as a vendor of balloons. Sarah returns, a sprig of
forsythia in her hand, to indicate birth and renewal.
Both will go on, "the dark behind . . . and still

live . . . still love." J. B. pushes God to one side
as something that ig, accepting His existence as a

 

glIbid.

53

fact, but placing his faith in love, which permits man

to create, to live, to suffer, to be himself.92

This explains why J. B. can choose to go on living in a

universe of contradictions.

. . . since man must go on, MacLeish finds his answer
in love. Such an answer is the application of modern
liberalism to theology.

With J. B., there is no return to faith, but a resig-
nation to go on, with Love as the Redeemer. The

mystery of life lies in man's own re-creation of life.

J. B.'s humanistic answer, with its implications of foun—

dation for social as well as individual justice, is an

answer which is being used today to supplement the area of
conscience emptied by the "disrepute in which modern reli-

gion is held by large numbers of ethically sensitive indi-

viduals."9u As Eliot wrote:

Birth, and copulation, and death. 95
That's all, that's all, that's all, that's all.

93

J. B. would have said "that's enough, that's enough, that's

enough, that's enough, that's enough."

a world of chaos the personal relationship has become an

For many people in

 

92Allan Lewis, American Plays and Playwrights and the

 

Contemporary Theatre (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.,

 

1965), p. 122.

and Plgys (New York:
80.

p.

93Ibid., p. 123.

9“Niebuhr, p. 63.

95T. S. Eliot, "Fragment of an Agon," The Complete Poems

 

Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962),

5A

island of rest, a reference point to which all else may be
compared. J. B.'s humanism is not altruistic nor socially
oriented, but is an inward turning to assert his personal
answer to the problem of living in this world. By
affirming human love as the single most important element
of existence, J. B. has put aside forever any dependence

upon his God who demanded love without a return in kind.

CHAPTER III

REACTION AGAINST SOCIAL MORES: CRAWLING ARNOLD

 

AND THE PRODIGAL

 

The ability of an individual to get along with others
is a habit acquired because of its usefulness in contri-
buting to the satisfaction of his needs as well as of the
demands his society places upon him. In the formative
years of childhood, which ”cannot be seen in isolation from

"96

the structure of society, absolute social dependence is

necessary. Social dependence becomes a learned quality
and from this, social behaviour largely becomes structured

_ upon the foundation of the infant's need for
sustenance, warmth and physical safety, the satisfaction
of these needs always being associated with the pres-
ence and assistance of other people, whose approval
therefore comes to have a value which the later insti-
tutions of childhood and adult life serve to rein-
force.97

Since absolute dependence on a social system is stressed

in childhood as a desirable state, the growth of a person

 

96Riesman, p. 19.

97Harding, p. 10.

56

will be measured at least for a time by the degree of his
growing conformity to the standards of his society.98
As a person advances in years such rigid conformity
to the standards of his society becomes less important,
for behaviour which defines his individuality and supports
his personal reactions to reality will begin to be
reinforced. This is possible because the individual
gradually increases the number of people to whom he gives
a degree of liking and from whom he derives social satis-
faction. This widening of the scope of his personal re—
lationships involves him in a membership-relationship to
many groups within and apart from the major society in
which his life began, and allows him to explore many
areas of belief concerning social mores or codes and
standards of behaviour. He may do this while remaining
within the general framework of a group to which he gives
allegiance. The process used is to some degree the trial
and error kind of learning retained from earliest child-
hood. Some of the new groups in which he tries to function
may differ widely in goals and mores from his initial group,

and "it would be disastrous to assume that those standards

 

98In the scope of this chapter, these standards, as
well as "mores," "codes," and "rules of behaviour,”
will refer to all standards of conformity held by a given
society, including, by implication, formal laws; Egg
those informal rules of conduct which are not structured
into statutes are the real subject of the chapter.

 

 

57

(of the group in which he began) must continue to be the
measure of (his) development."99
. the whole structure of an individual's values,

from its main branches to its finest growing points,

will be affected by the sub-groups of which he is

a member.1

Major differentiations between social groups and
subgroups are made by the mores to which they are attuned.
Though social groups possess qualities other than specific
mores which help structure the value system of the indi—
vidual, mores continue to maintain a position of the
highest importance. For example the general nature of a
group is determined by the ability of the dominant members
to impose their will on the rest. Niebuhr tells us that
"all social co-Operation on a larger scale than the most
intimate social group requires a measure of coercion."101
The principle means of coercion, superceding even the police
power which the dominant element controls, is the use of
these social mores. Li-Ki, a Confucianist sociologist,
indicates the conditioning role of pre-determined rules
of social behaviour.
The rules of propriety serve as instruments to
form men's characters, and they are therefore

prepared on a great scale. Being so, the value of
them is very high. They remove from a man all

 

99
100

Harding, p. 47.

Ibid., p. 60.

lOlNiebuhr, p. 63.

58

perversity . . . (and) secure the display of righteous-
‘ness . . . showing the peOple all the normal virtues. .
Their path may not be left for an instant. If it could
be left it would not be the path.102
A sociological explanation for the existence of rules
of propriety or social mores is that they are individual
habits and social customs which have arisen "from efforts
to satisfy needs."103 The best ways of acting, under
given conditions, are selected and repeated. The repetition
forms habits in individuals and customs in the group.
The customs "become regulative for succeeding gener-
ations."lou
Pitirim Sorokin contends that the theory of inherited
social values has never been proved; that it is in effect
no more than a tautology; ”the ways of doing things deter—
mine the ways of doing things."105 In a footnote to his
summation of basic theories concerning the development of
mores he mentions the fact that "selection is not always

good . . . sometimes there is no selection. The only

other theory to which he will attribute validity is

 

102Li-Ki, "Social Role of Folkways, Mores, and Customs,"
Contemporary Sociological Theories, Pitirim A. Sorokin
(New York: Harper Torchbooks, l96A), p. 697.

 

103Sorokin, p. 698.
loulbid., p. 678.
l051mm, p. 699.

lO6Ibid.

59

. . . an indefinite statement which claims that
interests, plus pleasure and pain, plus hunger, plus
sex passion, plus vanity, plus many other drives and
things exert an influence on human behaviour and
social processes.1
This theory may be as true as the preceding one, in whole
or in part--there is no absolute agreement among sociol-
ogists on the subject of the evolution of social values.
These are, however, the two most important prevailing
theories, according to Sorokin.

Though there is no agreement on the historical sources
of mores, there is agreement on the character of the mores
themselves, on the part mores play within a group, and
even on the reaction of individuals to them. Concerning
the character of the mores themselves, an important aspect
is their durability. Once established, they may remain
in force for generations.

They can be modified, but only to a limited extent

by the purposeful efforts of men. In time they lose

power; decline, and die or are transformed. While

they are in vigor they very largely control indi—

vidual and social undertakings, and they produce and

nourish ideas of world philosophy and life policy.108
The quality of perserverance is aided by the fact that

common folkways are not entrenched as social mores until

"elements of truth and right are developed into doctrines

 

107Ibid., p. 700.

lOBIbid., p. 698.

60

of welfare"109

which are based upon them. Once established,
the mores are further perpetrated by the tendency of Western
thought, deplored by both Lindner and Breisach, to be
content with "analyzing and describing existing social
situations. Such an approach unwittingly (tending) to

"110 in the value structure

strengthen . . . mass conformity
which is criticized.

Besides ingrained familiarity with their presence,
there are other less general considerations which impose
conformity to social mores on an individual, even if a
growing self-awareness shows certain of them to be incom—
patible with the individual's own ideals. One of these
considerations takes into account the possibility of
bringing injury to another, for human beings are, to a
degree, by nature

. . social beings and . . . like other people; their

satisfaction and happiness are of direct value to us,
and acts of ours which spoil them conflict with one
of the strongest systems of sentiment that we pos-
sess.

Another aSpect of mores which compels obedience is

that the individual may fear the possible retribution, from

 

logIbid., p. 698.

llOBreisach, p. 225.

lllHarding, p. 50.

61

physical punishment to isolation and disfavor, which may
be incurred by a detection of his disobedience.
Even if detection is not a factor, however, the
element of isolation from fellow members of the group
remains a strong impulse toward conformity.
A breach of the moral code that we share with other
people automatically deprives us of our own sense of
having group support in what we do: we know that our
group now sanctions us not for what we are but for
what we pretend to be.112

This deepens a sense of isolation which may be already

felt, to an uncomfortable degree, by "individuals who

live in an atomized society.”113

The last lever for conformity and the one Harding

considers most important of all

. contributes to making us obey whatever code we
have ourselves accepted, or at least to making us
feel guilty if we disobey it. This is simply the
central effort of a living being to remain an inte-
grated whole and avoid the tension that results from
actions conflicting with the stable features of his
personality, such as his sentiments and the estab-
lished hierarchy of his values.1 4

The most important factor, for purposes of this
study, which may eventually bring an individual to over-
come the above "sets" against the disobedience of a social
more is the growing awareness of the self, and the capacity

for self-determination which leads to an assertion of

 

112Ibid., p. 54.

113Pappenheim, p. 68.

lluHarding, p. 50.

62

personal ideals. This would begin with a critical appraisal
of "sentiments and the established hierarchy" of values
which Harding mentions in the above quotation. A possible
catalyst for the beginning of this process is a realization
of either an "injustice" brought about by the societal
assertion of a more, or the inadequacies of an existing
more to fill a social need; an unfilled need seen by the
prospective rebel when his ideals were balanced with social
realities. The possibility of moral disobedience occurring
in this event and the support for it once it happens are
rooted in what Lindner discusses as "selfhood":

From each phase of . . . life it abstracts elements

and qualities that . . . form a concept of distinction;

this composes a special image along the lines of

which the individual life is lived. In it are

embodied preferences . . . and a veritable universe
of disparate items from which selfhood is made.

. . this is an egoism with . . . a fixation point
of reference, a matter . . . of selfhood . . . in
which the ego as such is . . . distinguished from its
surrounding. . . .115

When the individual has this ability to see himself
as being distinct from his environment he can more objec-
tively analyze his environment and his place within it.

The degree to which he is sensitive to his own
experience, avoiding rationalization and declining
to reinterpretation (of his own values) which social
convention offers, must affect his moral behaviour.
The more "sensitive" he is in this sense, the more
he is likely to question the accepted moral

 

115Lindner, pp. 176-178.

63

standards of the peOple around him and to establish

for himself standards that deviate in some degree

from theirs.116
We have already pointed out the tentative quality of the
foundations upon which social mores are based. There seems
no reason to doubt, then, that all features of a group's
code of behaviour may fall under the testing of the socially
"sensitive” individual and either be confirmed or rejected
by him. Consequently ”not only immoral but highly moral
behaviour" or moral disobedience, " may bring a man into
conflict with his group."117

Another aspect of society which makes moral dis-

obedience possible, even probable, and which is based on
the selfhood of the individual is the essential hypocrisy
of group behaviour; a tragedy deeply rooted in the human
spirit. Humanity seemingly always has had a marked ina-
bility to

. . . conform its collective life to its individual

ideals. As individuals, men believe that they ought

to love and serve each other and establish justice

between each other. As racial, economic and

national groups they take gor themselves, whatever

their power can command.ll

We have mentioned before how social organization is based

upon strength--the domination of a group which accepts

 

116Harding, p. 55.

ll7Ibid., p. 50.

118Niebuhr, p. 9.

6A

the will of its strongest members. With the over-lapping
and interaction of groups within groups and groups among
groups, the struggle for power is extremely important with
the strongest overcoming the strongest; each challenging
the other's will to power. By definition then, "individ-
uals have a moral code which makes the actions of collective
ma? an outrage to their conscience."119 We see from this
that if man can be objective enough to separate himself
from his social environment, it is not unlikely that he
will find some discrepancy between the actions of his
society and his own ideals. The discontent which results
may be regarded as
. the prime mover of man to action provided that
his image of cause and effect permit him to believe
himself capable of such action as to reduce the di—
vergence between the perceived real and the ideal.120
Since the mores against which the individual reacts
are social in nature, his assertion will be one of a new
form of social behaviour particularly suited to his own
ideals. Because man is a social being it is likely that
he will seek the society of others whose ideals approximate

his own, for besides wishing to contribute something at

a given level of the group's activity (an inherent desire

 

1191618.

120Kenneth Boulding, "Social Justice in Social Dy-
namics," Social Justice, Richard B. Brandt, ed. (Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962), pp. 78-79.

 

65

for function of place) he also wants to feel that his

. . . more highly developed interests and sentiments
are attuned to the value system of (his) group. . .121

If he does choose to remain alone, or if his views are so
singular that no other person in his society echoes them,

it seems likely that he will be lonely and disatisfied.

In this case he gains little in terms of personal content—
ment by his rebellion. T. E. Lawrence, a social malcontent--

"I hate being in front, and I hate being in back and I

don't like responsibility, and I don't obey orders”l22—-

hints, in a letter to V. W. Richards, at the loneliness
of the self-made stranger in his own society.

. . . these years of detachment have cured me of any
desire ever to do anything for myself. When they
untie my bonds I will not find in me any spur to
action. However actually one never thinks of after-
wards: the time from the beginning is like one of
those dreams which seems to last for aeons, and then
you wake up with a start, and find that it has left
nothing in your mind.

Achievement, if it comes, will be a great disillusion-
ment, but not great enough to wake one up.

A house with no action entailed upon one, quiet,
and liberty to think and abstain as one wills——yes,
I think abstention, the leaving everything alone
and watching the others still going past, is what

I would choose today, if they ceased driving one.

 

121Harding, p. 79.

122T. E. Lawrence, "To V. W. Richard," The Essential
T. E. Lawrence, ed. David Garnett (New York: Viking Press——
Compass, 1963), p. 184.

 

 

66

. . . I change my abode every day, and my job every

two days, and my language every three days, and

still remain always unsatisfied.123

D. W. Harding comments upon attitudes of despair

and loneliness among the morally disobedient by declining
to attribute much importance to these personal reactions
to their own acts. His analysis is a character study of
all rebels, including T. E. Lawrence, who contribute
something with their actions.

It seems clear that individuals need enough toughness

and resilience to tolerate conditions that fall far

short of complete social harmony; otherwise they
would never develop any original lines of activity.

124
And Lawrence himself, though he threatened suicide at one
time when he felt his usefulness was over, closes the
letter to Richards, quoted above, by writing:

A long quiet like a purge and then a contemplation

and decision of future roads, that is what (there)

is to look forward to.l25

Loneliness is not always the result of the act of

moral disobedience, however, as will be seen in the play
Crawling Arnold by Jules Feiffer—-presented-for analysis
as an example of the use of the issue of moral disobedience
and the renunciation of social mores as a theme.

The family name of Arnold, the protagonist and title

character of the play, is "Enterprise," a name which is a

 

123Ibid., pp. 183-184.

l2“Harding, p. 79.

125Lawrence, p. 184.

67

symbol for the age in which he lives,126 and a comment upon

the abundance of enterprise~without-meaning among the

Older members Of the family. The play is an excellent,
though superficial, history of an act of moral disobedience.
In the Opening moments Of the play, Barry and Grace
Enterprise, Arnold's parents, not only describe their
society and individual roles within it, but unselfcon-
sciously relate their determination to conform to the major
superficial behaviour patterns Of that society, no matter
what its condition might be. Barry tells how, in the

event Of enemy attack, he is prepared to maintain the

status quo in his bomb shelter (the only one in the country,

incidentally, written up in Good Housekeeping).

 

For example, I've had cards made up with the names
Of our favorite (television) shows and at the time
they would ordinarily go on we run a picture-—a
slide picture on the screen showing the title of the
show--

Grace: Lassie--Bachelor Father--Danny Thomas--

Barry: And during the half hours those shows normally
run we sit and reminisce about our favorite
episodes. It's very important under crisis
conditions to simulate normal conditions of
living.12

 

126Thomas C. Cochran, William Miller, The Age of

Enterprise (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers--Torch-
books, 1961), p. 358.

 

l27Ju1es Feiffer, "Crawling Arnold." Horizon MagaZine’
1962.

 

68

Reinhold Niebuhr tells us how sOciety is inclined to "veil

r."128 The

the brutal facts Of human life from itsel
Enterprises locked in their bomb shelter talking about
"Lassie" are not exceptions to this tendency. In Niebuhr's
words
This is a rather pathetic but understandable incli-
nation; since the facts of man's collective life
easily rob the average individual Of confidence in
the human enterprise.12
And the Enterprises have a desperate need to have the con-
fidence that their actions are the "right" actions.

This atmosphere Of conformity surrounded Arnold when
he grew up, and like most children his early life was spent
matching the value structure Of his parents. He was un-
demonstrative; "normal" in his lack Of individuality or
distinguishing characteristics. He blended well into the
life of his parents, and Grace has nothing but praise for
this period of his life.

. . .‘I know there's nothing seriously wrong with
Arnold. He's always been a good boy. Done everything
we told him. Never talked back. Always well mannered.
Never been a show-Off.
But as Arnold grew Older he began to question the values
of his parent's society. His overt behaviour was still

grounded in conformity, "trying to lead a very active

social life" and so forth, but unknown to his parents his

128Niebuhr, p. 8.

129Ibid.

69

adherence to their values became rationalized in terms
foreign to them. Because Of his rationalization, his
disobedience was undetected for a time.
When I began drinking martinis ten years ago, I
ordered them with an Olive. I didn't know any
better, I guess. They always came back with a lemon
peel. I hated the sight, aesthetically, Of‘a lemon
peel floating in my martini. There was something

so garbagey about a lemon peel lying at the bottom
of my martini.

I got used to it. I got to like it. I got to want
lemon peels in my martinis. It still looked garbagey
but I found that exciting! I've always been surrounded
by lots of money, out off from life. That lemon
peel floating there in its oil slick that way was to
me my only contact with The PeOple. It reminded me
Of East River movies--The Dead End Kids.
Eventually, however, his ideals were made known to his
parents. As soon as his social aberrations became apparent,
Barry "tried to show that boy." He wrote to "Dear Abbey"
and "tried in every way to get close to him like a father
should," attempting to bring Arnold back into the flock
Of conformity. Arnold was introduced into Barry's club,
". . . into my way of life—-my friends," but Arnold con—
tinued to search for an identity of his own, becoming in
alternate weeks Jewish, then Buddhist.

Arnold's act of crawling in the play is not primarily
intended to gain his parent's attention, or to compete with
Baby Will, though these were probably the motives which
finally caused him to act. But crawling is for Arnold a

true act of moral disobedience. His own rationale is

70

As an adult my values encompassed a rigid good, a
rigid evil, and a mushy everything-in-between. As

a child I've rediscovered one value I had completely
forgotten existed.

Being naughty.

Webster defines "naughty" as being morally wrong.
The fact that Arnold deeply believes in crawling--"I do
it because I believe in it. You do it because you think
you're being therapeutic"-—shows us that the naughtiness
he intends is only directed toward his parent's society;
that for him crawling is not morally wrong, but morally
right. It helps him assert his own ideals and find his
own way Of living apart from the restrictions and manners
imposed by his parents, who are his major society. He
asserts his moral independence at home by crawling. He
does not crawl when he is at work, or otherwise away from
home.' His attitude Of moral disobedience does, however,
endure against the society outside the family. His initial
act Of moral disobedience within the family gave him the
total awareness--"I never would have thought of doing such
a thing before I crawled"--spoken Of by Camus.130

When Arnold verbalizes his beliefs in terms Barry

and Grace know and can understand, they do not realize the

attack on their society, for they believe very strongly

 

130Camus, The Rebel, p. 15. (See material Of footnotes
75 and 76, this thesis.)

 

71

that theirs is the best and only possible path for them
to follow; or as Li-Ki puts it: ". . . if it could be left

it would not be the path."131

With Barry and Grace, the
latter eventuality is unthinkable. Thus when Arnold quotes
a precedent for his non- conformity, his parents argue with
him, first in terms Of "propriety" and "normal" behaviour.
Since they know the principle of Niebuhr's dictum that

"all social co-Operation . . . requires a measure of

coercion,"132

they begin to speak in terms of force and
the threat of retribution, when Arnold does not respond.

Grace (to Arnold): The sky is blue, dear. Not red;
blue.

Arnold: Picasso colors it red.

Grace: Picasso is an artist dear.
She sets Arnold's precedent out of reach of their society
and continues: "Artists can color the sky red because
they kppfl_it's blue." Everyone in Grace's society is
aware that artists are specialists in color, and a di-
gression in use of color among artists may be patronizingly.
endured as a flight Of fancy. But in p23 society this may
not be.

Those of us who aren't artists must color things

the way they really are, or people might think we're
stupid.

 

l3lLi-Ki, p. 697. (See material or footnote 99,
this thesis.)

132Niebuhr, p. 63.

72

Barry (flushed, strides over to Arnold): For Christ's
sake stop embarrassing us in front Of the woman!
Color the goddam sky blue! (He glares over Arnold's
shoulder.)
Arnold acquiesces because to him it is a minor point, and
he is a reasonable man.

Barry and Grace are perhaps too embarrassed or
confused by Arnold's (to them) incomprehensible behaviour
to say anything about it to him to prompt an explanation.
They also feel a vague guilt that they are to blame.

Grace: I'm afraid he took the news of Little Will's
birth rather hard. I imagine when one has
been raised as an only child and has lived
happily all one's years in one's parent's home,
it's hard to welcome a little stranger.

By bringing in a social worker to see him they hope to
assuage their guilt and cure him painlessly.

They are, however, quick to criticize other overt
manifestations of rebellion on his part, as we've seen.
This gives Arnold an Opportunity tO disobey the more
concrete laws Of the household as well as of society out-

side the family.

Barry: Arnold, I've had enough Of this nonsense!
Downstairs! That's a parental order'

Arnold: I colored the sky blue, didn't I? Why don't
you ever meet g3 halfway.

Barry finally realizes the incompatibility of their views
and abandons his recalcitrant son to what he believes to
be a horrible but deserved fate: social isolation from

the group in the shelter, and a wanton career of lawless-

ness .

73
Barry: The hell with him. The law doesn't mean a
thing to 9gp son. Come on!

The motives which originally prompted Arnold's
behaviour are emotional as well as intellectual, and the
combined qualities add realism to the satire. Emotionally
his rebellion is centered in the lack Of the love which
his parent's society declines to give him; the lack Of
love and regard directed toward him as a person rather than
the institutionalized "son" concept. He has a day dream
(implying conscious manipulation Of events) in which the
vacant aSpect Of his mother (her lack Of personal warmth
and love) is replaced by a kind Old lady. His mother's
practical side is then retained in the guise Of the kind
Old lady's radio, which gives useful hints, in his mother's
voice, on child care.

By choosing‘ a regression to childhood as the means
Of asserting greater personal freedom, Arnold forced more
than an ordinary amount Of attention to himself. While
this was not ultimately the end he desired, it was perhaps
his most immediate motivation. This is evidenced by the
fact that his first day Of crawling was also Little Will's
first day Of crawling.

The regression to childhood also solved, to a degree,
a source of personal frustration:

SO while I'm out trying, unsuccessfully, to make it
with a girl and I come home, mixed up and angry and

feeling like not much Of anything, what are they
waiting up proudly to tell me? They're having a

74

baby . . . it's hard to face a daily series Of piddling,
eroding defeats and, in addition, have the fact thrown
in your face that your father at age sevenpy can

still do better than you can.

 

I'm not ready to compete yet.

The rational motive in his action is to establish
an atmosphere in which he can realize his "selfhood" and
decide for himself the relative values Of social mores and
actions. His problems Of frustration, love and inhibition
stemmed from his lack of freedom, for once he asserted the
freedom to make his own choices, to push himself forward
in life, saying "now I have g1 road, my side," his life is
good, for he is recognized as himself. "I'm conspicuous
now."

Once his purpose has been accomplished-—that Of
freeing himself and maintaining his right to his own
opinions, it does not matter so much if the constantly
overt manifestation of his freedom, that is his crawling,
is continued. When he receives positive reinforcement from
the side which he has rejected, he wavers. When it is
intimated he can be himself and still belong, functioning
within his parent's society, he wants to believe it. But,
when confronted with a contrary law within the structure
of their society, he again retreats.

Arnold: DO you really want me to get up?

Miss Sympathy: It's not what I want. It's what's
best for yourself.

75

Arnold: You mean if I got up, I'd be doing it for
myself?

Miss Sympathy: Not for me. Not for your mother.
Not for your father. Strictly for
yourself.

Arnold: That's too bad. I don't care much about
getting up for myself. I would have liked
to have done it for you though.

Miss Sympathy: I would be very pleased.

Arnold: If I got up right now?

Miss Sympathy: Yes.

Arnold: O.K.

Miss Sympathy: NO!

Arnold: But you said--

Miss Sympathy: Not now. Later! It's against the
law.

Arnold (shrugs, returns to his crawling position.):
Did you see my coloring book?

Feiffer does leave us with some hope at the end,
for the two sides Of the question of walking v.s. crawling
in this society prove to be reconcilable after all. A
tenuous union Of the reasoning members Of both sides is
finally asserted through a common interest, completing
Arnold's act of moral disobedience. Crawling brings him
freedom, recognition, satisfaction and for both him and
the social worker, Miss Sympathy . . . love.

(He unzips her skirt. The sound Of the zipper rings
very loud.)

This same theme, the rational disobedience Of social

mores, is developed on a deeper level in The Prodigal, by

 

76

Jack Richardson. Richardson goes beyond the superficiality
Of Feiffer to give us a moving account Of a man who, unlike
Arnold, is a victim of the mores of his society; a man too

tightly bound by Sorokin's tautology to free himself Of it.

Using the Oresteia legend as a framework, Richardson
has written a parable about man's enforced subserv-
ience to the demands of society. In Richardson the
philOSOphy Of determinism is placed on a purely
temporal level: there is nothing to prevent man doing
as he pleases except the laws and conventions Of
society, but these bind him as effectively as the
cosmic forces Of the metaphysicians.l3

In The Prodigal Orestes is an "Angry Young Man" or

 

the "beatnik" of the late 1940's and early 1950's who
wishes to dissociate himself completely from the respon-
sibilities which his society expects him to fulfill. The
Opening moments Of the play reveal Orestes' disinterest
in the workings Of his society. Penelope asks him about
the government of Aegisthus "and his hysterical priests,"
and Orestes answers "it does not interest me." He later
tells Aegisthus "I ask nothing of the gods, if there are
such things, but to be left alone." He has no feelings
Of either patriotism or familial love and duty, and his
contempt for Agamemnon is equal to that which he holds
for Aegisthus.

His mother's betrayal Of his father and her liaison

with Aegisthus merely inspire him with cynical
amusement. His one care in life is not be become

 

133Geprge E. Wellwarth, The Theatre of Protest and
Paradox New York: New York University Press 1963)—
557'284-285. ’ ’

77

"involved": in a world he considers mad he intends
to remain detached and sane.

As the play progresses we find the forces Of Orestes'
society presented in the arguments of Aegisthus and
Agamenon. Aegisthus states his philOSOphy and points to

Orestes' fault.
I Aegisthus:

. I removed the word "importance" from the
people's vocabulary merely by singing the absurdity,
and hence equality, of all life centered about man.

I told the consumptive shepherd, in simple, masculine
rhymes, of course, that the martialing of sheep was
as useful as the martialing Of men and empires. I
sang the praises Of the immediate and trivial.
With my poetry I leveled all.

my gods were not the friendly pranksters Of
Agamemnon's time . . . my gods were angry, proud, and
contemptuous Of our vain little activities. They were
always ready to answer well-meant questions with an
inscrutable blow Of anger, and this is what our
people wanted, Orestes. Borders were established past
which no man could go, and this divine blockade, added
to the liquidation Of importance from human affairs,
created happiness and peace here. . . .What standards,
what truth could he strive for, since it was now clear
that such pompous dung was merely the leftover drop—
pings of the gods?

you dared to call yourself a quester .
someone who will slyly ask the prostrate priest if
his gods ever answer prayers, someone who points out
the difference between the poetic symbol and the
philosopher's truth, someone who will tell the almost
honest politician that his prOposal for underground
sanitation won't alter man's miserable knowledge of
himself in the least. For, if you were this one,
Orestes, I would order your death in an hour.

Orestes: It was you who used the word "quester,”
Aegisthus, not I. I have no intention Of
causing even a small disturbance.

 

Ibid., p. 285.

78

Aegisthus: That's not good enough, Orestes. Your
refusal to side with your mother and me
is disturbance.l35

While Aegisthus is a rationalist and politician,
Agamemnon is a heroic idealist, a man of violence and
impulse. He has a certain naivéte with regard to the
emotions and motivations of any but men like himself. As
Wellwarth says, he is "totally unable to see that his life-

long emulation and pursuit Of the heroic ideal has been

"136

useless and mischievous. Orestes is equally Opposed to

his argument:

Agamemnon: You don't care that Aegisthus and his
priests will turn your home into a
primitive rock of superstitious reaction?
You don't mind seeing the foundations of
your father's life pulled apart by a
puerile poet?

. . with all his talk Of acceptance,
(Aegisthus) is not walking with you along
the banks, but rowing furiously in the
middle of the river.

Orestes: That may be, but I'm not seeking his company.

Agamemnon: NO, it is you who are being sought.

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I C O Q

Will you not judge the issues here?

Orestes: I have, and you have had my Opinion.

I 0 I I I 0 I I I I I I I I I C I O I I I O

No matter how you succeed, your life will
never move me.

 

135Jack Richardson, The Prodigal (New York: E. P.
Dutton CO., 1963).

136

 

Ibid., p. 286.

79

Agamemnon: But my death will.

I I I I I I I I I I p I I I I I I C I I I I I

. . . It will suck you into my current. . .
It will settle quickly over your life, and
where before you were untouched it will
carve indelible scars. You will no longer
be the prince who laughs and stands aside,
but the son who has not avenged his father's
death. Wherever you go, you will be noticed
and the world will argue and await your
decision. You will be drawn into the cur—
rent. . . .You will amuse no one, for a man
who bears the guilt of his father's death
can make few peOple laugh. The world will
begin to ask questions Of you, Orestes, and
will demand answers. And soon you will ask
them yourself, and like the world you will
be dissatisfied with tolerant, reasonable
excuses. . . .

Orestes: Can you be that certain:

Agamemnon: I can, Orestes. . .

Orestes: Your death will never force me so far past
myself. Let the world drag me through its
self-made judicial mud——I will let you die
and do nothing.

Though initially Orestes has no interest in
Agamemnon, Aegisthus, or affairs Of state,

. . . his destiny—~not the destiny the gods have

mapped out for him, as in the ancient Greek plays,

but the destiny required of him by the conventions

of society--pursues him relentlessly.l

Finally, it is love for a peasant girl that causes him to
return to face his society. By rejecting her, he reveals
his love and consideration for her as well as acknowledging
his own defeat.

Orestes: . . . our love is so fragile and the gross

hammers Of the world would shatter it.
You would have nothing but its bitter pieces

 

137Ibid.

80

to console you after all you renounced for
it.

There is no place left to take you,
Praxithia. It was you who were tO lead me,
and now there is no place to be led to.

Love failed to save him from the furies Of public Opinion,
and he found himself running, "blocked, and, bit by bit . .
(brought) closer to Argos," his loneliness increasing with
every moment. He pleads for the support of one other being,
for anyone—-crying

Find me one voice who'll Object to my killing my
father's murderer and sister's pander. Find me one
breast that'll be shocked by my slaughtering on
principle.

There is no one. This is the moment when Orestes chooses
to submit to society rather than persist in his attitude
of moral disobedience. His ideal Of self-interest which
he asserted in the beginning of the play was not sharply
defined nor strong enough to carry him through society's
trial Of it. The traditions of his society overwhelm him.

The world demands that we inherit the pretensions of
our fathers, that we go on killing in the name Of
ancient illusions about ourselves, that we assume the
right to punish, order, and invent philosophies to
make our worst moments seem inspired. Who am I

to contradict all this any lbnger? ‘I will retdrn

tO Argos. I belong no other place.

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I C I I I I I C I c

Is there a way to deny Aegisthus' gods and my father's
dangerous love of man? Is there a way to let a foolish
sister suffer her mistake, without feeling the world

is right in branding you a leper?

81

Because he cannot find moral cause to sustain him in dis-
obedience, he must submit. He is a helpless prisoner in
the bonds of conformity. The will of his society is
stronger than his ideals and his tragedy lies in the fact
that he retains his ideals without the power to assert
them. His last statement before returning to Argos
reflects his piteous impotence.

I can resist these forces no longer. I will go back,
murder, and say it's for a better world, for this
must be said to prevent insanity. And when I'm
standing, addressing the crowds of Argos, telling
them what great things are to come because Of my
act, I will know it is nothing but weakness that
brought me there in front of them. I will Speak of
the golden days to come and boast Of my killing

to achieve them; but, King Agamemnon, I will do so
under protest. I will do so knowing I was not great
enough to create something better.

Orestes has no more wishes and needs no more proph-
ecies.
The sense Of being outside society overwhelmed Orestes;
he did not have the ”toughness and resilience” written of

138 and quoted in the first part of this chapter.

by Harding
We know that, unlike the truly mprally disobedient person,
Orestes would "never develop any original lines Of activ-
ity."139 Like Lawrence, he changed his

. . . abode every day, and (his) job every twolgays

 

and . . . still (remained) always unsatisfied.
138Harding, p. 79.

139Ibid.

luoLawrence, p. 184. (Also, see material Of footnotes

123, 124, and 125, this thesis.)

82

But unlike Lawrence his dissatisfaction did not stir him

to contribution.

CHAPTER IV

RENUNCIATION OF CIVIL STATUES: INHERIT

THE WIND

Much of history--from its beginnings, through Robin
Hood, to the "situin" strikes of the civil rights move—
ment Of today--may be thought Of as a quest for social
justice by denying certain dictates Of constituted civil
authority. The principle differences between this kind
of moral disobedience and that discussed in Chapter III
are the stronger reactions Of society and the greater
seriousness of the act, for here the social mores have
been formalized into law. In a democratic situation this
implies that the law reflects the ideals Of The People;
their common attitudes Of "justice" and "ultimate good"
for the greatest number, as seen in the introduction to
this thesis.

There is no single widely accepted theory which
explains why people have a sense of law, but it is known
that such a sense exists, and it not only encompasses a

desire to make laws.171 There is agreement, however,

 

lulSOrOkin, p. 705.

83

84

on a definition Of law. Sorokin calls it "a specific psy-
”142

 

chical experience.

 

Psychologically law-experience is composed Of a

specific emotion, which is simultaneously passive

and active, and Of an idea Of certain patterns Of

action (rules and conduct). This latter element

consists Of the ideas Of (a) a subject who is

entitled to be given what he has a right to

demand; (b) of the subject Of an Obligation who

is obliged or bound to do his duty; (c) Of the

idea of what is to be done by the subject Of the

Obligation; plus several other "ideational"

(the right and the duty) elements define the

patterns Of conduct to which the law-emotion is

urging.l”3

Because of the formal structure Of law and the pro—
visions society has made for the enforcement of it, any
act of moral disobedience which transgresses a law
strongly emphasizes all the "sets" against self—alienation
mentioned in Chapter III. This is true because in as much
as the law is a formal concept with the weight of society
behind it, so also are the reactions Of society regarding
its viability formalized and given great weight. Thus
laws are called statutes: something declared as fixed or
established.
It is on the matter Of determining the justice Of

a law where moral disobedience begins, for if a man

questions the justice of the authority which orders him

to accept a "lawful precept,” he is even less likely to

 

lu2lbid., p. 701.

lu3Ibid., p. 705.

85

be sure Of his Obligation tO Obey that law. Conversely,
he may choose to condemn the system because of the
injustice he perceives in one Of its laws.
The concretizing Of an idea Of social justice into
a law that is satisfactory to everyone is virtually
impossible because Of
. . . the fact that the good life (. . . in the sense
Of the happy life) and its conditions are not the
same for all due O their differences in needs and
potentialities.lu
We must ask, then, how there can be social justice in a
world of individuals with individual aims—-what in fact
is social justice? Here again there has been no agreement
among philosophers and social scientists concerning a
definition, but it is
. . . true . . . that the modern concept of social
justice is complex and includes a meritarian as well
as egalitarian element. It recognizes the demand to
respect differences between persons as well as the
demand to respect personality as such.145
The ideal of equal treatment in the modern concept Of
justice, according to William K. Frankena, is its most
universal aspect. Since individuals have different
ideals, differences in treatment must be allotted for

the general good. However

It is not as if one must first look to see how the
general good is best subserved and only then

 

l“Brandt, p. 15.

1&51618., p. 12.

86

tell what treatment of individuals is just. Justice
entails the presence Of equal prima facie rights prior
to any consideration Of general utility.”6

 

Frankena concludes his discussion with the idea that just
behaviour can be called "right," with the contextual
implication that it is equal treatment.177
There are Of course, other elements in social justice:
ideas Of non-injury, non-interference, non-impoverishment,
but these and other specific attributes of a just society
are ”linked in that they all involve and ultimately depend
on a recognition Of the equality or equal intrinsic value

"1148

of every human personality. As Martin Luther King,

Jr., says
Man is not made for the state; the state is made
for man. . . .Man must never be treated as a
means to the end Of the state, but always as an
end within himse1r.149
When a society is called unjust by one Of its
members, the judgment which is made "presupposes an
unwritten, eternal, divine law or standard which

"150

transcends all human legislation, and which involves

the diSparity between individual and social morality,

 

lu6Ibid., p. 15.

lu7Ibid., p. 25.

luBIbid., p. 14.

lugMartin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom (New
York: Perennial Library, 1964), p. 75.

150

 

Brandt, p. 28.

87

emphasizing the complexity Of man's social involvement

and "the glaring reality Of collective evil."151

Con-
cerning the idea of collective evil, Niebuhr has written:
From the perspective Of society the highest moral

ideal is justice. From the perspective of the

individual (as an active member Of a given society)

the highest ideal is unselfishness (as in self-

sacrifice for the good Of the society). Society

must strive for justice even if it is forced to

use means, such as self-assertion, resistance,

coercion and perhaps resentment, which cannot gain

the moral sanction of the most sensitive spirit.152

The moral disobedience which a "sensitive spirit"
feels welling up from within himself may take two forms
when made an issue in questions Of formal authority:
Violent and non-violent. In neither case is the rebel
acting within the legal structure of the society, for if
he were, that society would not necessarily consider his
act to be morally reprehensible. Violent disobedience
or revolution through force Of arms may have aims as
high as those Of the non-violent, purely intellectual
rebellion using only the force Of ideas. In setting
forth the ideal qualities Of the rebel-in—arms, Che Guevara
says that
the guerilla . . . must be an ascetic.
the guerilla is a crusader for . . . freedom
who, after exhausting peaceful means, resorts to
armed rebellion.

 

151King, p. 81.

152Niebuhr, p. 257.

88

In your conduct toward the . . . (people), show great

respect and demonstrate . . . moral superiority.l53
Perhaps the greatest ideological difference between a
violent and a non-violent revolution is that the pro-
ponent of immediate, violent rebellion

. aims directly at destroying an unjust social

order and indirectly at replacing it with something

new.l54
The advantages Of this kind Of moral disobedience or social
rebellion are Of course Obvious: the creation Of a
situation which makes the society face the issue, and the
provision Of a means for the immediate erradication Of
the injustice.

The disadvantages of this type of rebellion are two—
fold. First, the dust and thunder of war obscures the
issues which began it; the winning Of the war becomes
more important than the assertion of the instigating
ideas. Secondly, an armed revolution advocates the
philosophy Of the end justifying the means; a philosophy
which, particularly in this case, is for many people
indefensible. In some forms Of violent rebellion

the criminal may have a high, even laudatory

end in mind that inspires his deed; but the resort to
this particular technique for achieving that end

 

153Che Guevara, On Guerrilla Warfare, trans. Office Of
the Assistant Chief Of Staff for Intelligence, Depart-
ment of the Army, and Marine Corps Association (New
York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), pp. 20—31.

154

 

Ibid., p. 30.

89

alters the nature Of the rebellion he is making
thereby.l

Modern philosophers consider the non-violent mode
of rebellion to be positive, philosophically defensible,
and without the onus Of questionable means attached tO
armed rebellions.

I think it can be stated with assurance that the
concept Of positive rebellion is a valid one; that
rebellion, in short, can be of a positive type in
both its inception and its continuity, depending
upon the nature Of its cause, the quality of its
latent motivation, and the manner of its accomplish-
ment. Rebellion . . . does not have to be Of a
negative kind. It is true, however, that in the
world and in our society today negative rebellion
is endemic; but this is because very few know how
to be rebels in a positive way. . . .155

The advantages of non-violent rebellion are some-
what less Obvious than those of violent rebellion. The
initial advantage Of both is somewhat the same, however:

Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a
crisis and foster such a tension that a community
which has constantly refused to negotiate is
forced to confront the issue.1
This confrontation is not for purposes Of armed alliance,
as in the case Of violent rebellion, but, as stated, to
bring about negotiation.
You are quite right in calling for negotiation.

Indeed, this is ghe very purpose Of (non-violent_
direct action.15

 

155L1ndner, p. 220.

156Ibid., p. 223.

157Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait (New
York: Signet Books, 1964), p. 79.

158Ibid.

 

90

Thus the war is one Of ideas; the weapon used in such an

act of moral disobedience is the strength Of the idea

that is asserted. The individual
. . breaks an unjust law . . . Openly, lovingly, and
with a willingness to accept the penalty . . . of
imprisonment in order tO arouse the conscience of the
community.1

M. K. Gandhi elaborates this idea in an essay on non-

violent resistance.

Non-violence in its dynamic condition means con-
scious suffering. It does not mean meek submission
to the will Of the evil-doer, but it means the
pitting of one's whole soul against the will of the
tyrant. Working under this law Of our being, it is
possible for a single individual to defy the whole
might of an unjust empire, to save his honour

his soul and lay the foundation for that empire's
fall or its regeneration.

Civil disobedience . . . must appear (civil) even to

the Opponent. He must feel that the resistance is

not intended to do him any harm.160
Of course the power structure against which the morally
disobedient man rebels may believe that any disagreement
or agitation for change does harm. By saying that "the
resistance is not intended to do . . . pgpm" Gandhi
means that the power structure must be convinced that
the rebellion is meant to be for the good Of all members

Of the society and not for the self advancement Of the

individual rebels.

 

159Ibid., pp. 83-84.

160M. K. Gandhi, Non-Violent Resistance, ed. Bharatan
Kumarappa (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), pp. 134 and
306.

 

91

Besides the strength Of its idea, non-violent moral
disobedience of a law has the advantage of incorporating
a majority Of the people and Of the governing Officers
into its active support. Thus, the societal structure is
not disrupted but is strengthened. The society works
together for its common good. This assumes that the people
will see the advantages of the position held by the non-
violent rebels. If non-violent rebellion cannot mass
public Opinion behind it, then it is doomed to failure.
If it fails Of its own lack Of impetus, then society does
not agree with the change which is advocated. prthe non—
violent rebellion is forcibly quashed by the state,
however, then the state is by definition morally wrong.
I wish I could persuade everybody that civil
disobedience is the inherent right Of a citizen.
Civil disobedience is never followed by anarchy.
Criminal disobedience can lead to it. Every State
puts down criminal disobedience by force. It
perishes, if it does not. But to put down civil
disobedience is to attempt to imprison conscience.
Civil disobedience can only lead to strength and
purity. A civil resister never uses arms and hence
he is harmless to a state that is at all willing to
listen to the voice of public opinion. He is
dangerous for an autocratic State, for he brings
about its fall by engaging public Opinion upon the
matter for which he resists the state.151
Public support is, Of course, necessary for either rebellion
to succeed, but in the case of non-violent upheaval the
rebel may feel satisfied that he has worked for the

betterment Of his people, Often by their own admission.162

 

1511616., p. 174. 162Lindner, p. 157-

92

On the other hand, the rebel-in-arms may experience the dis—
satisfaction spoken Of by T. E. Lawrence when he said that
. anyone who pushed through to success a rebellion
Of the weak against their masters must come out of
it so stained in estimation that afterward nothing
in the world would make him feel clean.l53
A recent play concerned with analyzing this problem

is Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee.

 

The play Opens with a presentation of the community's
attitude concerning law. Law in Hillsboro, the play's
setting, is a result of custom as in Sorokin's tautology,
and the law is obeyed because it is the law, not because it
is just.
Rachel: There's a law against it.167
Rachel, the romantic interest of the play as well as the
representative of the "common man," tells Bert Cates, the
morally disobedient man, that what "everybody says" is
right.

Rachel: Everybody says what you did is bad.

Gates: It isn't as simple as that, good or bad,
black or white, night or day.

Rachel: . . . we live in Hillsboro, and when the sun
goes down, it's dark. And why dO you try
to make it different?

Why can't you be on the right side of things?

 

163Lawrence, p. 200.
164

Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind
(New York: Bantam Books, 1964).

 

93

During the trial, the judge gives a formal statement Of

this attitude:

In this community, Colonel Drummond-—and in this
sovereign state. . . .The language Of the law is
clear; we do not need experts to question the
validity Of a law that is already on the books.

 

The townspeople, "Everybody," are committed to
absolute conformity to tradition and hand-to—mouth living.
In nO sense is the community interested in abstract
Justice. The ideological conflict between Drummond and
Brady is not realized by Cates' society. Rather than
react to Drummond's idea when he says

This man wishes to be accorded the same priviledge
as a sponge! He wishes to think!

 

Cates' society reacts to the theatricality of Drummond's
phrasing, and his semantic triumph over Brady. The trial
becomes a circus contest between two giants. When the
popular favorite is tOppled, not by truth but by trickery,
the victor is elevated to new status as favorite. The
essence of his victory is ignored. The stage directions
for the action-climax of the play, taken in sequence,
reveal the garish, carnival atmosphere Of the moment.
Determined

Pause. BRADY is unsure
floundering
Hestitates--then

DRUMMOND'S got him. And he knows it! This is the
turning point. From here on, the tempo mounts.
DRUMMOND is now fully in the driver's seat. He
pounds his questions faster and faster.

94

wriggling

He brandishes the rock underneath BRADY'S nose
DAVENPORT is able to restrain himself no longer.
He realizes that DRUMMOND has BRADY in his
pocket. Redfaced, he leaps up to protest.

There is excited reaction in the courtroom

laughter begins

DRUMMOND bows grandly. The crowd laughs.

BRADY is now trembling so that it is impossible for
him to speak. He rises, towering above his tormenter—-
rather like a clumsy, lumbering bear that is baited

by an agile dog.

At this, there is another burst Of laughter. BRADY

is almost in a frenzy.

Pounding the air with his fists.

There is confusion in the court. The JUDGE raps.
BRADY beats his clenched fists in the air with
every name. There is a rising counterpoint Of
reaction from the spectators. Gavel.

Over the confusion

Gavel. The spectators begin to mill about. A number
of them, reporters and curiosity seekers, cluster
around DRUMMOND. DAVENPORT follows the JUDGE out.

They go out.
Still erect on the witness stand

His voice trails Off. He sinks, limp and exhausted
into the witness chair. MRS. BRADY looks at her
husband, worried and distraught. . . .BRADY sits,
ignored, on the witness chair.

The ideology of the play and Cates' rebellion is
smothered in this activity, and Cates' triumph, the climax
Of his act of moral disobedience, is manifested at first in
a very negative manner.

Judge: Bertram Cates, this court has found you

guilty . . . there is no precedent to guide
the bench in passing sentence. . . .The

95

court deems it proper . . . to sentence
Bertram Gates to pay a fine Of . . . one
hundred dollars.

(The mighty Evolution Law explodes with the pale
puff Of a wet firecracker. . . .)

This is very near a sanction for Cates' ideas, in-
asmuch as society, while formally destroying him, with-
held the strength Of censorship which would haVe crushed
his rebellion totally. The group which pressured him was
in turn pressured by a larger group; it was in the larger
group that he achieved his victory. The actual victory of
his ideals, though slight, is diffused through the remainder
of the play.

Drummond: Bertram Cates has no intention what-
soever of paying this or any other
fine. . . .Will the court grant thirty

days to prepare our appeal?

Judge: Granted. . . .

I I I I I I I I 0 I I I I I I I I I I I I

Cates: . Did I win or did I lose:

Drummond: You won.

Millions of people will say you won.
They'll read in their papers tonight that
you smashed a bad law. You made it a
joke!

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I

Remember--you've helped the next fella.
This muddy conclusion is due to the fact that the immediate
society Of the play, the lawmakers, are unaffected by the
trial. Cates' real victory is in the larger society Of

his nation as stated.

96

The process of Cates' rebellion is inferred, but not
shown. Instead, specific attributes and characteristic
aftermaths of the act of moral disobedience determine the
structure of the play. The play is by no means a history
of an act of moral disobedience, but it is a colorful
discussion of elements intrinsic to such an act.

When Gates and his defense counsel Drummond oppose
the law and assert the justice of their right to reflect
and express their own ideas, they taste the experience
of the rebel finding himself ostracized from society.

They become the lonely men written of by Harding and T. E.
Lawrence.
It's the loneliest feeling in the world—-to find your—
self standing up when everybody else is sitting down.
To have everybody look at you and say, 'What's the
matter with him?' I know. I know what it feels
like. Walking down an empty street, listening to
the sound of your own footsteps. Shutters closed,
blinds drawn, doors locked against you. And you
aren't sure whether you're walking toward something,
or if you're just walking away.
Like Harding's rebel, however, Cates overcomes loneliness
and privation striving to contribute something to society
with his rebellion. He has the strength of intent and
the courage, unlike Richardson's Orestes, necessary to
assert his ideals.
Drummond: . . . If you honestly believe you committed
a criminal act against the citizens of
this state and the minds of their children.
If you honestly believe that you're wrong

and the law's right. Then the hell with
it. [sic]

97

what's the verdict, Bert? You want
to find yourself guilty before the jury
does?

Cates: No, sir. I'm not gonna quit.
Drummond defines the basis of his courage, and Cates', as
a belief in Truth and a conviction in the correctness of
that belief.

I must say that 'Right' has no meaning to me whatso—
ever! Truth has meaning--as a direction.

When society persists in condemning Cates' rebellion, it
is the strength of his beliefs which enables him stead-
fastly to maintain his ideals.
. . I feel I am. . . .I have been convicted of
violating an unjust law. I will continue in the
future, as I have in the past, to Oppose this law in
any way I can. I-—
Cates' rebellion had only a qualified success. The
authors infer that his ideas begin to work within his
society, bringing about changes in attitude in a non—
violent manner. The first overt result of the attention
given to Cates' ideas appears in the person of Rachel,
the girl who was guided by the attitudes of ”Everybody."
Maybe what Mr. Darwin wrote is bad. I don't know.
Bad or good, it doesn't make any difference. The
ideas have to come out—-like children. Some of
'em healthy as a bean plant, some sickly. I
think the sickly ideas die mostly.

Here Rachel represents the common man of the society and

summarizes a final, good effect of the act of moral

disobedience. Cates' rebellion is completed. At the

98

final curtain Darwin is still not accepted subject matter
for public schools, but the way is opened for freedom of
thought and speech.

Drummond: . . . remember—-you've helped the next
fella.

Gates: What do you mean?

Drummond: You don't suppose this kind of thing is
ever finished, do you? Tomorrow it'll be
something else——and another fella will have
to stand up. And you've helped give him
the guts to do it!

While the climax of Cates' rebellion was understated,
with the judge specifying a small fine, the summary of his
ideals was emphasized in a statement of the quotation from
which the title of the play was taken. Summarizing the
ideals of Cates, the frenetic activity of the courtroom
and the death of Brady, Drummond quoted:

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the

wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise
in heart.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

The philosophy represented in this thesis holds that
man has the right and the power to determine his own
destiny; that society should be the servant of man, not
his master. Man's propensity for exercising this right in
spite of opposition seems to have grown in the last twenty
years. As an indication, we have seen examples of man's
struggle for individual self-determination and we've seen
instances of this struggle used as a theme in post World
War II literature. Man has been shown exercising his
right of self-determination in respect to his religion,
his informal group and his formal society. Playwrights
have used instances of self—determination through moral
disobedience of an existing order as a theme in dramatic
literature. In Chapter II of this thesis we find J. B.
abandoning one idea of God for the ideal of humanism.

In Chapter III man seeks to assert his individuality in

the face of contradiction from the traditions or

informal mores of his society. Arnold crawls to assert his
individuality, while Orestes succumbs to the pressure of
his society's traditions. In Chapter IV Bert Cates defied
the civil law of his town to bring it freedom of thought.

99

100

He did not succeed with his immediate society, but he
caused his larger society, his nation,to move closer to
an ideal of individual freedom of thought emphasizing
through his self-sacrifice the decadent pettiness of
restrictions on free thought and speech prevalent before
his trial. His society condemned him in compliance to
formalized tradition, but informally granted him victory.
Philosophically, the chapters of this thesis re—

iterate Thorau's question and its answer.

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least

degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?

Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that

we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It

is not desirable to cultivate a reSpect for the law,
so much as for the right.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that
is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist
the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency
are great and unendurable.

As for adopting the ways which the State has pro—
vided remedying the evil, I know not of such ways.
They take too much time, and a man's life will be
gone.1 5
As a theme in dramatic literature, moral disobedience
has the universality of history and the immediacy of his—
tory repeating itself. It is closely related to signi-

ficant events of today, linking the theatre to them.

 

165Henry David Thoreau, "On Civil Disobedience," Walden
(New York: The New American Library, 1963), pp. 223, 225,
and 229.

 

101

The strength of plays written with the theme of moral
disobedience lies in their affirmation of a higher ideal
contained in the disobedient act. Social and theological
criticism in these plays is positive, unlike the plays of
Brustein's "theatre of revolt." While Brustein says that
"what makes Job's torments bearable to us is the way

they are set down"166

the morally disobedient characters
in the plays discussed here believe that what makes

Job's torments bearable is the answer modern Job, J. B.,
discovers and makes to them. That is, that man must act

according to his own beliefs in seeking the ultimate good,

as defined in the introduction to this thesis.

 

166Brustein, p. 416.

 

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102

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