“isolation amid crowds” understandably gave rise
to Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism and Albert
Camus’s sense of the absurd.
All age-old conflicting theories finally seem to
endorse a paradox: An individual is both “the crea-
ture and the creator of society” (Hawthorn 27). The
individual, the French sociologist Émile Durkheim
declared in the latter part of the 19th century, is
defined by his social relations. By playing his “social
role,” he metamorphoses from an individual into a
person (persona is a Latin word for the ancient theat-
rical mask). Since this “person” is a social being, his
every act is invariably a social (because human) act.
So is his literary venture. He writes in a language
which, the 20th-century British sociologist Anthony
Giddens would argue, he did not even create. Even
in satirizing society, he may distance himself from
the society he criticizes, but that again underscores
the inseverable link between himself and his society.
An individual can never be completely divorced from
society.
The society allocates roles for each individual
and prescribes rules for each role. The violation of
“formal” rules is punished by judiciary and police;
that of the “informal” ones by shame and ostracism.
Meursault, in Camus’s The stranGer, is condemned
when he refuses to conform to the unwritten norm
of showing grief at his mother’s death; his society
is unwilling to condone a murder committed due to
the glare of the sun. For his former offense, he reaps
societal suspicion and dislike; for his latter crime, he
gets capital punishment. In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s
criMe and punishMent, Raskolnikov’s punishment
for murder is more personal than judicial. The judi-
ciary comes to know of it only when he confesses
of his own accord, and that very confession is the
outcome of a thorough internalization of his soci-
ety’s morality.
Conditioned by social expectations, beowuLF
(Anonymous), as the hero of his people, must show
extraordinary courage. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane
eyre, for all her radical thoughts of emancipation,
may still be redeemed by her ultimately not flouting
the social dictates of feminine tenderness, faith-
ful love, and Christian kindness. But in Gustave
Flaubert’s MadaMe bovary, the title character’s
violation of norms in the form of an extramarital
affair cannot be exonerated by her conservative soci-
ety. Her husband forgives her, yet she must still die
in the end to maintain the societal status quo.
A society inevitably dooms an individual to a
divided self. Various social positions and phases
demand various social roles to be played. To do so,
the anthropologist Margaret Mead argued, I (the
real self ) must give in to Me (the social self )—will-
ingly or otherwise. The uncoordinated instincts of
the id (the dark, unconscious part of human psyche),
to use Freudian terms, must be reined in by the
rationality of the ego (the polished part modified
by external influences) and the moralizing function
of the superego (the critical conscientious part). A
fantastical allegorical representation of this dichot-
omy of self is seen in Robert Louis Stevenson’s
dr. JekyLL and Mr. hyde, where Dr. Jekyll is the
“social” face of the named individual and Mr. Hyde
is the “real,” untailored part of him that defies social
conventions and performs deadly acts contrary to
a doctor’s healing duties. The healer by day hor-
rifyingly transforms into the killer by night, sym-
bolizing the hideous image of an individual when
uncontrolled by society’s leashes.
“Without a social environment no self can arise”
(Aubert 58) because self-analysis is possible only by
considering others’ perception of it. Hence, extended
isolation may “threaten to disturb or destroy the per-
ceptions of the self ” (58). Though Daniel Defoe’s
robinson crusoe is portrayed as the sole shipwreck
survivor, rebuilding his world on a remote island
with the morals and customs of his civilization
indelibly etched in his nature, William Golding
takes a more skeptical approach. His Lord oF the
FLies instead subverts Defoe’s world to illustrate
how something goes very wrong with human “cul-
ture” when segregated from the civilizing influences
of society by showing a swift degradation of mor-
als in a band of boys left stranded on a deserted
island. Not just total isolation but confrontation
with other cultures may also challenge the stabil-
ity of one’s own cultural values. In the absence of
the restraining measures of his compatriots, Kurtz,
in Joseph Conrad’s heart oF darkness, “goes
native.” Chinua Achebe, on the other hand, depicts
the doomed struggle of an individual, Okonkwo, to
hold together his dilapidating traditional societyindividual and society 59