Reassembling+the+Broken+World

=Reassembling The Broken World =



 One of the main distinctions made between Marcel and many other philosopher playwrights is that Marcel considered himself first and foremost a dramatist. This difference is noticeable in Marcel’s plays. They are not only rife with philosophical questions, but also characters with whom the audience can empathize and truthful, sharp dialogue. While he was thinking through the concepts and ideas that would later become his approach to Existentialism, Marcel would often write out his thoughts in play form; he composed his philosophical ideas as a dialogue between two “characters”. Another large difference between Marcel and his fellow existentialists is the fact that he believed in God. He came from a non-religious family, but after much reflection into his personal philosophy Marcel converted to the Catholic Church. He felt like it was the best way to live out his principles. As Michaud put it in his article on Marcel and religion,

In fact he once noted that without the religious experience which engendered his subsequent baptism in the church, he would not have written //The Broken World//, arguably his best play, which was published in 1932 and which, in many ways, set the thematic stage for the more or less 16 plays that followed (229).

 //The Broken World// is named after a specific concept from Marcel’s philosophy, which sheds a lot of light on some of the internal stru ggles that many of its characters face. The Broken World is what Marcel believes that we live in, and he set out to prove it in his play of the same name.

 According to Marcel, the world around us suffers from a lack of contemplation and a complete denial of secondary reflection; it is shattered by a lack of transcendence and connection with others around us. There are two different ways to approaching ontology. One is  to regard it as a problem with a solution that can be defined, which is the stance taken by science. However the failing with only using this form of reflection is that the solutions found to the problems can never really answer the important questions. This form of knowledge is called primary reflection. Primary reflection has problems that have solutions with results. It is objective—the answers are outside of us. Primary reflection is also reductive, which means it excludes anything that doesn’t fit in its narrow focus, such as anything that is non-empirical or non-quantifiable. Marcel looks at the questions of being not at a problem, but as a mystery. This is called secondary reflection. If people accept this, then they become able to know of the transcendent. They learn about the importance of hope. Secondary reflection brings the issues back to our personal experience. There is no final answer to mysteries. Secondary reflection involves the participation of the person asking the questions. What you discover reflects back to you. You have to mirror your findings with changes in you. Marcel is very much against philosophies that are focused only on rote knowledge. He claims that this sort of theory is one, “that ignores the tragic, that denies the transcendent and tries to reduce it to caricatures that misrepresent its essential characteristics” (Marcel, “Concrete Approaches to Investigating the Ontological Mystery” 176). Marcel’s focus is on pulling yourself up out of this broken world without reflection.

 Another theme that is found in The Broken World is that of disposability and non-disposability. What Marcel is talking about in terms of disposability is just simple give and take. You need to be there for other people and in turn they will be there for you. When you are disposable, you are willingly giving yourself to others, when you are non-disposable you don’t pay attention or don’t truly give yourself. When you do not really take the time to appreciate someone else’s value …it is really your own value that decreases. We tend to take advantage of the things, people, or the foundations and stableness we have around us. We are easily dissatisfied and expect the world from others without putting in much effort ourselves. We see the world and its meaning partially through our relationships with others. Even when you aren’t in a good mood, even if you don’t know the person very well, it is necessary for your own character to open yourself and be available for that person. Once you are available and disposable, your presence is always there for others. As Marcel defines it, Presence is…“the absolute gift of one’s self” (Marcel, Being and Having 69). What people don’t understand is that by isolating themselves they have already lost their life. They are not truly living. They are an island all on their own. They are prideful, but not in the meaning one usually associates with the word. Pride isn’t just thinking one is better than other people. Marcel would call that vanity; instead he uses the world pride for the futile people who won’t acknowledge that they are interdependent on those around them. Marcel believes that even by not doing anything one is making a choice,“…life cannot be played without stakes; life is inseparable from some form of risk” (Marcel, Being and Having 70).

 The Broken World more than anything else asks the question, “What does it mean to exist?” All the characters in this play are searching for the answer, or trying to ignore the question completely. Either way it often leads to tragic endings. One of the characters, Denise, overdoses on drugs, and the others merely live their lives not even realizing that the world around them is broken.

This image of the “broken world” refers not only to a world that appears fractured and fragmented, one that no longer has coherent unity. It refers also to Christiane’s growing sense of dissatisfaction with her own being. Her increasing uneasiness with the emptiness of her personal life—shallow relations, hollow gestures, artificial posturing above a void (Hanley, “Translator’s Preface” 15).

Christiane realizes the existence of the broken world around her, but cannot figure out what the implications of this are. She doesn’t know what changes she should make to her life. She talks with her playwright friend Henry and tells him, “You fabricate scenarios, we understand and live them” (Marcel, The Broken World 130). She realizes that he is disconnecting himself from life, and that his is a futile, unfulfilling way to live, but doesn’t know what the right way to live is. In many ways a lot of the pain she suffers comes from her attempting to go out and live life, but not fully grasping what it is or what it involves. She wants to be completely available for others, but is unable to do more than flirt with all those around her. “People meet, or more accurately, bump into each other. That makes quite a racket” (Marcel, //The Broken World// 47).

 When she was younger she fell in madly and completely in love with a man who didn’t realize that she was in love with him. He was very good friends with her, but he ended up becoming a monk. After that she just couldn’t put herself out there and take any risk involving interpersonal relationships. She suffered so badly, that the idea of being totally disposable and being rejected again is too frightening for her. She doesn’t understand that the only way for her to actually find peace and freedom is to be truly disposable. She doesn’t understand that she is in complete control over her life. Her actions and choices decide her very purpose for existence. “You think I chose this life. It disgusts me. It makes me sick” (Marcel, The Broken World 82). This is her biggest mistake and the one that allows her to go one living her shallow life, with only minor twinges of conscience. She refuses to accept responsibility for the way she lives and all the actions and choices that have brought her to this vacuous, shallow life.

 Lawrence, Christiane’s husband, is another great example of non-disposability. He exists less fully because he refuses social interaction and closeness with others. He has never opened himself up to even his wife. He has trouble even understanding how to be available. He is prideful and full of self-love. He relates to others in how he can use them or how they relate to his well being. He doesn’t really try to connect with Christiane, because of his pride; he thinks that he would be stooping to actually beg and profess his love after she has shown no interest in him, and would rather live a life empty of love and affection than feel like he made a fool of himself trying to attain her love. As Hanley put it in the “Interpreter’s Preface” to The Broken World, “He knows that to love is to give, but he cannot give unless he is made to feel superior by this giving” (17). Christiane knows this and plays on his pride to try and get Lawrence’s attention again. She pretends that she was having an affair with a boorish fool, Antonov, but she had been rejected by him. The plan works, but when Christiane is faced with Lawrence’s selfish pity for her, she is revolted. Lawrence doesn’t realize that one cannot be completely self-sufficient as a person without stripping oneself of one’s own humanity. He removes everything from himself that could make him care; he sends away his son to a different country for health reasons and doesn’t even appreciate his letters, or what is worse won’t admit to himself that he does. He refuses to look at people as really unique and separate. Lawrence looks at people as a mob, a vaguely irritating, homogenous group, but as another character says, “No one is simple” (Marcel, The Broken World 46). Lawrence doesn’t even realize the existence of the Broken World for, “…he is too much outside it to feel its emptiness” (Gouhier, 155).

 Denise is another example of a character that is afflicted with self-love. She is, however, the complete opposite of Lawrence in every other way, being a bohemian and the personification of everything Lawrence hates in the world. Denise professes to adore her lover many times in the play, but really he is just an ego boost to her. It makes her feel good about herself that she could hook a younger man, when in reality she is paying to keep him in money and with her. He is a “kept man”. She is in effect paying him to stay and love her, though she has no idea that what she is experiencing isn’t love at all. Unlike Lawrence’s potentially hopeful ending, Denise’s ending is tragic. Once her lover leaves her, due to her pride and self-love, she falls into despair and then overdoses and dies.

 The Broken World also recognizes the importance of communication between people—of being open to another presence. When there are true exchanges of being they irrevocably change who we are. These moments make us transcend the limits that non-disposability puts upon us. There is one moment in this play, between Genevieve and Christiane that is the perfect example of this. The short conversation they have at the end of the play changes both of them forever. Christiane hears that Jacques Decroy, or as he is now known Dom Maurice, has died and falls into despair, feeling so alone that she tells Gilbert, a younger man who is in love with her, that she loves him as well. They start to have an affair. When all hope seems lost for Christiane and Lawrence, Genevieve, Jacques Decroy’s sister, comes to visit Christiane with an important message.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Genevieve is a woman battered by circumstances; her husband is bed-ridden and in all likelihood will be an invalid for the rest of his life. Genevieve tells Christiane about a letter written by Jacques after he became a monk. He realized later in his life that Christiane had been in love with him and constantly carried the fear that he had irrevocably damaged the rest of her life. “At some point he realized that the same act by which he gave himself to God might have meant despair for you…who knows, even perdition. That just mustn’t be. So from that moment he prayed fervently that the light would come to you…” (Marcel, The Broken World 145). Knowing that Jacques Decroy did care so much about her liberates Christiane from her hollow life of non-disposability and gives her closure and the ability to move on with her life. Christiane’s love of Jacques Decroy has shaped her life, but now it will do so in a positive way. She can now look back without regret.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">In The Broken World, Christiane’s attempt to lose herself in diversions and superficial relations to avoid being in touch with her true self reveals a self-deception and a deception of others. Genevieve’s revelation that she knows of Christiane’s heartache moves her to accept herself now in a light of truth…The passage from self-deception and deception of others to living in a light of truth enables Christiane to establish, beginning with her husband Lawrence, authentic interpersonal relationships (Hanley, “Marcel: the playwright philosopher” 245).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Christiane realizes that she must learn to accept her life past, present, and future. She has to acknowledge the importance of her actions, take responsibility, and actively hope for a deepening relationship with her husband, Lawrence. The play does leaves us with the hope of a brighter future for the couple, as Lawrence starts to open up and become available to her.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> The Broken World is a wonderfully written work. Marcel’s expertise as playwright is clear to his audience; however, equally clear is his skill as a philosopher. The philosophical concepts do not burden the play, rather they make it more urgent to the audience. Understanding Marcel’s philosophical theory before reading this play makes it not only clearer, but more poignant. “For it is in these imaginative works of mine that my thought is to be found in its virgin state, in, as it were, its first gushings from the source” (Marcel, The Mystery of Being 22). There is an honesty and purity about this play that can catch you off guard, and move you in a way you never expected. Looking at this play one can see the implications that this philosophy can have on your life. When you see or read The Broken World you realize that it is an occurrence of presence, a life changing moment between you and playwright and the actors, one that you have to reflect in yourself after experiencing it.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Works Cited:
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Gouhier, Henri. //L’Europe Nouvelle//. pg. 66-67. January 20, 1934. Critics’ Review. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Translated by Hanley, Katharine Rose. //Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World//. Marquette University Press. Milwaukee. 1999. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Hanley, Katharine Rose. “Marcel: the playwright philosopher”. //Renascence: Essays on// <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">//values in literature//. 55.3 (Spring 2003): p241. Literature Resource Center. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Hanley, Katharine Rose. “Translators Preface”. Pg. 13-30. //Gabriel Marcel’s// <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">//Perspectives on The Broken World//. Marquette University Press. Milwaukee. 1999. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Marcel, Gabriel. //Being and Having//. Marcel Press, 2007. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Marcel, Gabriel. //The Broken World.// Pg. 31-152. Translated by Hanley, Katharine Rose. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">//Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World//. Marquette University Press. Milwaukee. 1999. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Marcel Gabriel. //The Mystery of Being//. Translated by Fraser, G.S. St. Augustine’s Press. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">South Bend, Indiana. 2001. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Michaud, Thomas A. “Gabriel Marcel’s Catholic Dramaturgy”. //Renascence: Essays on// <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">//values in literature//. 55.3 (Spring 2003): p229. Literature Resource Center.

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