Lawrence of Arabia

Just watched Lawrence of Arabia. My letter box comment was: "The original Lisan al-Gaib".

There is something very attractive about the type of story where an outsider (or at least someone who appears as an outsider) shows the ability or demonstrates an innate grit or perseverance for cultural adoption or even foreign culture curiosity. They seem to have a genuine interest in learning the techniques and formalities of this other culture and work hard to convince others (the reader and the cultural opposition) that his motives are true.

Those that are part of the cultural opposition then begin to fall in love with his honesty, with the love that he himself imparts on their culture and they too convince themselves of his divine deliverance. There is an inevitability to all his actions which never gets repetitive or predictable because his condition, his authority, is consistently challenged, if not from within then from without.

There is always a internal strife. The foreigners, the indigenous population, begins hesitant to adopt his character or even skeptical of his being. Maybe even outright hostile. This hostility, this fear of the unknown, slowly dissipates as the character exudes a suave and graceful appropriation of that culture. It comes not from a learning of what is right or customary, but an innate knowledge of how it is. The character possess an a priori understanding of the culture. At times he maybe even performs these things better than those practiced in it.

There is often than an imperial force, a great empire or large being whom from our character descends. He is the child of this empire, but his character is set apart from it as to separate his moral compass, his moral actions from those of the more questionable larger entity. He does so not on purpose. Not because he feel particularly poorly about his upbringing, but because it is his nature. He is patriotic, to a degree. He is quirky. He is different. There may even be a secondary opposing empire to this first which helps boost the morality of the character's home empire. This is to make the first more favorable then the second, but less favorable, or at least more morally ambiguous, then a third, as to promote the adoption or understanding of the characters drift towards that third power, that of the indigenous population.

He sees something that we can not see. He sees victory where none see it. He acts in a way and through ways which are mysterious, hidden from the observer (at least at first). He partakes in these actions with what may be mistaken as flippant exuberance, but really is just a supreme confidence in their outcome, an extreme conviction in his thought faculties and their ability to perceive and predict. Everything, for him, is known. We, the reader, are thoroughly impressed by this.

There is a tragic nature to his statehood. As he strives to belong to what seems a more appropriately fitting culture, running from his imperial parent, not aware, or at least not willing to face, the difference in underlying faculty that he has with this indigenous culture despite the perfect match in appearances. He comes to this realization slowly. It builds in the character's triumphs, brutally obvious in his conduct, but only recognizable in hindsight. He possesses convictions and a disposition heavily influenced/adopted, without explicit consent, from his parent empire: a disposition to conquer, to hold domain. This disposition sets in him a higher purpose, higher not in the form of transcending in a tangible value sense those convictions around him, but higher in that it is completely unrelated, completely unhinged from the reality in which the scenes are set. It is a purpose set outside the main aspects of the story, running parallel and only rarely, if at all, plunging into its neighboring stream but for a moment before returning to its parallel path. The height of his tragedy is realized when he notices this fact. When he realizes his difference. The audience has known it all along and we recognize in him what he comes only to notice later in that moment. We follow his gradient of recognition and as it builds, we come equally estranged from the story as to does the character. We both run away from the plot transforming ourselves into this otherworldly being and we take great joy in the transformation, in this shared disfigurement as we transcend the plot with this fictitious character.

Now, at some point, there is a fall. A plummet. The character becomes too estranged. Too distant from the plot and its other minor characters. His reality begins to fail. Maybe he sees too little, maybe he sees to much. This transformation is seen primarily in the reaction of those closest to our protagonist. There grows in them a great fear as if they have grasped or recognized suddenly the creation of some otherworldly beast who now stands on their doorstep demanding to be let in. He neglects them, he maybe shuns them, dishonors them, harms them, kills them, annihilates them. He does so senselessly. Or with perverted purpose. They do not know, but we do. His psyche, if done correctly, remains open to us. As he curls away from the cast he displays to us his nastily protruding innards. He and we are caught, drawn into a frenzy of his own creation, a frenzy we only participate in if we are completely convinced by his character. A frenzy which is built throughout the beginning of the entire plot and now, only now rears its ugly head. We sympathize with this ugliness, we even enjoy it. We nod as if in understanding as he commits all horror of atrocities. We even egg him on. We take comfort in the fact that there exists others as brutal as we wish ourselves to be.

This fall is interesting for the reader maybe because it doesn't totally estrange the reader from the main character. Maybe in his fall he remains connected with the reader and they both descend together, spirally in a sort of graceful fall, intertwined as two lovers down into the depths of hell. Maybe it is this togetherness that compels the story.

Sometime after these events there is usually a crusade, where unhinged from reality, but still with sufficient support from the cast, the main character embarks on a sort of revolution. He changes the game. Stokes the fires. And at the conflicts end, he reflects and in this reflection he concludes or rather considers whether his actions were for nought, if the path he felt so clearly defined was in fact more obscure, less obvious (they often always are). He questions the inevitability of his action and in doing so loses the strength of his prophetic character. He shies away from the moment and is reclaimed by some background force, maybe his homeland, before dying. There is some concluding remark of this style.

This is by no means exhaustive and also may be completely wrong but it is what has stood out to me in the arcs of two characters Lawrence of Arabia and Paul of House Atreides.