Chapter 6 Towards the Hometown of Art (6)--Hell Exercise

The Robinson incident in the Western Hotel permeates the principle that facts only exist in different interpretations of people, and the final judgment only depends on the result and not on the cause.Any personal justification is powerless in the face of principles. When a person commits a crime, he can only be borne by himself. All sympathy and understanding must give way to duties here. People are first regulated by duties, and then others. , this other is actually equal to zero. The superintendent, who looks like a cold robot and casually makes murder judgments every day, is actually the true face of the messenger of the god of destiny.All his standards are super-moral and just, but the justice here is a kind of justice like hell (or heaven).This kind of justice is not understood by Karl, but the head chef and Therese understand it.According to this standard, Karl committed a heinous crime by leaving his post (proved by the facts) and stealing (deduced by the previous facts), and must be severely punished.If the steward did not punish Karl, for whatever reason, he would be committing malpractice and incompetence.Of course, the steward also had a small weakness, namely his love for the head chef, from which he reduced Karl's punishment a little, and this was made up for by the co-operation of the concierge.In front of this envoy of fate, Karl has no way to defend himself, because all his excuses start from his own "good intentions", and they only involve the reasons for things to happen, and the boss despises all of them. The boss wants to tell Karl If he commits a crime, he must be punished. According to his logical reasoning, Karl will die. The appearance of the manager here reveals the gloom of death. As a hot-blooded boy, how can Karl not struggle and resist? Karl is afraid Driven to resist instinctively, the result of resistance is of course not death, but escape from the handkerchief of death. Carl, as a worldly person, cannot live life like the female chef and Therese. Escaping and wandering is the only way out .Looking back at the manager, we can see that there are many gaps in the unshakable principle. The manager is not really a god of death, but just a player. Otherwise, Karl would not have the opportunity to break through the gap in the principle. As for the female chef and Therese, because they live in the shadow of death every day, they respect and love the manager and obey them absolutely. In the eyes of us mortals, their lives are unreasonable, and such a life cannot be lived. Life can only be a model, an ideal, and a symbol of enlightenment. Karl understands them and doesn't understand them. In the end, he still doesn't follow their arrangements. It seems that he is forced by life and subconscious. The appearance of fate is always terrible, and Karl, facing it, cannot recognize it, and even if he recognizes it, he can't do anything else, just because he still wants to live and be a man in the world.

There are two explanations for the causality in the Robinson affair.Karl's explanation is exactly the opposite of that of the manager, and they could have insisted on their own opinions and refused to give in to each other; but because the two sides are in the opposite positions of fate and human efforts, principles and those who are executed, superiors and subordinates, the judgment is of course It's up to the manager to decide.All are in office, so all can only support the chief.Karl was in the position of the accused, and whatever he said always came to the conclusion that he was guilty; everyone saw that except Karl.That is why the Matron said that there must be a special appearance in the case of justice, which does not exist in the case of Karl.The headmistress's logic is the butler's logic, and that logic is always incompatible with Karl's worldly logic, and neither of them is wrong.In the face of this unchangeable logic, Therese cried out in despair when Carl failed due to a foul.Emotionally, neither of them believed that Karl was a bad person; intellectually, they had to believe that Karl had done something bad.In such an irreconcilable inner conflict, the female chef said some typical contradictory words.On the one hand, she absolutely agrees with the manager's judgment, because she has proved that the manager is the most reliable person through years of contact, and no one can refute his reasoning; on the other hand, she still thinks that Karl is a decent boy.She couldn't draw a conclusion in her heart, she could only suffer in hell.In the end, behind the manager's back, she took a peaceful approach to provide Karl with a new way out. On the surface, it seemed that the conflict was resolved, but the result was to make herself and Karl more painful.Therese went from hope to despair, and once again lost a companion with whom she could communicate, and her pain was beyond words.In her opinion, Karl's guilt and innocence have already been determined, and the important thing is whether he can stay.Karl didn't understand her at all, and he was full of childish sense of justice.He didn't know that in the Western Hotel, any deviant behavior was a crime, and he was dissatisfied and disappointed that Therese misunderstood himself.

The concierge is another type, which symbolizes the neglected contingency.A person's life is full of such contingencies.It was true that Karl had never been careful with the concierge before; he was inexperienced, and his eyes lacked the sharpness of a Western hotel clerk.And all these negligence that could not be taken care of, accumulated over time, planted the root of disaster.The concierge's appearance was hideous, and his purpose seemed to be to torture Karl, to make things difficult for Karl, and to make it impossible for him to move.If you dig deeper, you will find that his behavior also comes from that special logic, which reminds people of the characteristics of vengeance, torture and entanglement of human beings by capricious fate.The concierge played the role of the messenger of punishment.He is aware of everything, and sits in the glass house all day long. The house is like a fate observation platform. The network inside is intricate but has its own laws. His position is extremely important.It is such a superior who is actually neglected by a little boy, and the punishment can be imagined.The concierge is absolutely infallible, and no matter how wronged Karl feels emotionally, his judgment cannot be changed.His judgment was based on something mysterious and unreasonable, something Karl had never understood, something Karl could not contend with.So on the surface, the concierge's judgment is extremely arbitrary. He can doubt whoever he likes to doubt, but once he doubts anyone, he will be finished; his work is a supplement to the work of the manager. Work that can be carried through to the end must be carried out with his help.That strange musty smell emanating from the porter was the smell of dank hell; and Karl was doomed by that smell.Karl could not understand why the concierge had such a strong desire for revenge.This kind of incomprehension is of course due to the ignorance of young people. He can't see the danger hidden in what he has done, and he can't figure out the karma in fate, so he will just blindly run around.Carl, who was strangled by the concierge's iron fist, finally created a miracle, escaped from the concierge's restraint with all his might, and ran out of the iron cage in broad daylight, performing a show where spiritual principles gave way to primitive power good show.

After sorting out these intricate relationships, and looking back at the structure of Western restaurants, you will realize that this is a real hell.To say it is hell is to look at it in the sense of its suppression of human nature.On the other hand, this hell is an inaccessible paradise for Karl, because Karl tries to be a "good guy" with due diligence here, just like the head chef and Therese.But Karl can't be the head chef and Therese, and despite his near-death experience, he can only be himself.There is no place for him in this heaven, because his "mortal heart is immortal", the only ending is to be expelled.Indeed, the paradise Karl longs for is nothing more than a life of dutifulness.But how far that is!Just thinking about the misery of the head chef and Therese, their stifling of their own humanity under the grip of principles, and their insensitivity to worldly joys and sorrows is enough to make Karl hesitate before the threshold of heaven.All this has shown a symptom: Karl's future career can only be an endless wandering, an endless process of trying to enter-being expelled-trying to enter-and still being expelled; , he gradually matured; in the process, heaven and hell entered his heart at the same time, prompting him to fight and at the same time tempting him to reconcile.