ABSTRACT
What literature can show us, then, is the human being in the grip of his vision of the world, a vision that demands not only his or her attention and interpretation, but also his or her reaction. In interpreting the world, memory is guided by knowledge and experience and also by feelings and beliefs. We now have to add a new dimension to the arsenal of interpretation, and that is the individual will, which is dependent on our beliefs and on the image that we have of ourselves. For purposes of analysis we can distinguish the vision that the author has of the world and of the characters he or she created and the vision that he or she assigns to these characters. We have seen that often there is a relation between the two kinds of visions. Camus’s vision and his desire to offer a new paradigm of moral understanding have penetrated the thoughts of his characters, as is the case of Rieux in The Plague. Vigny writes a poem to present a Christ who is more human than divine, and that understanding informs his philosophical thinking.
