ABSTRACT
Camus is a teacher of a very different kind: he knows where we have gone wrong and he comes to tell us how to go right – we are to learn from him how to live. In Camus's dramatization of The Possessed, Kirilov admits to being puzzled as to why there are not many more suicides and searches for 'the reasons why men don't dare kill themselves'. Denying eternal life, Camus is just as categorical as Christianity in forbidding suicide: 'even within the limits of nihilism it is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism'. The difference between Camus and Christianity is not that he is libertarian and it is dogmatic; The Myth is a text crammed with instructions and commands. Camus has commandments aplenty, as binding as those brought down from Mount Sinai. Camus's changes in the play are significant. He leaves out the child and introduces the crucially important figure of the old servant.
