The Rock Bottom Comedian

7th Archetype of the Accused

"I loathe my life…"

Here is the long story of poor old Job. He is a happy, successful and goodly fellow who loses everything in a series of freak tragedies. He finds himself alone and homeless, sat in a ditch and scraping his sores with a broken piece of an old pot. His friends arrive and sit with him in silence for seven days. It's good. Then they open their mouths and begin to edge around the idea that is often aimed toward those who sleep in ditches: "is it not that you've done something wrong, dear Job?" This is a belief common among both the religious and the not religious: that disastrous circumstances must be somehow an indicator of personal failure.

Then Job answered:

"How you have helped one who has no power!

How you have assisted the harm that has no strength!

How you have counselled one who has no wisdom and given much good advice!"

Here is the archetype of the one who seems to have been framed by the gods of malice, or chance, or indifference. The judgment has already fallen, and so mortals are obliged to level their accusations after the event. What can the accused do? What would be the point of doing anything? They are already serving the sentence. And since even God, in silence, has allowed the disaster unfurl, to whom would the miserable accused now appeal?

What follows from Job is something like the mad and howling laughter of grief, surrounded there by his accusing friends. 

"Doubtless, you are the people, and wisdom will die with you!"

He is pushed beyond limits, obliged to describe something only he can see, when everyone else is confronted with the appearance of something quite different. He dialogues with his friends' well intentioned accusations with the most ferocious poetry that suffering ever produced. He is brutally sarcastic and wickedly dry. He becomes the rock bottom comedian, because the trick of transfiguring tears into laughter by saying unsayable things is the only power he has left; the only remaining mode of truth telling. When hope is gone, its ghost will sometimes appear as laughter.

Why do we continue to try to communicate ourselves to those who will not be able to understand? To remain relationally true? To prevent ourselves from disbelieving ourselves? Because we have nothing else to lose? Because the charade of agreement is more lonely than open disagreement?

"Far be it from me to say that you are right

Until I die I will not put away my integrity…"

Job is unable to persuade his friends that he is innocent, and perhaps there is a time for letting go of what another person does or doesn't see. All is revealed in the end. But in the meantime he is obliged to speak his truth against all conventional and decent wisdom, and he cannot do so without appearing mad and lyrical. He can barely speak without appearing to accuse God of misjustice. I suppose, sometimes, the laughter of madness is the only container for such griefs.