Barabbas by Pär Lagerkvist
"Barabbas" is a novel by Swedish author Pär Lagerkvist that explores themes of faith, doubt, and the search for meaning through the story of its titular character, Barabbas, who is famously known as the prisoner released instead of Jesus Christ. The narrative begins with Barabbas witnessing the Crucifixion and grappling with the profound implications of Christ's sacrifice. Struggling with his identity and feelings of guilt, he engages with various characters, including believers and skeptics, who reflect on Christ's teachings and the nature of love.
As Barabbas moves through Jerusalem and beyond, he experiences disillusionment and apathy, distancing himself from his former life as a bandit. His interactions with a fellow slave, Sahak, introduce a layer of complexity as Barabbas navigates faith and the consequences of belief. The novel delves into his internal conflict and existential crisis as he witnesses the crucifixion of Sahak, who remains steadfast in his faith.
Ultimately, Barabbas's journey leads him to a profound sense of isolation and confusion, culminating in a confrontation with his beliefs and the societal pressures around him. This poignant exploration invites readers to consider the nature of faith, redemption, and what it means to truly believe.
Barabbas by Pär Lagerkvist
First published: 1950 (English translation, 1951)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Moral
Time of plot: First century CE
Locale: Palestine, the Near East, and Rome
Principal characters
Barabbas , the robber freed in Christ’s steadA Girl , formerly an intimate of BarabbasSahak , a fellow slave of Barabbas and an Armenian ChristianThe Roman Governor ,Mary ,Peter ,Lazarus ,
The Story
At Golgotha, Barabbas, watching the Crucifixion from which he was suddenly saved, is startled by the words uttered by the figure on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Even stranger to him is the darkness that seems to come over the world. As he is leaving the scene, he is also disturbed by the look of silent reproach directed at him by the dead man’s mother.
Back in Jerusalem, he meets and walks with a young girl, whom he knew before. The girl, who has a harelip, goes with him to a dive where some of his low companions are gathered. Barabbas and the people there discuss Barabbas’s rescue and the strange rabbi who made such extreme claims and yet permitted himself to be crucified like a criminal. Barabbas is considerably relieved that the people in the café do not believe in the rabbi’s divinity, although he is troubled that they did not notice the darkness that for a while hung over the land. After the young girl leaves the dive, Barabbas indulges, as a kind of escape from his worries, in a drunken debauch with one of the patrons of the café—a fat, crude woman.
Later, Barabbas meets a red-bearded follower of Christ who expects Christ to rise from the dead the next day. He explains some of Christ’s teachings to Barabbas but shamefacedly admits that before the end he denied Christ. The girl with the harelip, to whom Barabbas also talks about Christ, says that she met him. She is wilder in her predictions than is the red-bearded man; she expects the millennium and divine miracles at any moment. Superstition does not blur everything, however, for she tells Barabbas that Christ’s message is one of love. Barabbas thereupon goes to the grave; he watches all night but sees nothing. The next day, however, the stone is gone from the entrance. He believes that the followers of Christ have taken the body; the girl thinks he had risen.
Barabbas asks the followers of Christ about these events but finds little satisfaction in their answers. He cannot understand one who uses his power by refraining from using it. Barabbas is later taken to a man who was dead four days and was raised again by this rabbi. This man tells Barabbas that death is nothing; it is there, but it signifies nothing. He adds that after one experiences death, life also is as nothing. As Barabbas further questions the followers of Christ, it becomes clear that although they are believers, they are quite confused as to the meaning of all of these happenings. When the followers learn Barabbas’s identity, they naturally hate him.
About this time, Barabbas becomes estranged from his fellows in the low life of Jerusalem—so much so that he resigns himself from sensual life. The fat woman, his sometime lover, thinks that Christ’s soul has possessed Barabbas. One day, by accident, Barabbas is present at a church meeting and hears a rather disappointing sermon by the red-bearded man who denied Christ. He finds the snuffling testimony of witness given by the harelipped girl even more distasteful. Later, when a blind man denounces the girl as a Christian, Barabbas nevertheless knifes the first person who stones her. She dies a humble martyr, but one who sees Christ as she dies. Barabbas carries her body to the grave of a baby she had; Barabbas was the father of that child.
A short time later, Barabbas leaves Jerusalem and returns to the robber band that he at one time led. The robbers are distressed by his seeming character change: Formerly the boldest of all—he fought, killed, and supplanted the bandit leader, earning the scar on his face—he now is apathetic. What none of the characters knows is that Eliahu, whom Barabbas killed, was his own father. Sensing that he no longer fits in with the robber band, Barabbas silently steals away from the camp.
For an indeterminate period, Barabbas wanders the earth. Later, he is enslaved and put to mining for the Romans. There he meets Sahak, a slave who is thrilled by the knowledge that Barabbas saw Christ. Without revealing to Sahak the true nature of his relationship with Christ, Barabbas increases the details of Sahak’s belief by telling him things about Christ. Some of these are lies, such as that he saw an angel come down from the sky on the night that he watched outside Christ’s tomb. After a time, Barabbas apathetically suffers Sahak to enter into Christian observances with him. He even permits Sahak to draw Christ’s symbol on his slave’s disk, and for a time he prays with him. Years later, a new mine overseer, attracted to Christianity but mystified by its doctrine of love, notices the two slaves, bound to each other by a chain. The overseer, having talked to them about Christianity, is moved to secure positions above ground for the two men. Although still slaves, Sahak and Barabbas are at least free of the deadly conditions of primitive mining.
Matters soon change when the Roman governor of the territory learns through another slave that both men are Christians. Sahak refuses to renounce his faith. Barabbas, who by this point would have liked to believe in Christ but cannot, readily renounces his. He lets the governor scratch through the sign that Sahak put on his disk. He then witnesses Sahak’s crucifixion. He is relieved when no miraculous occurrences accompany the death of Sahak.
When the pagan but kindly Roman governor retires to Rome, he takes Barabbas with him. Once, Barabbas goes to the catacombs to see a Christian religious service, but no worshiper is there. In the darkness of the catacombs, he feels very much alone. He also feels that, as he dreamed one night, he is still chained to Sahak, just as he was during the days when he pretended to believe.
After he leaves the place of the dead, he smells fire; flames are everywhere. He thinks that Christ is returned to save the world, the first step of which will be to destroy Rome—for Rome considers Christ the enemy. Barabbas seizes a burning brand and begins to set everything afire that he can; he wildly thinks that he is helping the Christians and his Savior.
Thrown into prison with the Christians, Barabbas learns that there is no service in the catacombs because the followers were forewarned that an attack is to be made on them. The fires were probably set by agents or spies to further discredit the Christians.
The Christians in the prison naturally deny that Barabbas, who was caught in the act, is one of them. When they protest to the jailer, the man shows Barabbas’s disk, which still has the Christian symbol dimly scratched on it, as evidence. A venerable old man among the Christians turns out to be one whom Barabbas met before, the man who denied Christ. Now he explains to Barabbas that it is Caesar who set the fires, not Christ; it is Caesar, therefore, whom Barabbas helped by trying to burn Rome. Christ’s message is still that of love.
To the others, the old man adds that they must not condemn Barabbas. He continues that Barabbas is unhappy and that he has to wear his crossed-out disk. The others are also weak and full of faults; their belief comes from God. They must not condemn a man who has no god in whom to believe. Soon the Christians are led out in pairs to be crucified, but Barabbas is taken alone. When death comes, he speaks rather ambiguously into the darkness, saying that he delivers up his soul “to thee.”
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