a consciousness into a flame of suffering and let it lie, squirming...? Having rejected religion, the past and present organization of society, the proposed totalitarian alternative and the kindred uncontrollable violence of his own behavior as a "free" man, Cross abandons ideas and pins his last hope on love. But his mistress commits suicide when she sees him as he is. There follows a chapter in which the Law, personified by a hunchbacked district attorney who understands Cross Damon, convicts him of a crime and condemns him, but is powerless to give his life significance by punishment. After this Cross is murdered. The district attorney comes to his death bed and asks how was life and Cross dies murmuring, "It was horrible." Literary significance and criticism The Outsider was Wright's first book to receive predominantly negative reviews. Reviewers were primarily critical of its characterization, particularly the absence of sufficient motivation for Damon's violence. Many thought that Wright should have "stayed gold". The novel's mix of melodramatic action and lengthy rhetorical exposition seemed disruptive. Black reviewers believed that Wright's interest in existentialism indicated a separation from his roots. Most reviewers found the unrelieved pessimism of the novel unattractive. The novel has often been considered the result of Wright's involvement with existential thinkers following his break from Marxism in the 1940s. The novel seems to mark the low point of Wright's despair, for it lacks Camus's humanitarian hope or Jean-Paul Sartre’s belief in social change. Later critics, however, have suggested that The Outsider is a rejection of existentialism or is even a Christian existentialist novel. Existential or not, The Outsider is a logical extension of Wright’s earlier fiction and thought. In Native Son (1940), central character Bigger expresses in a less articulate manner the same sort of rage and dread felt by Damon. In Wright's short story "The Man Who Lived Underground", central character Fred Daniels, like Damon, wants to share his hard-earned knowledge with others. In Art and Fiction, Wright maintained that personal freedom was conditioned on the freedom of others. Thus, in The Outsider Wright addressed familiar themes but consciously tried to move beyond the racial limitations of his earlier work. Wright, influenced primarily by German nihilism and his earlier involvement in the Communist party, condemns Marxism for its repression of individuality inherent in the structure of such group ideologies. Damon, molded by his repressive childhood as an African American