Caligula

Caligula carries out his principles to the ultimate degree. Until this point, he has continued to lean on his most loyal supporters—Helicon and Caesonia—both of whom were disinterested enough in the fates of others to be Caligula’s friends and accomplices. By the end of Act IV, however, Caligula realizes that Helicon has failed to gain him the moon and that he is more at ease with the act of killing than with Caesonia’s attempts to comfort him. In murdering Caesonia, he has brought himself to the pinnacle of his solitude; only himself and his mirror remain. In his last moment of self-reflection, he realizes his failure. He sees his image and says: “See, I stretch out my hands, but it’s always you I find, you only, confronting me, and I’ve come to hate you. I have chosen a wrong path, a path that leads to nothing. My freedom isn’t the right one” (73).

The four major themes—impossibility, logic, death, and freedom—intertwine. Caligula’s quest for the impossible, carried out according to the most rigorous logic, has led to the deaths of all those around him, and ultimately, to his own. The exercise of unrestrained freedom has dire effects on society and his friends; it leaves him in a place not of freedom, but of captivity. Logic has led him to death, a reality that does not permit freedom. Caligula has tried to be the godlike master of freedom and power, but death that leaves him with no choices—the nullification of freedom.

Camus closes the final scene not with the finality of death, but with the dying Caligula crying out, “I’m still alive!” (74). This may represent Caligula’s personality, which still strives for power and personal freedom even as external circumstances take both away. Camus may also be telling his audience that the motivating principle of Caligula’s murderous logic is still alive and at work in the world: the realization that nothing lasts and, as a result, nothing matters.

The motif of performance appears once again, as do the symbols of the moon and mirror. Act IV begins with a series of performances: Caligula’s brief dance, his attempts to trick his audience into believing rumors of his sickness and death, and his poetry competition. In each case, he uses performances as a way to illustrate life’s absurdity. By choosing erratic theatrics that keep his audience off-guard, he underscores the idea of meaninglessness. His performances also show his attempts to exercise power and freedom, which he does by creating a helpless audience.

The mirror has a prominent place in Act IV. Caligula interacts with his reflection. Unlike his conversations with other characters, he shows a degree of self-awareness. With others, he is always acting as the puppeteer and pulling the strings, but when he sees his reflection, he cannot manipulate the responses of his image. In the end, he smashes the mirror with a stool, paralleling his striking of the mirror with a mallet at the end of Act I. He can’t use his power to compel the reflection’s responses as he can with other characters. This leads him to destroy the mirror.

Many of the minor characters are static, meaning that they don’t change from the play’s beginning to end. For example, Cherea remains stoic, even as he comes to realize that the time to assassinate Caligula has come. Caesonia naïvely attempts to comfort Caligula until nearly the end, when Caligula betrays her affection and murders her. Scipio, however, changes. Initially set against participation in the assassination plot, he becomes one of its main actors. In the last scene, he and Cherea stab Caligula in the face. Intriguingly, he and Cherea have noted that they are most like Caligula—Cherea with his philosophical perspective and Scipio in artistic sensibility—but both see in the emperor a dangerous perversion of the things they hold most dear.