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Rating: 
Summary: The story of the Acquitted
Review: Barabbas Is an excellent novel concerning belief in religion (or, at the very least the desire to believe). It chronicles the life of Barabbas, the man who was freed in place of Christ. From the moment he's let go, he decides (is drawn) to follow the condemned to Golgotha, where they are crucified. There he witnesses the darkening of the sky upon Jesus's death. This event effects Barabbas so deeply, that he attempts to contact those who followed this crucified man; He desires to learn more about them and him. In his journey for answers, he meets a hare-lipped woman dressed in ragged clothing. They are both at the tomb of Jesus Christ when he rises (or is said to have risen) form the grave. The Young lady claims to have seen angels swoop down and lift his body in a blinding flash. Barabbas, however, saw no such thing. He believes that someone must have simply stolen the body while he was distracted. This is Barabbas's main struggle. He rejects the supernatural, believing instead that all of these phenomena (The darkness at Golgotha, the hare-lipped girl's account of the rising) have worldly explanations. Yet, he desires to believe. He desires to be a part of this new religion. This theme is shown again later in the novel in the slave pits. Having been enslaved by Romans, Barabbas works in a mine (chained to another slave). He finds out that this slave is a Christian. This fellow has the name of Jesus Christ scratched into the reverse side of his slave tag (the tag that tells who he belongs to). The meaning of this being that the slave's soul belongs to God. Barabbas asks this fellow to scratch the symbol into the reverse side of his own tag. Yet, Barabbas refuses to pray with his fellow slave. Instead, he stands guard while the other prays. This again shows his desire to believe, yet his inability to truly do so.
I think that, as a subject for a novel, the choice of Barabbas was an interesting one. For Barabbas is a very easy allegory for one of the main ideas of Christianity. Barabbas the Acquitted: Christ died on the cross in his place (for his sins, you might say). He serves as a sort tangible embodiment of human sin. It's difficult to talk about this book without discussing religion. It does, after all, deal with Biblical figures; and it deals with themes of belief and disbelief. Those of you who prefer to stay away from religious matters, or materials with religious content, probably won't think too highly of this book. However, I would strongly advise against completely disregarding it on those grounds. It is an excellent idea, that is very nicely executed. It's also a thought provoking book. It gives an interesting look at what the early, underground, Christian movement may have been like.
Rating: 
Summary: A massive subject in a few pages
Review: Barabbas, the ultimate sinner, the one human being Jesus literally died for on the cross. Magnificently portrayed by Lagerkvist, true to the biblical story and still very subtly questioning every truth, including the great truth of the Bible. Lagerkvist shows humanity's need and search for belief. Barabbas wants to believe. Others do believe and have their own truth, their own morals. They are self-claimed Christians but often hypocrites and not necessarily very good people. A story in the story, the unfortunate looking girl with the hare-lip, but with a good heart, being loathed and condemned. And at the same time the blind man condemning the "bad" people, but not accepting any responsibility for whatever happens, because "he is blind, he can't see anything, he only say what he hears..." I wondered whether I should give the book four or five stars, and easily decided on five, because Lagerkvist handles the subject with such care and respect, without making some sensational fairy tale out of this biblical event, which might have tempted others. Instead we accept it as a very genuine story and happily believe that this is Barabbas' story, and could just as well have been a part of the Bible. The capturing of the atmosphere in Jerusalem after the crucifixion is totally convincing. Also, in showing these very fine but simple portraits of humanity, Lagerkvist proved a very rare and deep understanding of human beings. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: A truly great character and a story to remember!
Review: I first found this book by accident, while browsing through the Amazon.com book lists. Then one day I found it in a shelf here in Brazil and decided to buy it. At first sight it didn't seem to be a very impressive book, especially because it was so thin. However, I must say I was totally "hooked" by the style of Mr. Lagerkvist. He is so economical in his writing, that basically almost every one of his sentences or descriptions carry a lot of "weight". I believe the power of his writing comes from his "raw" style. It's such a short phrase or description, but yet so powerful, that several times I stopped to reflect about that part or caught myself thinking about it at a later time. As you must have already know, this is the story of Barabbas, who was a terrible criminal and escaped the "Death Row" of his time, because Jesus was chosen to die in his place. It is a beautiful story, because unlike many modern writers, Mr. Lagerkvist never tries to build a "hero" or any of the things I read a lot in these books for writers I tend to buy. He also never "melts" over emotional passages that could lead to a "hollywood drama" scene... We basically follow this miserable and damned being, through the rest of his existence, as he tries to understand the life of the stranger called Jesus and at the same time find some clue about his pointless existence. I can even say I am a bit suspect to praise this book, since I have this major crush on books about redemption or deep and lonely characters. It is always nice to read a book which touches the human condition with such objectivity. Oh, and this book has a very powerful and beautiful end. If you found this book and is still reading this review, I believe you should probably buy it. I have no doubt this is a book worth reading!
Rating:
Summary: Legerkvist is one of the greats
Review: I really enjoyed this book for a number of reasons. It was very interesting to see Lagerkvist flesh out the brief story of Barabbas from the Bible, while posing valid and universal questions about man's capability for faith. Reminded me a lot of one of my favorite books, Albert Camus' The Stranger, an Existential classic.
Rating:
Summary: Is faith useful? For whom? And when?
Review: The answers are not in this book, actually they are not really in any book. Many attemps, sure, there are thousands of books from religious garbage to philosophy and fairy tales. But the quest, the eternal quest to find something to ground us, to find a point of departure from which all the nonsense, beauty and cruelty we see in life could be explained, is brilliantly assembled in this book, using the inner strugle of Barabbas searching for an answer for the killing a guy called Jesus who died instead go him for no good reason at all. In his search he faces the same stupidity, fanatism, hate and superstition that surrounds the life of that man until today. For the author, the inner pain of Barabbas have not faded with time and nowadays remains as valid as 2000 years ago, when there is no good reason to have faith in anything at all, but to claudicate upon such quest only leads to despair faster that to keep on looking for something we know nothing about.
Rating:
Summary: haunting
Review: The central crisis of the Modern Age is the crisis of faith, the failure of our belief in God. Our disbelief is an inevitable outgrowth of increased scientific understanding of the world around us, particularly in the realms of Physics and Evolutionary theory. It is a predictable corollary of the individualistic political and economic doctrines we have adopted with such success. And to a little appreciated degree, it is a function of the material comfort that we enjoy. Taken together, all of these factors have removed ignorance, superstition, subservience and desperation as reasons to believe in religion. Since Reason would require proof of God's existence, which it is probably impossible to provide, all that's really left is simple faith and, from what we've seen this past century, faith is not enough. There is much that is good about this liberation, the freeing of man from God, but there are also some terrible consequences. The most important consequence is the removal of metaphysical standards of Right and Wrong, of Truth and Beauty, and the resulting disastrous slide into moral relativity. The other main consequence is the sort of inchoate longing that, even if you haven't experienced it personally, is so readily apparent in things like the Psychiatric, Environmental, New Age and Wicca movements. Absent God and his laws, what is there to give our lives meaning and direction? What are we doing here? Do we have a purpose or are we, individually and as a species, as insignificant as science has made us seem? The difficulty of answering those questions lies at the heart of the soul sickness that human society suffers. This inability to attach meaning or value to ourselves and our actions has left an enormous void at the core of our beings and, thus far, science has offered us nothing to fill the vacuum. Given the tremendous difficulty that even we have reconciling our skepticism with our desire for certitude, separated as we are by two thousand years from the Biblical age, imagine how much more difficult it would have been to struggle against belief if you were a contemporary who witnessed the living Christ and encountered evidence of his miracles. Imagine further that you are not just any man, but are actually the criminal who was spared from the cross when the mob was offered the choice of setting Jesus or one of his fellow prisoners free, that the innocent Christ quite literally died for your sins. This is what Par Lagerqvist has done in this beautiful and moving novel. Barabbas is set free but not before seeing the luminescent figure of Christ and hearing him plead that Barabbas be spared and not himself. Barabbas then feels compelled to follow Christ to Golgotha, where he witnesses the Crucifixion and sees the darkness fall as Christ dies. Through the rest of his life, Barabbas's path intersects with the disciples and followers of Christ. Always he resists their belief--how after all can one believe in a Savior who allows himself to be crucified--but looks for some irrefutable proof from them that Jesus was the Messiah. His ambivalence comes to represented on a medallion that he wears. On the front it says that he is property of the Roman State--it is placed on him while he is enslaved in the mines--but he has a Christian acolyte scratch the symbols on the back that show him to be a follower of Christ. Still later he scratches this out. Ultimately, while living in Rome, he hears rumors that the Christians have set the city aflame and, taking up a burning brand, he proceeds to start the fires that he hopes will signal the return of the Messiah. In the final scene, he is crucified along with Peter and the other Christians accused of arson: When he felt death approaching, that which he had always been so afraid of, he said out loud into the darkness, as though he were speaking to it: --To thee I deliver up my soul. And then he gave up the ghost. These lines concisely capture the human dilemma. The darkness reappears, recall it descended as Christ died, and Barabbas calls out "as if" he were speaking to it. Does his addressing the darkness mean that in the end he believes it is God? Or does the "as if" imply that he dies doubting? And though he delivers his soul, he gives up the ghost--is he in fact imbued with a divine spark which he can surrender to God? I found the following story in a sermon online : Par Lagerkvist, in his short story, My Father and I, tells of an experience he had as a small boy when he and his father went for a walk one Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful day when their walk began, but suddenly night came and they were engulfed in darkness. In order to find their way home, they followed the familiar railroad tracks. The boy was filled with great fear at the encroaching darkness, though the father walked calmly along. The boy tried to walk closer to his father. He confesses to his father that the darkness is terrifying him and the father replies: "'No, my boy, it's not horrible,' he said, taking me by the hand. 'Yes, father, it is.' 'No, my child, you mustn't think that. Not when we know there is a God.' I felt so lonely, forsaken. It was so strange that only I was afraid, not father, that we didn't think the same. And strange that what he had said didn't help me and stop me from being afraid. Not even what he said about God helped me. ... We walked in silence, each with his own thoughts. My heart contracted, as though the darkness had got in and was beginning to squeeze it. Then, as we were rounding a bend, we suddenly heard a mighty roar behind us! We were awakened out of our thoughts and alarmed. Father pulled me down onto the embankment, down into the abyss, held me there. Then the train tore past, a black train. All the lights in the carriages were out, and it was going at frantic speed. What sort of train was it? There wasn't one due now! We gazed at it in terror. The fire blazed in the huge engine ... sparks whirled out into the night. It was terrible. The driver stood there in the light of the fire, pale, motionless, his features as though turned to stone. Father didn't recognize him, ... the man just stared straight ahead, as though intent only on rushing into the darkness, far into the darkness that had no end. .... I stood there panting, gazing after the furious vision. It was swallowed up by the night. Father took me onto the line; we hurried home. He said, 'Strange, what train was that? And I didn't recognize the driver.' Then we walked on in silence. My whole body was shaking. It was for me, for my sake. I sensed what it meant: it was the anguish that was to come, the unknown, all that father knew nothing about, that he wouldn't be able to protect me against. That was how this world, this life, would be for me; not like father's where everything was secure and certain. It wasn't a real world, a real life. It just hurdled, blazing, into the darkness ahead." (Par Lagerkvist, "My Father and I," The Marriage Feast, 1954) This story relates to Barabbas in a couple of illuminating ways. First, there is the use of darkness as a metaphor for the unknown, the abyss. Second, the name "Barabbas" itself means "son of the father"--Christ, of course, referred to himself as the "Son of Man." Though this is a historical novel, Barabbas is the quintessential modern man. Where our fathers (fathers broadly, not yours or mine) were blessed (cursed?) with an unquestioning faith which made sense of their world, we must wrestle with doubt and accompanying confusion. No book better captures this internal struggle than Par Lagerkvist's haunting novel Barabbas. GRADE: A+
Rating:
Summary: Legerkvist is one of the greats
Review: While not one of the most entertaining books I have ever read, BARABBAS provides a look at Christianity in a different era. The contradiction between the Christians' contempt for "Barabbas the Acquitted" and "Christianity: Synonymous for 'Love'" prove interesting. The style may be slightly rudimentary, but Agnostics, Baptists, and Atheists alike will get something out of this.
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Summary: A Naturalistic Novel
Review: While this novel delivers, as the title suggests, the story of the convict in the New Testament who is freed instead of Jesus, it is unlike most novels set in biblical times. The author has no interest in dazzling us with detail. It is a short novel and an understated one. Written just after World War Two, it is clearly about modern man, but the author doesn't trumpet this. Because it's so uncluttered, it sticks in your mind. It's an archetypal example of naturalism. A cinematic equivalent would be Ingmar Bergmann's THE SEVENTH SEAL.
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