Caligula

“I’m not mad; in fact I’ve never felt so lucid. What happened to me is quite simple; I suddenly felt a desire for the impossible. That’s all.”

These lines are from Caligula’s first appearance in Act I. Although he is muddy and tattered from wandering about and chasing the moon, he tries to explain that he is not having a mental health experience. Though many observers would feel that pursuing the impossible is, in fact, erratic behavior, Camus portrays him as logical.

“It’s just because no one dares to follow up his ideas to the end that nothing is achieved. All that’s needed, I should say, is to be logical right through, at all costs.”

Caligula responds to Helicon’s comment that a life of pursuing the impossible is impractical. Caligula believes in logic as a measure of truth, regardless of the consequences.

Helicon: “May I know what it is, this truth that you’ve discovered?”

Caligula: “Men die; and they are not happy.”

Helicon is trying to understand what drives Caligula’s new perspective. In his preface to the play, Camus identified Caligula’s response as the essential core of the emperor’s philosophy.