
Alberto Moravia wasn’t one for sugarcoating life. Born in Rome in 1907, a city caught between its imperial glory and its eventual collapse under the weight of fascism, Moravia had seen it all: the rise and fall of political regimes, the broken promises of social systems, and the absurdity of human nature.
He’d spent his early years battling tuberculosis, spending more time in isolation than with people. And it’s in that isolation where you learn the cold truth—that life isn’t about triumph; it’s about enduring. It’s about surviving.
Survival—that’s the core of Moravia’s The Conformist. It’s a novel that takes the simple concept of getting by and exposes it for the sham it is.
Moravia’s protagonist, Marcello Clerici, isn’t fighting for something grand. He isn’t searching for truth or meaning or love. He’s just trying to blend in. He’s just trying to survive.
But it’s not survival that elevates him—it’s survival at the expense of everything that makes him human. And that’s where the real alienation kicks in.
Moravia’s Gritty World of Survival
Moravia grew up in a world that had no use for softness. He was born into a middle-class family in a country that had just lost its sense of direction. Italy, after Mussolini, was like a boxer who had taken too many hits to the head and couldn’t tell where the ring was anymore.
You could almost taste the disillusionment hanging in the air like smoke. And Moravia, with his early experience of sickness and confinement, knew that life wasn’t about the idealism they shoved down your throat in the textbooks.
Life wasn’t a story of rising stars or happy endings. It was about getting through the day and making sure you didn’t fall apart in the process.
That’s where The Conformist comes in. Marcello Clerici isn’t trying to find himself; he’s trying to disappear. In a society that had just witnessed one of the most brutal dictatorships in history, Marcello doesn’t want to stand out.
He doesn’t want to fight for freedom, for truth, or for any kind of meaning. He just wants to be normal. And the price of normality?
His soul. He conforms to survive, and in doing so, he becomes a stranger to himself.
You see, survival at all costs isn’t about living—it’s about avoiding pain.
And that’s the trick. You avoid pain by burying yourself under layers of fake smiles and hollow words. You become the thing you hate just so you don’t have to feel the weight of reality.
The moral decay of Marcello’s character isn’t just a flaw—it’s a survival mechanism. He’s not living; he’s just playing the part.
And if you’ve ever felt like that—like you’re wearing a mask just to make it through the day—you’ll recognize Marcello’s emptiness. It’s the same emptiness we all carry, day after day.
Alienation as the Only Path to Survival
In The Conformist, alienation isn’t something that happens because of external forces. No, Marcello’s alienation is something that he actively chooses.
He doesn’t just become an outsider by circumstance; he chooses to shut himself off from the world. He becomes numb. Why? Because in the world he inhabits, feeling too much would be a death sentence. Alienation becomes the shield that protects him from the brutality of existence.
Alienation is a cold place to exist. It’s a place where you don’t even have the luxury of feeling anger or pain. You simply are.
Marcello’s alienation doesn’t scream out for help; it doesn’t cry for justice. It simply fades into the background. It’s the kind of survival that leaves you hollow.
He’s a man without passion, without conviction, without a sense of self. He’s a robot, a drone—a man whose soul has been buried beneath layers of survival tactics. And the worst part? He doesn’t even know it.
Now, you might think this is just a flaw in Marcello, a character out of touch with himself. But if you look around, you’ll realize that Marcello is all of us.
The world teaches us how to survive. It teaches us how to fit in, how to be “normal,” how to obey. And we all buy into it. We play our roles. We go through the motions. We smile when we’re supposed to smile, we buy the things we’re supposed to buy, and we say the things we’re supposed to say. All to keep the world from swallowing us whole.
But here’s the sick joke: in trying to survive, we lose ourselves. Survival isn’t worth a damn if you can’t even remember who you are by the end of it.
And when it’s all over, when the years have passed, and the world has moved on, you’ll look back and realize that you never lived—because all you did was try not to die.
Nihilism, the Void, and the Gritty Truth
What Moravia gets—and what many of us fail to realize—is that survival doesn’t make life meaningful. Just because you’re alive doesn’t mean you’re living.
The Conformist speaks to the nihilistic heart of humanity. If life is about surviving, about avoiding pain at any cost, then what’s left? Where’s the meaning in that? Where’s the point of it all?
The answer is that there’s no answer. Nihilism isn’t some fancy philosophy; it’s the grim reality that there’s no grand meaning to any of this.
There’s no cosmic order, no plan that’s going to swoop in and make everything okay. That’s a fairy tale. The truth is darker—life is meaningless. It’s an absurd mess. And if you’re lucky, you’ll find a way to keep it together long enough to make it through.
But don’t kid yourself. There’s no neat bow on the end of the story. Life doesn’t care about your dreams. It doesn’t care about your hopes. It’s just a series of moments strung together until they run out.
Marcello’s story is the epitome of this. He conforms not because he believes in anything, but because he can’t bear the idea of not surviving.
The absurdity of it all is too much for him, so he opts out of feeling. He opts for emptiness, because that’s the only way to avoid the overwhelming reality of life’s meaninglessness.
Talking to the Kid: A Simple Breakdown of Alienation
Alright, kid, let me break this down for you. Imagine you’re in a room full of people. Everyone’s laughing, talking, moving around like they know what’s going on. But you? You feel like you’re not really there.
Like you’re looking at them through glass. You’re not part of it, and you don’t know why. It’s like everything is happening to someone else, not you. You’re just watching.
That’s alienation.
It’s like being a ghost in your own life. Marcello, in The Conformist, doesn’t feel anything. He doesn’t care about the world because it’s too much to care about. So he turns off. He shuts down. He becomes numb to everything around him, just so he can make it through the day without feeling the weight of life. It’s easier that way. It’s safer..
Morality, Hypocrisy, and the Dangers of Political Conformity
This book doesn’t just challenge the idea of political conformity, it takes a sledgehammer and smashes it to bits, the pieces scattered across the floor like broken dreams.
Marcello gets wrapped up in fascism, but don’t get it twisted—it ain’t because he believes a damn thing about it.
No, it’s about fitting in, finding a place where he can stop feeling like the world’s passing him by. The man doesn’t care about right or wrong, not even for a second. It’s all about survival, about not being left behind. It’s about being part of something, even if that something is rotten to the core.
Moravia gets to the heart of it, exposing the filthy truth about how people can twist their morals just to be part of the bigger machine, the one that chews you up and spits you out. Marcello’s just another cog in the wheel, and he doesn’t even mind—hell, he thrives on it.
He’s willing to sacrifice every ounce of his integrity, his dignity, just to not be the odd man out, just to not feel the weight of the world’s indifference pressing down on him.
But when you abandon that inner compass, the one that tells you what’s right and what’s wrong, you can justify anything. You can murder your own soul and still look at yourself in the mirror, still pretend to be a man of honor.
Marcello’s not just destroying others; he’s destroying himself, piece by piece, as he pretends to be something he’s not, something he’ll never be.
The political machinery doesn’t care about you, Marcello—doesn’t care about anyone, really—but it’ll chew you up and make you think you matter, make you think you’re part of something bigger.
Dynamics In Marcello’s Relationships
Looking at Marcello’s relationships is like staring through a cracked lens, everything distorted, everything blurry, as if the truth’s been so mangled it can’t even recognize itself anymore.
The man can’t connect with anyone—not even his own wife, the one person who’s supposed to mean something.
But Marcello? He’s too busy keeping everyone at arm’s length, too busy hiding from the shit that makes him sweat when the lights go down.
His sex life, his emotional life—they’re all just one big exercise in repression. It’s his way of controlling people, making sure they stay just close enough for him to keep the upper hand, but never too close to see the mess he’s buried inside.
He’s got his hands all over their bodies, sure, but he’s miles away.
Marcello’s inability to connect isn’t just about the women around him, it’s about the whole damn world. He’s alienated from himself, from his own desires, from his own needs.
He can’t get close to anyone because he’s too busy pretending he’s someone else. The loneliness is suffocating, but it’s the kind of loneliness that feels like freedom to him—freedom from the truth, freedom from having to face what’s buried deep inside.
But that freedom?
It’s a prison. And it’s all his own doing. He pushes people away with the same cold indifference he feels toward himself, and in the end, he’s left with nothing but the echoes of his own silence. That’s the tragedy of Marcello—the man’s got the whole world at his fingertips, but he’s too damn afraid to touch it.
The Role of Power and Authority
Marcello isn’t just hunting for acceptance, he’s got his eyes locked on something much bigger—he’s after power, the kind that promises to give him a place in this ugly, spinning world.
He’s looking for that sweet, comfortable chair at the table where the real decisions are made, where the world’s bent to your will, and you don’t have to beg anyone for a damn thing.
Aligning himself with the fascists feels like his ticket to some kind of peace, like finally finding shelter in a storm. He thinks he’s got a shield against all the chaos of life, a way to make the noise in his head finally stop.
But what he doesn’t know—or what he’s too scared to admit—is that the moment he submits to power, he’s not becoming stronger.
Hell, no. He’s shackling himself to a system that’s already devouring him, bit by bit, every damn day.
Power, it doesn’t give you control. It doesn’t hand you the keys to the kingdom. No, it just hands you a leash with a choke chain attached, and sooner or later, you’re the one gasping for air, struggling to break free.
It promises security, promises to wrap you up in a blanket of stability, but the truth?
The truth is that security is an illusion, and it comes at a cost too high for anyone to pay. It takes your soul, chews it up, spits it out, and leaves you with nothing but an empty shell.
And that’s what Marcello’s walking into, blindfolded, thinking he’s on top of the world when in reality, he’s just another pawn in a game that’s already been lost. He thinks by feeding the system, he’s gaining control. But in reality, he’s only feeding the beast that’s eating him alive, bit by bit, day after day.
Final Words For Those Still Reading
In the end, Marcello dies a little bit every day. Not a dramatic death, not the kind that makes you weep, but the slow, suffocating kind.
The kind where you wake up one day and realize you’re not even sure who you are anymore. You’re just this hollow shell, stuck in the grind, wearing your mask like it’s your skin, pretending you’re someone you’re not, because that’s the only way to make it through the goddamn day.
And that’s what life does to you.
It doesn’t offer salvation or meaning—it just hands you the tools to survive. And you use them. You build your walls, bury your feelings, and plug your ears to the noise.
Because you’d rather be numb than face the absurdity of it all. So you sit in your chair, stare at your reflection, and pretend you’re part of something bigger—when all you really are is a cog in a machine that’s already rusting away.
Moravia knew that. He saw through the charade. He understood that survival isn’t worth shit if it costs you your soul. But in a world that’s too damn loud and too damn fast, survival is all most of us can hold onto.
So we keep moving. We keep playing the game. We keep pretending we matter. But deep down, we know: we don’t.
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