Day of a Stranger

In much of Merton's later writing, one sees the effort to identify and retrieve a meaningful idea of paradise joined to a fierce resistance to the increasing presence of "false paradises" within contemporary thought and practice. This is particularly clear in two important late essays, "Rain and the Rhinoceros," and Day of a Stranger, which frame the ideal of contemplative living as being both utterly "purposeless" and necessary to the work of social criticism and political resistance.