The Bible gives very few details about him, though there's some suggestion in Luke that he took part in riots in Jerusalem. Barabbas can never quite bring himself to believe in Jesus as a divine figure, but, as he says in the novel's most famous passage: ‘I want to believe.’ That conflict is the essence of the book.Barabbas is a great figure to expand upon, since in the source material he is both crucial and barely mentioned. But he really had died for Barabbas, no one could deny it!So the reactions of Barabbas – relief, disbelief, morbid curiosity, survivor's guilt – become a kind of study in what Christian dogma might imply for the human mind.

Telling people that this man went through agony, and then died, on your behalf, whether you like it or not, is a heavy load to lay on someone and entails a serious amount of what I suppose psychologists would call guilt.What's very clever about this book is that Pär Lagerkvist has found a way to examine this idea which works whether or not you believe in the metaphysics: Barabbas, the man acquitted in Jesus's place, is someone in whom the central myth of Christianity is literally true. I understand that some people find it very touching and beautiful, but I find it difficult to see it that way. Trying to explain to a six-year-old why they all have statues of this beardy guy slowly dying on a stick has really brought home to me what a hideous and morbid idea Christianity is built on. My kids love churches, but not having been brought up religiously, they don't understand any of the iconography.

Barabbas by par lagerkvist