Analysis Of Hell Is Other People By Jean Sartre

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Of all the questions ever asked by humanity, perhaps none is as important as that of existence. It has received prominence dating back to ancient times, starting with simple questions like “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” Of course, there is a reason why these questions are so important that it created a new branch in philosophy. The question of our fate and reason for existing touches us all deeply because we will all die eventually, and we will all struggle with the question of why we bother when our destinies are so bleak. Even so, rarely do people give this question any weight until their own mortality smacks them in the face. I have received my own taste of this rude awakening last summer. A week after the end of school, I had my first existential crisis. I remember crying for seven hours straight, as I could not stop thinking about my own death and the deaths of those around me. How could it be that everything that I had ever loved, feared, and worried about simply disappear from my understanding? How could it be that one day, I will suddenly fall to this eternal sleep that is death that marks my departure into nothingness? My mother offered her own opinion that life is about having fun and that I should go off and enjoy my teenage years. Embarrassingly, her words of comfort only spurred my tears. Regardless of the level of fun I have, if I die, it would not matter for my satisfaction because I would be gone, I reasoned. As I continued to cry, I thought about the consequences at the root of my crises. If I were to die eventually, why does it matter what I do now? Why do I have ambition, and why did I have to take AP Language and Composition even though to take it would mean significantly less time for me to watch anime? At that point, I thought of my own parents. Both came from tiny villages in China, but they both worked laboriously so that they may attend Tsinghua University, considered the best college in that country. When they had my older sister, they sought to immigrate to the U.S., forsaking all the status they built in China. In fact, my mother abandoned her ambitions of obtaining a PhD to take care of me when I was born, and my father pursued his PhD while working as a takeout delivery guy. They had worked so hard to become more than the farmers they were destined to become, so why did they start back at square one? Like many of those who immigrated to the U.S., they were looking to give their children better lives. It was out of the goodness of their hearts that we live happier than they did. At once, I knew that my mother’s statement about life’s purpose of having fun to be merely empty words designed to get me to shut up. At that point, I believed that I knew that the true meaning of life is to live for others. When put in context of my own ambitions, it may seem silly to want to aspire to get a degree if it means to take years of my life to do so. In fact, I remember distinctly a story from my childhood in which a successful businessman visits a fisherman and gives him tips on how to …show more content…
I believe that there is truth to that statement beyond the fact that others cause the loss of one’s unique self, which is the way Sartre may have intended it to be interpreted. I view it as a more positive statement. I believe that hell is other people because other people keep us here, no matter how absurd it may seem to stay. Without others, it does not make much of a difference whether I live or die. I could do what I please with no consequence and perish with no consequence, but if I were to selfishly do that when there are other people in my life, I would be detracting myself from helping them, which is my purpose in life. In fact, I could actively create consequence by affecting those surrounding me. However, since I will not be able to do as I please without adversing from my purpose, others create this “hell” that I am trapped in, one that is not necessarily horrible since I am bound because I

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