Chris McCandless, a.k.a. Alex Supertramp, was a man who decided to abandon the usual materialistic lifestyle to search for the actual meaning of life while roaming in the margins of society and in nature. In 1992, he met his end after living alone for months in the wilderness of Alaska. A few years later, Jon Krakauer decided to tell his story through the book Into the Wild, which was written based on interviews with family members and people who Chris met through his voyage, as well as on a journal he kept. Alternatively, in the novel Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee writes the story of David Lurie, a fictional character, and allows the readers to have a great insight into his personality and thoughts, but only assumptions regarding the intentions…
James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time consists of two letters. The first letter was entitled My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation and the second letter was Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in my Mind. The first letter is much briefer than the second. In My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation, Baldwin wrote to his nephew. He wrote the letter five times before finalizing it.…
Author, Stuart Ewen, in his essay “Chosen People” talks about how the middle class has fooled America. The middle class is presented as an imaginary structure in American society. The middle class is an illusion to Americans; it has changed the meaning of the American dream. Ewen throughout his essay shows how the middle class was created in the United States. Ewen then moves the industrial revolution created, such as the perceptions.…
Rod Ewdish 12/13/16 English 120 Professor Progar Men in Society Men go so far to prove what they fear than acquire what they truly desire. Throughout life, men are taught to be tough and to not express their true thoughts or emotions. The article “Bros before hoes,” written by Michael Kimmel, an American Sociologist specialized in gender studies, goes along and asks a number of men from different campuses and states what it simply means to be a man. What sorts of phrases or thoughts come to mind when someone instructs them to be a man. Richard T. Evans, a researcher of interdisciplinary studies, in “Faggots, Fame and Firepower” describes how most male shooters have been dismissed by their classmates/peers, both before and after their crime,…
James Baldwin was an African American novelist born in 1924, and passed away in 1987. He wrote about racial, social, and class distinctions, during an important time of history when these topics were finally being more widely discussed. Though he is an African-American writer, one may think Baldwin specifically wrote about racial, social, and class distinctions in solely America, but he actually travels over the world to tackle these issues. One of his works that covers those issues abroad is A Stranger in The Village, a short story about Baldwin’s time in a very small, sheltered, and predominantly white community up in the mountains of Switzerland. The people of this village treat him differently because he is an outsider, and they especially treat Baldwin differently because he is an outsider with a look…
“All the people like us are we, and everyone else is They” (Kipling). This quote by Rudyard Kipling is the essence of the problems facing strangers every day. In the articles “Strangers” by Toni Morrison and “Stranger in the Village” by James Baldwin, the latter serves to provide a first-person point-of-view of the experiences in Morrison’s essay. By examining James Baldwin’s experience as a stranger in a secluded Swiss village, which serves to strengthen the theme of “Strangers,” Baldwin’s experience demonstrates how people in a community can frame a stranger 's identity. This experience allows the reader to see what Morrison is doing to her stranger.…
In the short story “The Guest” by Albert Camus of France, does Daru make the correct decision? This is hard to prove with so little known after reading the story. Daru was an ex-solider from a recently ended war. He is now a teacher in a small schoolhouse that services a few near-by farmsteads and is alone most of time now due to a blizzard. While the school is not currently in session he acts as the local attendant for famine relief supplies.…
Over the summer I read Albert Camu's book,"The Stranger. " The novel is about a character named Mersauct whose mother has died but he does not seem that effected by the loss. Later on the book tells how little he misses his mom, and at her funeral he talks about "hot and buggy" it is. Mersact is really emotionless about everything. He doesn't think too much either and makes many excuses for his poor behavior.…
Man is a social creature. He requires attention and adoration from his audience, constant engagement from his peers and wisdom and advice from his betters. Scientists have even discovered that in absolute silence, humans begin to feel a severe sense of discomfort. And perhaps that is why the human subconscious yearns for a raison d’être, an explanation to the events around them, and the hidden meaning to life itself. It even resorts to creating these fantastical stories when it is faced with the simple fact that we exist in a plane where chaos masquerades as order, and if one was to shout into the void asking for meaning all we would be able to discern would the unremitting, oppressive, and stark silence.…
Albert Camus contributed to a kind of writing consisting of Absurdism. In the book, The stranger, he used characters to demonstrate the absurdness in multiple ways. Albert Camus demonstrated how people who live by the rules of Christianity feel threatened by Meursault, the main character, because he doesn’t conform, in other words, he’s awkward. Meursault excludes himself from emotion in multiple events in the book, while most of the people noticed that he had minimal to no emotion at all. Meursault is an indifferent person who doesn’t care whether he is married or not, with or without a job, in love or even hated by Christians.…
Revenge seems to be a big thing among humans. As a society it is often known that one person will be jealous of something and then seek to try to get back at them, the people whom they seek revenge, for it. Camus provides a perfect example of this in The Stranger. Meursault murders the arab after he, Meursault, was given a gun. Meursault claims that the sun was the reason for killing the arab.…
The Stranger is book written by Albert Camus. It is set in Algiers, in French Algeria, in the 1940’s. The story is about a man who murders an Arab in seemly cold blood but it is shown that it was really by chance that the man was murdered. The man who committed the murder lack morals like many of characters in the story. In The Stranger the lack of morals shows the characters in what they should be shown as, by how they react to life changing events leading to the characters proving Absurdism’s main beliefs, the search for meaning in life leads to the realization that life has no meaning or the act of filling up the void with other things.…
To be asked to choose anyone in the whole world opens a pathway to endless opportunities. At first, I would have said that the obvious choice would be Albert Camus. I love his book, The Stranger, and I generally follow his thoughts that life might not have meaning, but we must continue like there is because struggle is fulfilling in of itself. However, I cannot learn fully if I agree with basically all of what he says.…
Niccolo Machiavelli, an Italian Renaissance historian, in the novel “The Prince and Other Writings” states that a prince Must have a balance of how he acts towards his people in order to be a successful leader. First, Machiavelli establishes, that a prince can be generous but must be careful, for too much generosity may lead to disorder. Then the author elucidates that a prince must be feared and loved, but to be feared has a greater benefit because humans will break the bond of love when circumstances become grave. Machiavelli then acknowledges, that while a prince who keeps his word is praised; A prince who is cunning and able to deceive people are more likely to be successful. Machiavelli goes on to claim that a prince must learn to be like…
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus, author of the book The Stranger, made this statement. However, it would be believable to hear that Frederick Douglass had made the statement. After all, his life was a true reflection of these words. Though, it wasn’t an easy journey to get to that point, the point where at last he could become free from every chain that bound him; physical and mental.…