Existentialism Essay

4. Setting and Time: The stranger was published in 1942 and takes place in French Algeria in the 1940’s. The french began invading Algeria in the 1830’s and by the 1940’s, Algiers was considered French territory. Because of this, French and Christian customs played a large role in societal expectations and anyone who did not conform to those values, was considered an outsider. Manifested throughout the book, it is seen that the French have a superior mindset over the Arabs. Raymond Sintes…

While Theater of the Absurd and Greek theater have many similarities, the heroes that arise from these genres are very different. An “Absurd Hero” is always plagued with the certainty of death; he or she lives life knowing that death awaits. The human condition is a major theme, and usually a depressing one. In Greek theater, the “Tragic Hero” is unaware of a major flaw in him or herself, which eventually leads to his or her demise. Though Absurd heroes are aware of their human condition and…

The butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. Small events can impact larger events just as historical and cultural events can impact larger events such as the writing of a book. In the book The Stranger, historical and cultural events impacted the writing of the book. The Stranger is a book about the main character, Meursault, and the psychology of…

The book will force the reader to question what they know about existence. Existence in a humanistic sense is awareness or consciousness. Consciousness is the medium of knowledge, as well as receptacle of identity and awareness. Simply put, the human consciousness is nothing more than thoughts which represent experiences. The world we live in is one of fabrication, reality twisted into subjectivity by difference in thought. Memories have a great deal of power in this fabricated world. This is a…

Regarding Nietzsche’s quote, what he means when stating “This is my; where is yours” is that there isn’t just one-way of doing things. The word simple or the concept of simplicity means completely different things to each individual. Each individual has a specific way they want to live their life. Trying to live someone else’s life will never keep you content. What make one person happy won’t automatically make you happy. Thus, Nietzsche’s quote explains that his way is how he wants to live…

A psychosocial moratorium is when a person takes a break from real life to actively search for their identity. It is a period of active searching for one's occupational, religious, ethnic or other form of identity. While this period may feel confusing and difficult to endure, many psychologists believe that an individual must go through a moratorium before he or she can form a true sense of identity. Erik Erikson, noted that it is a period of time “during which the individual defined and yet…

The novel The Stranger by Albert Camus was published in 1946, first was written in English hen was translated from the French by Matthew Ward. The film based off of the novel was released in 1967. The screenwriter and also director of the movie was Luchino Visconti. There were many small differences in the film compared to the novel. Most of the differences were to emphasize a specific part within the movie that the book necessarily didn't specify. One of the differences was how the…

The writer, Alan Moore, once said, “Why do we argue? Life’s so fragile, a successful virus clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.” This quote exemplifies the idea of nihilism, as it is saying that there is no point in arguing about anything in life, because life itself is not important enough to worry about. In Gardner’s Grendel, fate and boasting are important Anglo-Saxon elements. The lack of comitatus, or loyalty to one’s king is also relevant. The presence of these…

For most people, the environment may have an effect on your mood and your actions. However, for Mersault, the main character from Albert Camus’ The Stranger, the effect that nature has on him is so tremendous that it influences him to commit the irrational murder of an Arab. Camus uses literary techniques and devices when describing Mersault’s killing of the Arab to highlight the extraordinary effect that Mersault’s physical stimuli have on him. Camus does so using imagery, similes,…

Oyediran, Abdulmateen .O. Period 3 10.11.15 The Stranger The Stranger, by Albert Camus, is the “story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder” (Back of book). Albert Camus carefully and artfully weaves numerous strange events and occurrences into a masterpiece. Each chapter of the book is composed and set up to make readers read deeply into the meaning of each and every sentence, and also to make Meursault a much more intriguing character. In Chapter 6, Meursault…