Existentialism Essay

In “Notes From Underground,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky explores the Underground Man’s rationalism, emotions, impulses, and conflicts. The nameless narrator introduces himself as a spiteful man that lives underground, but then admits he is not spiteful because he can only be nothing. He is beleaguered with a mindset that causes him to exaggerate insults until they are altered exceptionally beyond the original context. The Underground Man is unable to become a character and is consumed with inconsistency…

Absurdism is seen as “a metaphysical tension or opposition that results from the presence of human consciousness—with its ever-pressing demand for order and meaning in life—in an essentially meaningless and indifferent universe.”. Albert Camus thought there were three solutions to absurdism, which were physical suicide, philosophical suicide, and acceptance (Simpson, “Albert Camus”). Philosophical suicide is seen as a leap of faith, a sort of giving in. If death is looked at in those terms than…

The novel The Stranger was written in 1942 by an author from Algeria named Albert Camus. This work has been translated into many different languages after its initial success. The story takes place in the French Algiers and is narrated in first person by a man named Meursault. The storyline begins with him speaking about his mother's death. “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.’ That doesn’t mean…

The following is an epilogue to Albert Camus’s The Stranger, an existentialist novel where the main character, Meursault, comes face to face with the reality of the Absurd. Being sentenced to death, not because of the murder he committed but because of his radical worldview, Meursault remains true to his belief that there is no God, no meaning, and no hope to the life he lives. Meursault, at the end of the novel, shares his last wish; that at his death, he would have one last bit of…

Hesse Analysis Paper Kera Kojima UCOR 1410: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud Dr. Kangas November 22, 2014 Since the beginning of the novel we see evidence of Haller’s suicidal tendencies, it is not caused by depression, but by his obsessive animosity of the bourgeois. He states, "For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of…

Albert Camus wrote The Plague using several literary devices to further the novel. It is often said that an author inserts their own character traits and beliefs into the characters of their novels. Camus is no different in this aspect, especially when it comes to his protagonist Dr. Rieux. The event of the plague which is the main focus of the novel is a catalyst that shapes and changes the characters, some for the better and others for the worse. With the rest of this essay Dr. Rieux, Cottard,…

In the short story, The Euphio Question by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., the author was criticizing the idea of escapism through the text. As the euphio was being tested by a small group of characters they were testing the machine’s ability to make them happy. The dictionary defines escapism as a tendency to seek distraction from unpleasant realities, which is what the character's goal was. They tried to use this machine to make them happy and forget about all their real world problems and just go into a…

Given the spiritual dilemma first highlighted in Europe as thinkers gradually discovered that their newfound embrace of faith in reason could not be easily reconciled with faith in organized religion, Friedrich Nietzsche’s post-Enlightenment philosophy should not have come as much of a surprise to any of his contemporaries. In his Parable of the Madman, he frankly portends the immutable result of a communal belief in a Christian God that has been permeated by rationalism and science: “God is…

“Meursault is a body without a soul. His pleasures and discomforts are purely tactile and sensory, with no admixture of emotion or spiritual awareness.” Meursault is the narrator and main character of Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger. Looking into the title of the novel deeper, one can refer to “the stranger” as Meursault. Referring to Meursault as a body without a soul is a very accurate description of him. He does not show any emotion to the people around him and his feelings are very…

Existentialism: “existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility.” -allaboutphilosophy.org James Gatz, more commonly known as Mr. Jay Gatsby, a rather rich man of many respectable traits and particularly interesting habits. Daisy Buchanan, a desirable woman of wealth with dark, saddening secrets of a blistering winter relationship. Both struggle in the era of The Roaring Twenties, a time full of flashy…