.. Anyone who has considerably meditated on man, by profession or vocation, is led to feel nostalgia for the primates. They at least don't have any ulterior motives." (Camus, 4) Passion as well might make one authentic, or a true and mindless embrace of any aspect of life. Truthfully, the story does little to present us with true authenticity, because the narrator himself never discovers it.
The meaning of this story may seem very difficult to grasp if one makes the assumption that the narrator speaks for the author as a voice of wisdom and reason. Actually, no such assumption needs to be made. Camus is well-known for writing ironic works in which the speaker is not a mouth-piece for virtue. A key to this work may be found in something which Camus wrote shortly before-hand regarding his falling-out with Sartre. "Existentialists! Whenever they accuse themselves, you can be sure it is invariably in order to assail others. [they are] Penitent judges." (in: Raskin) Because of this quote, and the similarities between certain elements of the story's philosophy and that of the existentialists, some critics consider this story to be "at least in part a mordant satire directed against Sartre and the philosophical position for which he stood." (Raskin) if this is the case, then we are being happily invited to mock the ideas of the narrator, who thinks that human society and esteem is enough to make one justified, or that there is meaning in such an interplay of guilt and righteousness.
The former title, "A Hero for Our Times," precisely pinpoints this problem. Sartre and others whom Camus considered hypocritical or overly life-rejecting were becoming central philosophical and social figures. Camus mocked them, proclaiming them as heroes specifically so the reader could see how anti-heroic they actually...
Yet, even Tarrou must fall to the plague inevitably. Camus as much as says that while Tarrou's ideals may be beautiful, they are not ultimately the truth: there is no moksha for Tarrou -- only death. Does absurdism expect that one's best course of action is to interact with life at a slight remove -- as Rieux does? No definite answer can be given. Cottard, however, is definitely not the
Balducci, a soldier who Daru knows, approaches with an Arab prisoner. Balducci's government papers give custody of the prisoner to Daru, who must now take him to the French jail in Tinguit. Upset, Daru wishes to refuse. He does not want to become involved. Balducci likewise does not want to be in the lawmaker role. "You don't get used to putting a rope on a man even after years of
Modernism) God, the World, and Literature: The Concept of Social Morality in Modern Literature Literature, as the primary source of information of people in witnessing and experiencing realities interpreted by the author/writer, is more than a medium that extends messages of reality and experience. Literature is, first and foremost, an expression of thoughts and ideologies that may or may not be agreed upon by the author or his/her characters in the
control over one's own destiny is an illusion of misconstructed ideals and metaphysical analysis. Beginning with Sigmund Freud's fascination with the power of the unconscious which he explicitly details through his work Dora (1963), the influence that the unconscious has on an individual is explicated and determined to practically guide everything that one does, but without really giving the illusion that one is in control. The unconscious controls the
Shape of Things: Theatrical Convention from Class: Suspension of Disbelief -- the audience is made to believe that a man or any person for that matter could become so obsessed with a single person that they are willing to completely change themselves, including having plastic surgery and destroying their interpersonal relationships for a person whose only appeal to them is a sexual one. Potential Convention: Given the subject matter of the
We are engaged in what happened then. We are the same ones who were involved in the action; the memory brings us back as acting and experiencing there and then. Without memory and the displacement it brings we would not be fully actualized as selves and as human beings, for good and for ill (71). Jacek is very clearly stuck in a place in his mind where he believes that
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