The Human Condition

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The multitude of underlying notions central to the all-encompassing human condition, as portrayed and delved into within a wide variety of literary and visual texts, are just as crucial to an exploration of humanity as the numerous vivid emotions and feelings they evoke. Love’s proclivity for overriding ordinary sane instincts, the nature of social connections or lack thereof amongst people in a community, and the persistent impacts of profoundly bitter regret are all particular concepts of the human condition regularly examined by authors of creative works. Through an examination of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Michael Leunig’s cartoon The Life You Lead, and Guy de Maupassant’s short story All Over, it is evident that the various fundamental interpretations of collective human existence are truly intertwined with their associated thoughts and attitudes.

No critical analysis of the instincts and desires innate to the human condition, as depicted by countless creative composers and universally contemplated by individuals within society, would be complete without a consideration of love both as a concept of humanity and in terms of its accompanying emotive effects. The undeniable romantic inclinations attributed to fellow human beings have been presented throughout time from a multitude of varying perspectives, with the common ubiquitous implication that love’s sheer power can invalidate all rational human tendencies and lead to certain fundamentally correlating emotional consequences. Such evocative impacts are evidenced in T.S Eliot’s The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock through a recurring motif in “There will be time, there will be time”, demonstrating Prufrock’s indecisive uncertainty as he procrasti...

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...tain aspects of humankind’s collective existence that are undoubtedly applicable across an almost endless array of situations and manifestations, destined to pertain to every single individual within society during at least some point in their lifetime. Particularly relevant facets of the human condition in this respect incorporate the sheer dominating irrationality of potent love, interpersonal social relationships between human beings as a framework upon which society is built, and the irrepressible tendency to ponder regretfully over one’s position as a result of significant decisions. A consideration of T.S. Eliot’s The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Leunig’s The Life You Lead, and Guy de Maupassant’s All Over conclusively imparts the notion that the aforementioned concepts of humanity are inextricably and directly linked to our accompanying emotional condition.

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