Albert Camus 'Should I Kill Myself, Or Have A Cup Of Coffee?'

This is the same with other paths of life with existentialism questioning the authenticity of using things such as religion to fill such void leading to many nihilistic tendencies as well as alienation for oneself and the world around them. What is their left for some who comes to terms with these ideas perhaps suicide. Camus explores the effect of this dilemma which can be seen in his first novel A Happy Death where the two characters are have a conversation about what it is to love life with one of them proposing that for him” Loving life is not going for a swim. It's living in intoxication, intensity. Women, adventures and other countries.” To which the other responds by saying “To think the way you do, you have to be a man who lives either on a tremendous despair, or on a tremendous hope.” Representing that either that the character has embraced life’s meaninglessness and carried on by living life to its fullest or being so hopeful to the point where he’s blind to the cold truth of

In the essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus attempts to give answers to some tough questions. He wants to know if life is worth living or how we can make it worth living, as well as whether or not it is possible to live with certainty. To him, the absurd man realizes that life is absurd after his expectations are repeatedly contradicted and he realizes the world is an unreasonable place that cannot be explained. These unreasonable expectations of certainty ultimately cause many absurd men to think that life is not worth living when they are faced with what they feel is a hopeless situation. Camus offers an alternative to the problem the absurd man faces and it is not suicide or “Philosophical suicide”. Other philosophers commit philosophical suicide by suggesting that there is enough evidence, whatever it maybe, that one should survive on hope alone or make some leap. But Camus thinks that if a person is honest and truthful to themselves that they know they are nothing more than “a stranger” in this world. So how does one live a life worth living when faced with absurdity?

In the novel, Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, the main character, the Steppenwolf, considers committing suicide. He tries to justify taking his life with religious and philosophical rationales, but in the argument he finds that his life is worth living and suicide not a logical option. Sadly though, the novel provides little evidence beyond the Steppenwolf's own feelings as to why he cannot commit suicide. It is the intent of this paper, with some religious and philosophical references, to shed light on the reasoning behind the Steppenwolf's decision to live. The issue of suicide has been addressed throughout history by many critics. Many try to justify taking one's own life, but for different reasons. The disparity in justifications forces the individual to decipher applicable reasoning and determine if suicide is justifiable. The Steppenwolf is one of these individuals.

As Hamlet approaches a waiting Ophelia, he begins one of the most famous soliloquies in all of literature with the immortal line: 'To be or not to be?that is the question' (III. i. 64). Yet this obvious reference to suicide only scratches the surface of the heart-rendering conflict felt by the young Dane.

As humans, we seek to satisfy our desires. Freud’s notion of Static Fulfillment suggests that we desire to get back to the early stage of fusion with mother. Likewise, Brooks suggests that we desire a climax, or fulfillment. There has to be an end. The plot of our lives, the plot of literary texts, Brooks suggests that plot mediates meaning with the contradictory human world surrounding it. Eros, pleasure, relates to metonymy, complicating and adding symbols to the complexity of ‘the middle’ before arriving at an end, Thenatos, or death. The death represents metaphor, as ...

In this paper I will present skits from the Monty Python movie, The Meaning of Life, and discuss their relevance to our Existentialism class. This films does not tell us any particular story, but it symbolically walks us through an average person’s life as they move out of their granted view of the world via two realizations, absurdity and death. Being that the movie is not a cohesive narrative but rather a series of unrelated acts which serve to question what we can say about the nature of the human condition, I will consider some of the movie’s scenes, presenting the skit at hand through the lense of existentialist thinkers.

There comes a time in everyone’s life where we must face a hard often life-changing decision. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, protagonist Hamlet debates the philosophical advantages and disadvantages of existing. Using situations from his own life, Hamlet displays various amounts of emotion, ranging from depression to bitterness. He juggles between “whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (3.1.58-59), or “to take arms against the sea of troubles, and by opposing end them” (3.1.60-61). With disconsolateness he reflects deeply on the reason behind wanting to stay alive, concluding that the fear of the unknown consequences after death forces you to bear the suffering

If we know our fate, do our lives hold meaning? Meursault remarks, “Nothing, nothing mattered, and I know why.” He knows he will be executed by a society in which he cannot exist, but he resigns and thereby assures himself that the middle is meaningless. Before his arrest, he knew he would die. Perhaps this knowledge justifies his living moment to moment. His statement compares to Beckett’s Vladimir when he laments, “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it is awful!” Both Meursault and Vladimir understand their insurmountable fate, but Meursault desires to confront it. This reveals Meursault to have the heroic qualities of Sisyphus. So, what Vladimir recognizes, Meursault confronts, and Sisyphus transcends. Sisyphus conquers his fate in spite of his immortality.

The first part is Absurdity and Suicide which implements the main question of life, which is suicide. Obviously Clamence does not commit suicide so the assumption that he thinks life is worth living is valid. But the thought does indeed come across his conscious mind as he realizes he has no friends. Camus states, "I discovered it the day I thought of killing myself to play a trick on them, to punish them, in a way. But punish whom? Some would be surprised, and no one would feel punished. I realized I had no friends" (Camus 59). The thought of killing himself as a joke is not only questionable, but it deals with the first main step of Absurd reasoning. The fact that death is the only certainty in life still hasn’t crossed Clamence’s mind says a lot. The only thing that actually restrains him from committing suicide is the sad realization that no one would be there to care. In order for Clamence to proceed with any type of response requires there to be certain positive feedback or else Clamence won’t put forth any effort. Being able to find some meaning in others is what keeps him going, but all of Clamence’s actions require a specific motivation. He never does anything without there being a certain type of feedback he would receive for his efforts. Uncertainty is not something Clamence is particularly fond about, as it could potentially ruin his self-image. He views life as a game and drags whoever he encounters into his little game, which he refers to as life. Clamence solely traps himself with his absurd walls and never tries to overcome them; he truly fears uncertainty as he runs off to

Saul Bellow’s novel Seize the Day has personal relevance to me, because, in some ways, the story of Tommy Wilhelm is the story of my father. They both face a world that they neither belong in nor understand. They both have violent tantrums that reveal the emotional maturity of a child. They both victimize themselves by complaining about the supposed injustices that the world has committed against them. Wilhelm and I both experience an existential crisis partly due to our fathers, although we are in two very different stages in life. Having an existential crisis led many philosophers in the twentieth century to develop a philosophy known as existentialism. The novel embodies existentialism in its exploration of themes such as anxiety, absurdity,