Existentialism and The Plague
In the mid 1940s, a man by the name of Albert Camus began to write a story. This story he called La Pesté. Written in French, the novel became extremely popular and has since been translated numerous times into many languages. This story has been read over and over, yet it tells more than it seems to. This story tells the tale of a city gripped by a deadly disease. This is true enough, but this is not what the novel is about. The Plague can be read as an allegory of World War II, of the French Resistance against German Occupation. "To simplify things, one can say that The Plague is an allegorical novel" (Picon 146). This however, is indeed an oversimplification, and so this only tells part of the story. Camus is often considered to have been an Existentialist. "That Existentialist philosophies offered him a vocabulary from which he occasionally borrowed is of secondary importance in his case" (Brée, Camus 74). Perhaps this, Existentialism, is the focus of the novel? Not, it is not quite that simple. The Plague tells the story of a fight: not a fight against a disease, not a fight against German soldiers, but a fight against the indifference in the face of human suffering. Every man responds to this in his own manner, and this reaches to the heart of the Existential philosophy -- it is actions that truly define a man.
"No, I am not an existentialist" (Doubrovsky 345). These words come from Albert Camus himself. It is true; Camus was not an Existentialist. Yes, he embraced much of existentialism, but not all. What, then, do Existentialists believe, and of this, what does Camus reject and what does he accept? To the existentialist, life is meaningless in and of itself. Therefore, "Since lif...
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Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story have many differences and similarities. Characters such as Chino and Count Paris are very similar. There are also many similar events like their rumble. However, there are some differences in the scenes such as the tomb scene.There are many similarities and differences in West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet.
...and Juliet, when they marry, must marry secretly because of the feud. However, Maria and Tony do not marry, although they do perform a mock wedding. Another example of a difference is that Anita purposely tells the Jets that Maria is dead because of her hatred for them. But when Balthasar tells Romeo that Juliet is dead, he does it without knowing that it isn’t true. The last major difference between the two works is the death of the heroine. Juliet kills herself because she knows that her Romeo is dead and she cannot live without him. However, Maria is left alive at the end of West Side Story. It is almost as though she does not die so that she can accuse society of its prejudicial attitude against the Puerto Ricans and reveal everyone’s role in her and Tony’s love story.
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Plagues and Peoples. By William H. McNeill. (New York: Anchor Books: A division of Random House, Inc., 1976 and Preface 1998. Pp. 7 + 365. Acknowledgements, preface, map, appendix, notes, index.)
While certain aspects of the two works remain parallel, many deviations are found within the plot. In West Side Story, the first obvious difference, excluding time periods, is the "exile" situation. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is exiled due to public knowledge of his deed. West Side Story's Romeo, Tony, becomes a fugitive because the public is searching for a criminal. In "Introduction, Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story: An Appreciation" Norris Houghton writes, "As a result of this altered circumstance the plot of West Side Story begins at this point to deviate from Sh...
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Love in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare examines the concepts of love in the tragic play
writings where people as humans struggle to find purpose and ask themselves what is the meaning of life to which the universe responses by simply showing a complete and utter disregard for such a question or any questions as a matter of fact. It is “This paradoxical situation, then, between our impulse to ask ultimate questions and the impossibility of achieving any adequate answer, is what Camus calls the absurd.” Existentialism essentially deals with the absurd which had been “cultural movement that flourished in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s.” and besides Albert Camus there was other Philosophers who adopted such ideas like “Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, and Martin Buber in Germany, Jean Wahl and Gabriel Marcel in France, etc.….. [with]
He also tells Juliet that "Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift, and hither shall hem come; and he and I shall watch thy waking, and that very night shall Romeo bear thee to Mantua" (Act 4, Scene 1.) Unforeseen to neither the Friar nor Juliet that an error such as the one of Friar John’s would prove to be deadly. Poor Romeo was not able to receive the letter. Friar Lawrence plays a significant role in the plan for Juliet to "sleep."Friar Lawrence plays an important rule in the actual deaths of Romeo, Juliet, And Paris. Friar Lawrence is unable to reach Romeo with the news of Juliet’s "death." Romeo, thinking Juliet is dead rushes to Verona, but not before buying some fast poison.
Love is often perceived as something perfect and flawless in today’s society. However, Romeo and Juliet, a play written by William Shakespeare, portrays love as a form of passionate and violent force that comes with both rewards and consequences.The tragedy focuses on two young lovers called Romeo and Juliet, whose families are intertwined in an ancient feud that disrupts the peace in Verona, Italy. For love, the two teenagers are driven to overcome obstacles they will never imagine doing, and as a result, they along other family members are forced to pay the price of their lives. Through the play Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare exhibits the reality of young love through the portrayal of the Queen Mab Speech, the impulsive actions taken by both lovers, and the results caused by the powerful nature of their love.
Camus starts the beginning of his novel by stating the death of the narrator’s mother through a first person point of view. Meursault, the protagonist and narrator of the novel, begins by contemplating the day of his mother’s death and is unable t...
Albert Camus was a French-Algerian novelist, essayist, dramatist, and journalist and a Nobel laureate. He was born in Algeria to a French father and Spanish mother. After his father was killed in WWI, he was raised in poverty by his grandmother and mother. He was forced to end his studies and limit his life in theatre as a playwright, director, and actor due to tuberculosis. He then turned his interest to politics and, after briefly being a member of the Communist party, he began a career in journalism in 1930. His articles reflected the suffering of the Arabs in Algeria. This led him to his dismissal of his newspaper job. Later, he worked in Paris for a newspaper and soon he became involved in Resistance movements against the Germans. He started writing an underground newspaper. Camus wrote many novels and his writings, illustrated his view of the absurdity of human existence: Humans are not absurd, and the world is not absurd, but for humans to be in the world is absurd. In his opinion, humans cannot feel at home in the world because they yearn for order, clarity, meaning, and eternal life, while the world is chaotic, obscure, and indifferent and offers only suffering and death. Thus human beings are alienated from the world. Integrity and dignity require them to face and accept the human condition as it is and to find purely human solutions to their plight. He used a simple and clear but elegant form of writing to convey his ideas about morality, justice and love. In 1957, Camus received the Nobel price for literature. He was deeply troubled by the Algerian War of Independence and he immersed himself in the theatre and working on an autobiographical novel. He died in an automobile accident just before being named director of the national theater.
Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story share many similar themes. Romeo and Juliet both chronicle a story of overcoming prejudice and hatred, forbidden love, and defying stereotypes that nobody thought could be broken. The two stories are similar in a multitude of ways, even though their settings are centuries apart- Romeo and Juliet set in the 1500’s, and West Side Story set in the 1950’s. Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story both teach a lesson of how prejudice can teach you how to hate, and how one of your rivals may be the one who helps you remember how to love.
Existentialism is defined as "a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining his or her own development through acts of the will”. In other words, existentialism it emphasizes individual freedom. Throughout The Stranger, the amount of existentialism views is abundant. The use of Mersault’s experiences covey the idea that human life has no meaning except for simple existence. The idea of existentialism in Albert Camus' The Stranger reflects through Mersault's life experiences with his relationship with Marie, the death of his mother Maman, the murdering of the Arab, and Mersault's trial and execution, all these events show that Mersault’s life of no meaning.
An existentialist represents their choices throughs their actions, opposed to with their words (Corbett). Therefore, someone who expresses the ideals of existentialism may be a threat to society because of their differences in morality compared to others. In The Stranger, by Albert Camus, Meursault was always looking to find meaning in his life because of everything that was happening to him at the time; and that is a key characteristic of someone embracing the ideals of existentialism. Sadly, through Meursault’s search for his inner meaning, he ended up taking the life of another man with very little realization of what he had done. Throughout The Stranger, by Albert Camus, Camus portrays