Human Condition

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How have the texts you’ve studied enlarged your understanding of the Human Condition?
¬The human condition fundamentally embodies the experience of what is essentially considered vital to ‘being a person’, including not only the physique of a human, but more specially their behaviour and mentality. Due to the immense number of perspectives and variations of ideologies texts can demonstrate, a responder’s comprehension of the human condition can be substantially developed to create a broader understanding of society. These traits are particularly established in Samuel Wagan Watson’s poems itinerant blue (2002) and the finder’s fee (2002), as well as Fyodor’s Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment which delve most into mortality, insight and uncertainty respectively. Thus, these texts predominantly examine the psychological aspect of the human condition and mark it as the most significant.
Watson creates an extensive argument for universal ephemerality throughout his poem itinerant blue, with an antithetical motif of construction and destruction taking significant role in relating his ideas to the audience. Eventual abolishment of preconceived notions and connections is brought to the forefront when he mentions the ‘time to move on and abandon what is built’ and to maybe ‘later bleed’. By placing ‘built’ and ‘bleed’ closely together within the poem, he effectively juxtaposes the ideas and further accentuates his overarching motif of construction and destruction. Additionally, Watson references the reaction which comes with the realisation of transience when he refers to the 2nd person that becomes aware that ‘it’s all going to collapse’. The italic font clarifies these words as thoughts and, moreover, adds stress to the words. His use of...

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... fading but swirling’ within their mind. Watson’s extensive use of metaphors and symbolism allows the reader to form a perception towards the text which is relevant to their own experiences, creating a universal poem which can relate many aspects of the human condition while acknowledging the individuality of each. The ‘dead body’ is used to denote the transition for its ominous connotations and to enforce that the transition cannot be reversed, in the same way that a dead body can no longer be given life. He finally expresses it as ‘a finder’s fee that cannot claimed’ in that the loss of naivety to a greater awareness is unintentional and despite that, it can never the returned. Ultimately, the poem acts as a warning to the reader to heed in the psychological world through the raw display of the immediate effect that caused by experience within the human condition.

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