Who Has Seen the Wind: Meaning of Life
From the time people are born, until they die, it is only a natural thing to
want to keep learning about their life and to figure out why they were put on
this earth. From the very beginning of life, babies want to touch and
experience everything around them. Throughout the novel, Who Has Seen the Wind
by W.O. Mitchell, Brian O'Connal has found himself with a tremendous hunger to
discover the real meaning of life. Clearly, then, Brian always searches for new
ways to learn about the world he lives in. One of the things that Brian shows
an interest in is God. Brian really wants to meet Him, not knowing that God is
something that cannot be seen, for He is a spirit. Brian would say "Lets go
over to his place"(7). Throughout the novel, Brian seems to be looking for God.
He has his own image of God in his mind, thinking that "God rides the vacuum
cleaner"(31). Brian learns the truth about God from different people like his
parents, Saint Sammy, Mr. Hislop, his grandma, and his friends. He discovers
that God is everywhere and in everyone, but He cannot be seen.
Furthermore, Brian is very much interested, like many other children his age,
about where living things come from. Being as young as he was, he always
thought that God delivered babies. After Brian witnessed his very first birth,
that of a rabbit, he became very confused and curious about what and how it
happened. Brian had a very uncomfort...
these comes to him at an early age when he sees newborn pigeons. When his
Due to the lack of free will, he recognizes that no person can change fate. As well as a
The book I decided to read is called Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. He wrote this book because of what he went through while in the concentration camps. He told about how it psychologically messed with his mind and how he used his education in psychology to make it through what he was going through. The main idea of the book is to show people that you have to have a meaning to life. A person has to find the meaning in life, love, and suffering. This book taught me how to search for the meaning of my life, love, and sufferings.
that the sun rises and sets in the sky, but he still doesn't see the
He sees a man among thousands of people who are pushing closer to him.... ... middle of paper ... ... When people realize that they are capable of knowing the truth, they are able to overcome the illusions and help others break their own boundaries.
All of the above examples such as the wax and excluding everything that exists go back to the intellect of being a thinking thing that stands alone and Cogito inference in which it registers the sufficient grounds. The ‘I’ that he finally answers is who he is in the end when he says he long held beliefs that cannot be put aside. This is the ‘I’ that he now knows and claims to be the one that can doubt and be deceived by himself and others that are powerful such as God that allows him to believe he truly exist with or without a body and only being a thinking
...fighting his feelings about not seeing Jesus. He feels that he is lying to God and himself by getting up and being saved even though he cannot see Jesus. Even though the reader knows that he truly is being saved from sin. He is doing something good for himself. Therefore, we can see that he truly does not understand the meaning of God. He is a child on the verge of adulthood. He has every right to be confused and misinterpret religion because he is learning. Religion is metaphorical and imaginative; it is what you believe it to be.
In “Meaning of Life”, Richard Taylor begins with questioning the meaning of life. He mentions this is rather hard to do and decides to define what meaninglessness is in order to understand the exact opposite: meaningfulness. Taylor asks the reader to recall the famous myth of Sisyphus to come about the definition of meaninglessness. He states that Sisyphus was condemned to roll a large boulder up a hill, only to have that boulder roll back down the hill, forcing him to repeat the task forever. Despite all his efforts, his existence amounts to nothing more than endlessly repeating the same task, which itself contributes to no greater goal or purpose. This, Taylor suggests, is the very image of meaninglessness. He defines meaninglessness as the following: “Meaninglessness is essentially endless pointlessness, and meaningfulness is therefore the opposite” (270).
He starts to believe that what is happening to him is not what the “real” God would do. He starts to question why God is letting these terrible events happen to him, and even starts to question if God is even real. “For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent.
Stanley Kramer's film, Inherit the Wind, examines a trial based on the 1925 Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee. Often referred to as "The Trial of the Century" (Scopes Trial Web Page), the Scopes trial illuminated the controversy between the Christian theory of creation and the more scientific theory of evolution. John Scopes, a high school biology teacher, was arrested for illegally teaching evolutionism to his class. "The meaning of the trial emerged because it was seen as a conflict of social and intellectual values" (Scopes Trial Web Page). Kramer's film dramatizes this conflict between the Christian believers and the evolutionists in "Hillsboro, heavenly Hillsboro, the buckle on the Bible belt" (Inherit the Wind). Prosecutor Matthew Brady represents the values of fundamental Christianity while defense attorney Henry Drummond is the voice of reason and science. Although the two men have been good friends and partners in the past, the case in Hillsboro illuminates the difference in their values. Through the scene on the porch with Matthew Brady and Henry Drummond, director Stanley Kramer illustrates the incessant tug-of-war between religion and science. More specifically, camera angle and Drummond's metaphor of the "Golden Dancer" help deliver Kramer's belief in evolutionism.
In his science fiction novel The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut attempts to answer the meaning of life and ultimately comes with the answer that in order "to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved." (220). However, giving such a straightforward and blunt answer obviously hints that Vonnegut's sarcasm to such a simple solution. Throughout the novel, Vonnegut ridicules religion and science simultaneously in order to come to the ultimate "answer" to the mankind's purpose of life.
When you think of God, you jump straight to the immortal God of the Christianity faith where they are not physically present; they are omnipresent (ReligionFacts, 2004). In relationship
world, he has no way of knowing if they exist past his own mind. Another point he
The abstract idea of life cannot be explained by such simple ideas as being animated, breathing, or speaking. Ordinary machines in this century can perform all of these basic functions. The quandary with defining death is not as abstract and elusive as that of life. The problem of defining life and death has plagued philosophers and the religious bodies for thousands of years for one reason; each philosophy or religion has tried to define the meaning of life and death from only their certain perspective. The seemingly appropriate approach to this problem would be to understand the ideas presented in various philosophies and religions and through this knowledge create a new definition for each idea of life and death. The movie Blade Runner has taken this exact approach in its attempt to finally define life and death in a logical and un-spiritual manner. By taking the position that death is a concrete idea that can be explained, Blade Runner accomplishes the task of interpreting the idea of life in terms death. Through this approach, the meaning of life is redefined to accommodate for the existence of the replicants. Also, as a result of this novel notion of life, it is apparent that humans and replicants never actually live, even though they are alive.