When I think of Sisyphus and start comparing him to people in my life one person that stands out is my uncle Jessie. In his younger years my uncle lived his life as he pleased, and that led to him spending several years in prison. After he was released from prison, he started a family. There are not too many prestigious careers that an unskilled felon can acquire, so my uncle Jessie became a welder at a local fabrication company. Instead of having a normal nine-to-five, forty-hour a week job he works seventy-two hours Monday thru Saturday. This job allows him to provide for and be close to his family, that is the only motivation for maintaining a job he hates. On my uncle’s one day off, his attention it devoted to his two kids and wife. Sisyphus roamed the Earth as he pleased disobediently against the gods’ wishes and was punished for it. My uncle also roamed the Earth, as he pleased, against the laws of society, as a result he was sentenced to ten years in prison. Some people might say that he got off lucky considering Sisyphus’s punishment. I would have to argue that my uncle’s punishment is on the same level as Sisyphus’s. Jessie stared at a cell wall, while going through the same routine daily, and once he got out of jail, he obtained the only job he could that, yet it is just as miserable and consist of the same daily routine. …show more content…
The same is true for my uncle Jessie. He works hard all week and that is an uphill climb, but once that boulder topples over the peak, then he has an entire day of rest and relaxation with his family on that downhill walk. The same could be said for any individual, I know in my own life I have struggled through the week just to get to the weekend. Can a person wrestle with the frustration of life for the majority of a week to just have one day to unwind and be happy with their
How does being sentenced to prison affect someone later in his or her life? Many people pose the question, but they have yet to form an immutable response. Oscar Wilde once said, “one of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be”, this quotation engenders the philosophy of prison, which consists of one being held responsible for his or her wrongdoings. The book Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman explores how a once drug money launderer goes to jail for a crime which she committed almost a decade earlier. At the time she committed the crime, she considered herself lost and naive in regards to her life. Throughout the book, the audience witnesses Kerman’s struggles and how she ultimately overcomes them in order to better herself for the future. After examining the book, one can see that Kerman uses many rhetorical elements in her writing such as ethos, the rhetorical triangle, narration, and myriad others to make her memoir a timeless piece of non-fiction.
With freedom comes a great deal of responsibility which is the major theme of the book, Clockwork Orange. In the book, Alex says, “Nobody will tell me what I get out of this. Tortured in jail, thrown out of my own home by my own parents and their filthy overbearing lodger, beaten by old men and nearly killed by millicents--what is to become of me?” (183). This quote clearly exemplifies the meaning of the book. When people get the privilege to live freely, they have to honor that freedom. Once something is done against the law or the norms of society; there are consequences. Jail is a major role when it comes to settling consequences, and if jail is the punishment being treated like a trash is a given. Connecting this to the book, Alex went to jail because of all his murders he convicted. He was not treated with any respect because he did not deserve it. When Alex learned the hard way that respect is gained he wanted to change his ways, but no one wanted to be part of his life anymore. Not even his parents. Once the freedom is taken away nothing is ever the same, and this is what happened to
...s of The Myth of Sisyphus in The Outsider, and particularly to the discussion of the search for truth. In the Myth Camus goes through an inventory of accepted sources for truth and finds them all lacking: first he tries religion, but surprisingly it is too relative, for which god is god; second he tries science, but finds that it offers not precision but metaphor (the world is like...); third he tries logic, but finds that paradoxically it leads to contradiction (for if "all statements are true" is true then "no statements are true" must be one of the true statements). He is left with the "I" - not the Cartesian "I" - but the Humean "I" (a bundle of perceptions) as the foundation for a meaning system.
The “pains of imprisonment” can be divided into five main conditions that attack the inmate’s personality and his feeling of self-worth. The deprivations are as follows: The deprivation of liberty, of goods and services, of heterosexual relationships, autonomy and of security.
The life of the ostracized is something widely expressed in Luis Borges “House of Asterion”. The metaphor being Asterion being a prisoner of something without restriction. Asterion explains how he is a (lonely) prisoner of the labyrinths: “Another ridiculous falsehood has it that I, Asterion, am a prisoner. Shall I repeat that there are no locked doors, shall I add that there are no locks?”. It’s almost a metaphor that explains to how when someone is ostracized to the point they feel like they are in a prison in their own space in this world because the people around him don’t accept him. As the result the setting is further elaborated into a prison it is more than a prison than the house or maze Asterion had bluntly told us about. “Besides, one afternoon I did step into the streets; if I returned before night, I did so because of the fear that the faces of the common people inspired in me”. The labyrinths are not restricting him to stay there but, if he were to leave he would have been too revoked to stay in the outside world he explored one night. Because he was as scared as the people who wanted didn’t want him there.
Temptations of Odysseus Odysseus: a hero in every way. He is a real man, skilled in the sports, handy with a sword and spear, and a master of war strategy. Most of the challenges and adventures in his return voyage from Troy show us this even if we had no idea of his great heroic stature and accomplishments in the Trojan war. I found in my reading of the Odyssey that most of the trials the gods place upon him are readily faced with heroic means. These challenges are not necessarily welcomed by Odysseus but accepted as part of his role.
Several themes are readily apparent throughout Works and Days. One important theme that Hesiod comes back to time and again is the importance of work. Perses has squandered his inheritance and c...
Odysseus portrays his selfishness right as the book begins and this shows how truly incompetent of an individual he is. One form of selfishness Odysseys shows is adultery. He is unfaithful to Penelope many times throughout the book. He reveals this trait specifically when he is with Kalypso on Ogygia and with Kirke on Aiaia. Odysseus shows his selfishness when he steps foot on Kalypso’s island because he chooses to stay with her for seven years. He did not care about the crew’s feelings on the matter, since all’s he cared about was himself. By the time the seven years were up, the crew members finally realized they had to make Odysseus leave. These actions also make a liar out of Odysseus because he said he wanted to return home more than anything, yet he did not even make the slightest attempt to leave. On Aiaia, Odysseus was forced to sleep with Kirke to save his men from staying swine, but he still committed adultery. No matter what the reason, adultery is a choice that can be controlled. An additional negative quality Odysseus obtains is being self absorbed. This trait is seen when Odysseus traveled to the Land of the Dead. He shows his selfish qualities in this example because he travels there initially for his own benefit. Odysseus also has attendances to t...
Taylor is careful to identify exactly which features of Sisyphus predicament account for the lack of meaning. He argues that the facts that Sisyphus task is both difficult and endless are irrelevant to its meaninglessness. What explains the meaninglessness of Sisyphus’s life is that all of his work amounts to nothing. One way that Sisyphus’s life could have meaning, Taylor proposes, is if something was produced of his struggles. For example, if the stone that he rolls were used to create something that would last forever then Sisyphus would have a meaningful life. Another separate way in which meaning might be made present is if Sisyphus had a strong compulsion for rolling the stone up the hill. Taylor points out, though, that even given this last option, Sisyphus’s life has not acquired an objectives meaning of life; there is still nothing gained besides the fact he just ...
Several philosophers have made differing viewpoints regarding the outlook of life. Richard Taylor and Albert Camus are notably known for presenting their thoughts on whether life is meaningless or not through the use of the Greek myth of Sisyphus. The two philosopher’s underlying statement on the meaning of life is understood through the myth. The myth discusses the eternal punishment of Sisyphus who was condemned by the Gods to take a large boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down, forcing him to repeat this task endlessly. Each conceive the myth in their own way and ultimately end with a conclusion that differs from each other. Taylor’s ideals and his take on the meaning of life contrast with what Camus presents in his argument. While Taylor suggests that there is a subjective meaning to life, Camus states that life is ultimately meaningless.
The myth of Sisyphus was a paper written by Albert Camus to show that life has no ultimate meaning. This goals of men and woman are false and in the end humans really accomplish nothing. Camus represented his idea of existentialism through the use of Sisyphus. This allows us to see a comparison of a mythical tale and the real world.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus covers an existentialist perspective to the meaning of life and claims that the absurd; the inability ...
The norms of the prison are held up by sanctions, both by the prisoners and by the violence of the guards. Some examples of these sanctions are the degradation ceremonies established new inmates as inferior, violence by the guards enforcing their power over the prisoners, prisoners act in such a way that these techniques fail, and being sent to solitary confinement. All of these enforce their isolation and works to break them as a human being, reminding them their role as a prisoner and their lack of power. By doing this, one would want to abide by the rules to veer away from any severe
For this paper, I have chosen to interview my dad, Lester Everitt, because we have several statuses, both ascribed and achieved, that vary. His ascribed statuses include that fact that he is a 66 year old, white male; these have contributed to his achieved status of completing some college, being married, and being currently retired. Although he is now retired, Lester served 20 years with the United States Air Force, which included several deployments during the Vietnam Conflict, and then worked for 25 years at the North Dakota State Penitentiary until various health issues forced him to retire. When Lester was asked about his “master status” or the one status he feels he is most often regarded as, he struggled to provide an answer. Upon further
And when many of the prisoners tried to peacefully protest these cruel conditions, they were repaid with brutal force. This seems to be an unlikely way to reform or rehabilitate anybody It is believed by many human beings that what goes on behind prison bars is not happening in the society where we live; It is said that prisons are a microcosm of society, what happens in reflects the macrocosm. Comparing and contrasting, what go’s in prisons happens to us on the outside as a