Robert Fenhagen’s Beautiful People is a very short (I would say concise) story that is not concerned at all with beautiful people. Nor is it an essay on beauty, and what beauty may mean to different (beautiful) people, as seen (and perceived) from different (possibly beautiful) angles.
It is rather a minimalist piece of absurd literature that is about beautiful people as much as Eugène Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano (La cantatrice chauve) is about bald sopranos. Truth be told, both beautiful people and bald sopranos (and their equally juxtaposable positions) are only pretexts for the setting in of the absurd in a kind of literature that is absurd only inasmuch as its absurdness does not become an absurdity on its own merits. And the essential difference between the absurdness of a piece of absurd literature and the absurdity that it may fall prey to by all accounts is the optimal gauge of the absurd by which measure one is to know the proper length of a literary text that is edging on the absurd itself.
What is, then, the best length for any literary text to become literature of the absurd? Is there such a textual limit at which the absurd can penetrate literature and make its presence known in the form of the literature of the absurd?
The answer may seem nothing short of absurd itself. Yet, the answer is neither absurd nor possible. The answer is beyond the absurd of the situation that has made it plausible in the first place. In fact, the answer is utterly unknown to the asker except for a few historical hints that, on their own, cannot compose a fully articulate answer.
These hints are simple literary innuendos that should not be taken into consideration unless the asker is willing to do with them as if they were the stuff the...
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...the absurd, which states almost absurdly that the shorter, more concise a text is, the less likely absurd it can be, is no law at all. For how can it be so, and how can he abide by it, when his Beautiful People, who are quite absent from their title-supposed presence, are the living proof that the absurd of the literature of the absurd is gauge-proof and, most of all, immeasurable? After all, would gauging up the absurd not lead to the very absurdity to which the absurdness of any piece of absurd literature is striving not to fall prey? Obviously, Robert Fenhagen would not (could not) be in disagreement with his own writing. By its very nature, the absurd is as limitless as the hawk’s gaze gauging up the limitlessness of the process of enumeration of all the things standing between the two (equally absurd) ends of its food’s coming into being and in classic prey form.
In conclusion, it is true that beauty pleased our eyes and consciousness. People have gone far trying to make themselves look lovely. Consequently most of them end up by getting killed or having some disease such as skin cancer. Instead of having only some people being happier than others, as Morrison introduced Twyla, I believe people should be all equal as Vonnegut advocates in her story, that way there will be no longer such as killings, rapped or even manipulating other because of their beauty. Can beauty help to rebuild our society?
Rochette-Crawley, S. (2004) James T. Farrell. The Literary Encyclopedia. April 2, 2004. Retrieved on May 13, 2009 from http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1487
The underlying paradox of irrationality, from which no theory can entirely escape, is this: if we explain it too well, we turn it into a concealed form of rationality; while if we assign incoherence too glibly, we merely compromise our ability to diagnose irrationality by withdrawing the background of rationality needed to justify any diagnosis at all. (1)
Beauty is dangerous, especially when you lack it. In the book "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, we witness the effects that beauty brings. Specifically the collapse of Pecola Breedlove, due to her belief that she did not hold beauty. The media in the 1940's as well as today imposes standards in which beauty is measured up to; but in reality beauty dwells within us all whether it's visible or not there's beauty in all; that beauty is unworthy if society brands you with the label of being ugly.
Sarwer, D. B., Grossbart, T. A., & Didie, E. R. (2003). Beauty and society. Seminars in
In Camus there is a precise use of the word "absurd". "Absurd" comes from the Latin surdis and in surdis we have a dual definition: it means irrational, insensible (from that side of it we still use the word in mathematics; a 'surd' is an irrational number). But Camus concentrates on the other meaning which comes from the root. That is, "deaf, silent". There are many examples in literature of this particular kind of silence. I think of Romeo and Juliet when Juliet has been ordered by her parents to marry the County Paris, and in one of Shakespeare's best scenes in that play, he has Juliet's father talking...
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
story points out that beauty has its cost as well, the power of being beautiful holds a great
Kafka illustrates life is absurd through the use of metaphors. “ One morning, Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.( Kafka,3)” In this quote gregor wakes up and realizes he’s a bug without any explanation or recollection of what he was turned into. Gregor’s transformation is never logically explained and is therefore absurd.
...ot a single mention of curing or treating Gregor, his condition is thus rationalized as mundane in relationship to absurdity. Thus, the irrationality, and
I believe I have now outlined with reference to the text the disintegration of Aschenbach, the inevitability of his death, assessed the major philosophical conflicts of rationalism and irrationalism and provided examples of narrative comment that underline the conflict. This conflict is inevitable once the initial scene setting is constructed and there is no return for Aschenbach back from this destiny.
It is noteworthy to be stated clearly at the outset of the present paper that literary theories are composed of a mere plethora of highly debatable ideas, concepts and assumptions. They are in other words, strikingly vague, opaque and of a typical flexibility. According to Wellek and Warren (1966, p. 30) }there are then, not only one or two but literally hundreds of independent, diverse, and mutually exclusive conceptions of literature, each of which is in some way right~. That is, the diversity of literary theories and even the contradiction between them sometimes, is something natural.
...e ability to achieve anything in life. Hopefully, readers would learn from this novel that beauty is not the most important aspect in life. Society today emphasizes the beauty of one's outer facade. The external appearance of a person is the first thing that is noticed. People should look for a person's inner beauty and love the person for the beauty inside. Beauty, a powerful aspect of life, can draw attention but at the same time it can hide things that one does not want disclosed. Beauty can be used in a variety of ways to affect one's status in culture, politics, and society. Beauty most certainly should not be used to excuse punishment for bad deeds. Beauty is associated with goodness, but that it is not always the case. This story describes how the external attractiveness of a person can influence people's behavior and can corrupt their inner beauty.
... Absurd was the meaning Garcin came to realize about the room and Estelle and Inez.
To say human existence is absurd is to say human beings have a tendency to seek value and meaning in life but are not able to find any. According to Camus, we want to find meaning in the world but the world is silent and doesn’t give us any answers. As human beings we want an understanding of the world. We are all driven to find that greater meaning of life and if we did...