Essays on Absurdist

Perhaps the predominant turn in philosophy since the end of the First World War has been a move toward an adoption of the absurd. Before that war, there was more of a universalist approach to the world, but the events between 1914 and 1918, accelerated by the events between 1929 and 1945, took those universalist elements and dropped them squarely on their heads. Before 1914, even war was kind of a civilized affair, with warring armies frequently taking off Christmas, or even the entire winter; the Christmas truce during the First World War would be the last of its ...

Philosophy has been one of the most important disciplines in Western civilization. Many schools of thought have pondered over the great questions of human life. During the 19th and 20th century, the existential current questioned the nature and purpose of man, freedom and happiness. Miguel de Unamuno was a Spanish writer closely associated to this movement. His short story “Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr”, portrayed many aspects of this theory, such as: . Therefore, the present text will analyze the relations between existentialism and . Defining existentialism is problematic, as it is used to conglomerate many different systems of thought that ...

1. I think experimental fiction is very interesting. I find absurdist fiction most compelling because I think it, in a way reflects real life. Life in a sense is absurd. There are things in the world that cannot be explained. There are many religions of people saying this, or saying that. It is hard to know what to believe, whom to believe and what is real. So absurdist fiction, while it reflects reality in absurd ways, in a way is perhaps an accurate way to represent reality—which is often absurd. 2. I also find metafiction quite compelling, since it is ...

Camus’ “The Stranger” is brilliantly as it crafts Camus’s absurdist view of the world. The novel came out in 1942, and tells the story of Meursault’s , an emotionally detached, but amoral young man. Meursault does not believe in God. Camus shows the main character’s callous nature as he does not cry at his mother’s funeral and he kills a man he hardly knows. Due to his crime, the society sees Meursault as a threat to the society, and as such, he faced death. Nevertheless, he comes to understand the simple coldness of the world. He eventually finds ...

Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play written by Samuel Beckett. It covers many different social aspects that the author wanted to highlight and bring into publicity. First of all, the characters and their costumes remind Charlie Chaplin’s ones. Both characters, Vladimir and Estragon, are dressed as tramps, their costumes are pretty similar that’s why they can exchange with each other. Moreover, they are wearing bid bowler hats, bid boots not necessarily matching their real foot size and big baggy trousers – all there elements can be found in the appearance of Charlie Chaplin. Hence, Estragon and ...

1. Waiting for Godot follows Absurdist principles of setting and plotting. While some other characters present themselves and interact with Vladimir and Estragon, the entire purpose of the play is to convey a series of events in which nothing of consequence happens. he setting is never clearly defined, and the inherent silliness and nonsensical nature of what is happening and who the characters are is taken at face value. In real life, two people would not be waiting for an unknown figure and eventually kill themselves in an unidentifiable void; the fact that these extremes of the way reality is ...

In the previous chapter we have shown how the alienation pervades both of the plays thematically. The present chapter concerns with the stylistic devices which are used by Arthur Miller and Samuel Beckett to support the thematic preoccupation. Since we are concerned with the study of drama, we judge important to include an examination of the stagecraft; that is to say the technical aspects of the two plays. The most important point to insist on is that Death of a Salesman and Waiting for Godot belong to two different, if not opposed, theatrical movements - Realism and Absurdism, respectively. As a ...

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was an Algerian-born writer, playwright, political essayist, activist, and absurdist philosopher, who in 1957 was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. This essay focuses on his absurdist philosophy and in particular as exemplified in his work L’Étranger (The Stranger), written in 1942. In a comprehensive feature (Simpson, 2005) about Albert Camus, published on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), the author suggests that Camus’ concept of the absurd “does not simply refer to some vague perception that modern life is fraught with paradoxes, incongruities, and intellectual confusion”. Simpson goes on to explain that he believes that ...