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How different religions view death
How is death looked at in the stranger
Death in different religion
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The Stranger
What is life for? Different religions have different takes on life. There are many ways to view life. The way life is viewed by an individual is the way his morals are set. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and many other religions believe that a higher god sets morals and with the morals comes reward. Another camp, the existentialist, believes that life is absurd and meaningless. The existentialists believe humans live and humans die. They state that death is just a matter of time for everyone, a reality that is inescapable. In the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, Meursault realizes that death is a subject that cannot be erased. Meursault comes to the conclusion that death is the end result for every human's life.
The nurse tells Meursault how the weather affects the human body. "She says, `If you go to slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go to fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church'"(17). The heat's effect is inevitable. No matter the pace, the weather is still an influence in the human body. Meursault realizes this and responds with " She was right. There was no way out" (17). Most people have a problem with destiny. They have been raised to be in control of their circumstances or their decisions. Therefore, the average person has a hard time coming to the realization that the inevitable will happen.
Meursault kills an Arab. He is convicted for the murder. While in the courtroom Meursault is asked why he killed the Arab. The only response Meursault could give them was the sun. Meursault said, "I never intended to kill the Arab" (102). The judge replies and Meursault "blurted out that it was because of the sun" (103). Meursault did tell the truth, the sun did affect his judgment. Camus writes, "The sun was starting to burn my cheeks...it was burning, which I couldn't stand anymore, that made me move forward" (58-59). The Arab gets up and shows his knife. Because of the sun he is blinded in two ways. The first reason was because of the sweat in his eye. The second reason was because the knife was reflecting the light into Meursault's eyes.
...r has not done makes no essential difference at the end. The nurse at the funeral tells him, "if you walk too slowly, you'll get heat exhaustion, but if you walk too fast, then the cool air in church will give you a chill.” As he kills the Arab, he thinks, "Whether I fire or don't fire is irrelevant; the ending will be the same.” And at the trial, Meursault tells the prosecutor, "I have lived my life thus and did x, but if I had done y or z instead, it wouldn't have mattered.” And, ultimately, Meursault turns out to be correct; he discovers that when death approaches, all men are equal, no matter what their ages or previous lives. Meursault views death as an escape: you can't escape from it, but you can escape into it, and he prepares himself to do so, bit by bit. Each parellel incident is just one more winding round of the rope that will bind him completely.
Life is scarier than we think it is. We are always surprised by the unexpected and we don’t know what awaits us around the corner. The Greasers have been overwhelmed with the unexpected nevertheless they are ready, waiting anxiously for those miscalculations to occur. The most imperative and dominant themes that concoct S.E.Hinton’s The Outsiders are courage, social class and the importance of family and support.
Chapter 6 of part I of The Stranger concluded with Meursault’s conscious decision to shoot an Arab because of the physical discomfort the Arab’s knife caused him. The significance of the ending of part I is that it was the first demonstration of Meursault’s awareness of the possible consequences of the act that he committed. This awareness continues into the second part of the novel as he is arrested and trialed. The reason for Meursault’s trial is the murder of the Arab. His insensitivity towards Maman’s death and lack of a social conscientious are factors that contributed to support further investigations, but are not reasons to trial him because they have not ‘harmed’ society on a way that he could be arrested for. For example, if Meursault
However, both the force of society and the force of the sun can become overpowering. They beat down on people, smothering and suffocating them, just as the sun beats down upon Meursault throughout the novel. The sun is present whenever the force of society is strong within Meursault. At the funeral, the sun bears down on Meursault as society smothers him with expectations that he will grieve his mother's death in a typical manner. At the beach when he kills the Arab, the sun is ever present and overpowering, making Meursault disoriented and confused.
leaves to go out to a meeting that turns out to be for witchcraft and finds himself torn
brown paper carrier bag it was in!) It was all made out to be rather
Life is just a long suffer until death, anyway. Such as Sisyphus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus, condemned to roll a boulder up a hill and once at the top let it roll back down just to push it back up. It is a ceaseless task that he is condemned to act out for eternity, with no reward at all, alone. The Gods thought that there was no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. Much the same, life is for everyone, because that’s all life is. Nothing people perform has any real purpose behind it. It’s hard to think that everything society does is for nothing, then again, that’s the way it is. There’s no greater goal to life. “After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die.”-E.B White, Charlotte’s
Oxford Dictionaries defines religion as the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. Religion is important in life because it not only gives humanity order, but it also gives people a reason for life. Without religion, perhaps society would be one big pile of corrupt, evil, and selfish human beings. This is something that Meursault struggles with the concept of religion the entire novel because he has a strong belief in the truth, which opens up a wide spread of issues. Some of his beliefs about life include that it is absurd because he thinks it’s just a game, and that it is mankind’s responsibility to look over oneself because death is a traveling burden. Even during his trial he is at a disadvantage because of his inability to connect with the conventions of society. In Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Meursault loses his faith in life, God, and society because of his lack of understanding and comprehending his feelings and emotions. If the purpose of religion is to bring people together in unity and also give them a sense of hope, then why is Meursault so uninterested and unaffected by any of the events that took place during the novel such as his mother’s funeral, his relationship with Marie, or even his trial? The real purpose Meursault acts the way he does is because he loses is faith in himself and humanity. This feeling of nothingness inside Meursault is most evident in the first line of the novel, “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know,” showing no sign of grief or mourning for the loss of his mother (1). The death of his mother serves as a disruption of the status quo in his life, it is the beginning of his emotional journey of deterioration and separation from...
The diction used by Camus in the paragraph further develops the intensity of the action and the lack of emotion. Words such as “pulsing,” “scorch,” “bursting,” “clashing,” “searing,” and “gouging” are used in context with the heat on the beach, the veins in Meursault’s forehead, the sun, and the light reflecting off the Arab’s knife. All of these words carry a violent and rather drastic connotation which augments the tension in the activity of the passage.
If you were to walk into a high school lunchroom, what is the first thing you would see? Groups, cliques, friend circles, and separations. Tables split up in detached formations, almost completely unaware of the other surrounding pupils nearby. The most common groups in high school are the populars and the outcasts. The kids who have endless friends, engage in team sports, and meet the ideal teenage standards, against the ones who are quiet, solitary, and unconventional. The ones that are outcasts fall into the second description. They don’t line up with society's norms therefore, they tend to be looked upon as bizarre and atypical. Outsiders are too often misjudged and misunderstood
Camus’s motif of the sun illustrates Meursault’s emotions as he approaches the Arab, the sun’s rays separating Meursault from reality. “I knew that it was stupid, that I wouldn’t get the sun off me by stepping forward” (59). Yet after he utters this statement he takes another few steps forward. This sets the stage for the climax of Meursault’s murder of the Arab. More than anything the sun is depicted as a distraction to Meursault. It causes him to do things he would not normally do and clouds his judgment, causing him to commit a serious crime which will cause his own death. The sun is in a way a representation of the constraints society places upon Meursault. The effect the sun has on Meursault that results in death is a parallel to the effect of society on Meursault, which also results in death.
How do you label someone as an outsider? Some might say that an outsider is when a person encounters an external conflict, such as not meeting worldly standards or some who face internal conflicts by feeling like they don’t fit in or belong. The argument on whether the experience of being an outsider in universal is a very controversial topic. Some may state that outsiders are not a universal experience, and others may strongly disagree. In the stories we learned; “Sonnet, With Bird”, a poem by Sherman Alexie, “The Revenge of the Geeks”, an argumentative essay by Alexandra Robbins, and “The Doll House”, a short story by Katherine Mansfield are all stories that portrayed examples of being an outsider. In other words, the experience of being
Though not a film to be taken too seriously, this movie has the power to whisk audience members away for 2 hours, into a world in which the bad guys finish last and the power of good conquers evil.
Meursault was always shown as different to the outside world. Meursault accepted his and his mother’s death. Meursault saw the purpose of life meaningless. The reader is taught of the idea of absurdism. The idea of the Absurd is easily misunderstood and relates itself with negative meanings. To keep the absurd alive you only have to live the absurd. “Life will be more fully lived in so far as it has no meaning.”(Camus I) is a quote from the stranger that shows this.
Existentialism is defined as "a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining his or her own development through acts of the will”. In other words, existentialism it emphasizes individual freedom. Throughout The Stranger, the amount of existentialism views is abundant. The use of Mersault’s experiences covey the idea that human life has no meaning except for simple existence. The idea of existentialism in Albert Camus' The Stranger reflects through Mersault's life experiences with his relationship with Marie, the death of his mother Maman, the murdering of the Arab, and Mersault's trial and execution, all these events show that Mersault’s life of no meaning.