Who is this guy? The Stranger

My reaction to the book "The Stranger" is confusion among the complex narrative plots that stray away from what happened in the beginning of the book to where I am at now.  The author, I believe is purposefully doing this because he wants us to feel the detachment the main character, Meursault feels to the world.  In the book I feel he has a meaningless care about the people and setting around him for example when he was describing his mothers funeral,  I felt he did not care because of his sidetrack thoughts about his job and thanking his mom's funeral for a little vacation off work. A non-caring meaningless person would do that.

I also question what the future of the book would be if, Meursault would break through his non-caring phase, or for the entire book, we will be experiencing detachment from society through analyzing Meursault's actions.

In "Feed" characters have the ability to "know everything" due to a chip in their head that they can refer to answer questions.  But I feel because of their digital attachment they are more detached to the world itself then they are to society, which spreads around gossip, trends(most of the things we do as teenagers).  In "The Stranger"  I feel Meursault feels the same way they do, detached from the world and viewing people more from a 3rd person.

My personal connection with Meursault and the book entirely so far is very weak.  But I find it interesting to get insight on the mind of a person who thinks everything is meaningless, as to the opposite of what I feel, Everything is meaningful.  I even think that meursault could be categorized as a meaningful person because he must care to the fact that everything has to be meaningless.  He believes that everything is meaningless, therefore caring for his belief.  Although that was I believe the author is portraying.

Comment on Blog Post #3

To Larche G

christian said...
In your post I like how you broke down the existentialist point of view of happiness beause it gave me an idea of what you might be comparing it with. your on life.

I agree with you that happiness is very important to find it in ourselves, but finding happiness from the external world shouldn't be a problem at all. If we could not find happiness from the outside world, then our daily lives that we commit too would be horrible, enjoying the big or little things would be a waste of time.

I look foward to reading more of your blogs on happiness and freedom and your thoughts on it.
October 4, 2009 5:55 PM

I Heart Huckabees

"I Heart Huckabees" varied from many myriad situations of questioning life, existence and who we are to completely going insane and lost. It was interesting to see how you could analyze life either through "everything being connected or nothing being connected at all." For myself, I found that questioning my existence, I was at lost with words on how I could describe my existence on earth and what I live for. Crazy.

In our society, we humans compete with each other comparing and seeing who is the better man/women. We do this by buying the newest phone or laptop, expensive cars, houses and popularity. In "I Heart Huckabees" Dawn, the beautiful model, a icon for Huckabees corporation, stopped caring about her appearence after confronting the existentialist. She realized that her career depended solely on her appearence and being beautiful. Therefore she rebeled against her dependence on being beautiful by wearing overalls and a bonnet. Through this, she became her true self, but was looked down upon even though she stopped conforming to people's trends about being beautiful. This made me think about how in our society we are always conforming to new clothing styles, musics, sports, etc. but in the end we also try to be real to ourselves, but is that really being true to yourself?

In a world, that not all the time makes sence, I believe that "everything in the same, even if it's different" because of our dependent attitudes towards items/materials we need. Everyone has brain, we all use it differently though, no one thinks the same thoughts at the same time, but everyone still has a brain. Everyone has ears, but some are smaller then others, we still have ears. This is why i believe the world we live in makes sence, because everything one individual may have, another person may also have too.

Another reason why i believe the world is meaningful and makes sence is the fact that if I believe that everything matters, I too must matter. This also leads to how I can exisist in a meaningful world because "if nothing matteres, how can I matter?" Well if nothing I think matters then how in the world do I matter, because in the end nothing to me is important, or woth my time caring about, which I believe is what matters, "believing."

Banachs Lecture IV

"Are we free?" I would like to believe we are free but to society we are imprisoned by its surrounding structures and rules.

Physically we are not as free as we choose to be because of the laws, limits and rules our bodies cannot follow such as flying by growing a pair of wings, or running super fast and becoming the president without some elite education, etc. But I think we are free mentally. Who is it to tell us what to think, they can't be our brains. We freely allowed to think whatever we like because it's our minds and ours minds abide by only "our" rules.

Even though I say we are mentally free there is still people who put things in our head to make us think. I still think all together we are not free until it is "unlocked." How to unlock it? Death. Dark thought isn't it. But maybe it is true. Russian Novelist Fyodor Dostoebsky met freedom after facing death. Just before waiting his turn in execution in a Czar camp "he got a reprieve. It turned out that he was to be sent to a labor camp instead and that this had merely been a cruel joke." You might imagine that after facing death, the next thing you can think is "freedom." And for the one minute, one second he felt it. The value of freedom and what freedom cost.

Please don't go out there and try to kill yourselves to feel this thought of Absolute Freedom, its only for a minute anyway.