Essays on The Outsider

Emily sat and explored just purchased ancient manuscript with unknown runes. She tried not to miss any symbol and understand its true meaning. For a long time she sat in front of her laptop monitor at her desk, surfing the Internet. After all, she could not hold everything in her head and her memory was not perfect. And it can filter out some information. For Emily it was very important, what she did, after all, she dedicated her life to this. Well, but when she was a child, she could not even imagine it. It was already too late ...

Introduction

Ethics refers to those things that are firmly accepted ideas about what we should do in given situations (Velasquez, Andre, Shanks, and Meyer). For example, ethics might refer to a standard that says that stealing or murder or assault is not the right thing to do, and so it imposes restrictions on those activities. Ethics also includes virtues, such as honesty, compassion, and loyalty. The right to life, the right to privacy, and the right to be safe are also embedded in ethics, whether stated directly or not. What these things have in common is that the standards of ...

The Meaning of the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus

Albert Camus' creativity is one of the most important literature phenomenon of the 20th century. In his writings, the author considers the deep and complex issues related to human existence in the context of a total loss of faith. The novel The Stranger is considered the Camus' most important work. This story touches upon the problem of faith in God and the absurdity of life in detail. The theme of the absurd is not accidental for the culture of the 20th century, in which the universality of common sense and logical constructs lose their importance at all levels. A ...

Nelson Mandela was the first president of the Republic of South Africa elected in fully democratic elections. He served as president from 1994 to 1999. Before his presidency he was an outstanding fighter against apartheid and African National Congress (ANC). He was convicted and imprisoned for participating in an underground armed struggle. Mandela was a supporter of peaceful way of solving problems, although in the beginning of his political struggle armed resistance was the only effective type of fighting the regime.

How much powerful is the leader? What makes him powerful?

Nelson Mandela is a prominent leader. He decided to serve his term in prison rather than submit himself ...

Michael was doing what he was always doing on a Thursday night. He was seated comfortably in his armchair in the living room watching his favourite TV show, is home-made spaghetti Bolognese on his lap, and a cold beer on the table next to him. Mike was one of those guys, a creature of habit. Living alone for 3 years does that to you, I guess. Every weekday evening he would come home from work at somewhere between 5:30 and 6 pm, say hello to his cat Pontius, who didn’t seem to care whether he came home or ...

Karl Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach is an exclusive note written the document that includes eleven small pieces of notes, which describe the few light setting works of philosophy on the discovery of the new world. The thesis describes the breakthrough in the world of philosophy, from the world of idealism, to the world of Marxism (Jal, p 1). The hypotheses describe the whole process of transition of knowledge through the provision of the truth, by exerting reality, and the power of knowledge in knowledge attribution. The thesis describes the transition that the world undergoes due to changes in ...

The novel "The Stranger" by Albert Camus is one of the most important and popular of his works. It has a direct connection with the philosophy of existentialism and the absurd like most of the works of the author. The writer once again demonstrates the human and social relationships, as well as the internal conflict of the man himself by the example of the protagonist's life and feelings. The problem of the story touches upon many issues, but one of the main problems is the existence of God. The life of the protagonist Meursault is the way to truth ...

In many respects, Georg Simmel was a discoverer of new roads in sociology for those looking for a way to the fragmented territory of modern life. Simmel in his work “The Stranger” shows that a modern city creates new forms of interaction and new people. The intensity of life is so great that people cannot cope with it with measures they can take from the nature. Then they create – electronic devices, cars, build roads and do many other things to keep up with the pace of modern life. The USA is not an exception. Even more – it is an ...

Jocks vs. Pukes and Superman and Me

Jocks vs. Pukes and Superman and Me In America today there exists a great cultural divide that has less to do with race, ethnicity and class (although these can certainly be factors) than with an almost Calvinist hierarchy of those who belong and those who do not. There are certainly examples of “otherness” in the black vs. white, straight vs. gay issue that surround us, but two prime examples of the more philosophical problem are at the heart of Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me” and Robert Lipsyte’s “Jock Culture”. The two authors are extremely different in writing ...

What is the worthiness of one’s life? What value can you place upon someone’s life? Is someone expensive? Is someone cheap? These are some of the pertinent questions that most actuaries encounter everyday as they try to ascertain the amount of money to be as premiums in life insurance covers. This sort of questions arise the subject of morality and ethics in the field of insurance especially in life insurance. What indicators do actuaries use to ascertain the value of one’s life? Why are some people’s lives more expensive than the others? From a moral ...

Describe the similarities and differences between conducting insider and outsider Action Research.

Weather a research is an insider or outsider Action research is based on the relationship between the researcher and the system/setting/community under study. However, both insider and outsider AR are aimed at achieving positive change/action and are participatory in nature. In other words, in both cases the community must participate in every step of the study in order for the action to be affective in solving the identified problem.

The differences between conducting an insider and outsider AR are based on the merits and demerits of either approach as well as what is valued by either the outsider or ...

ID Number

This presentation focuses on one of the episodes of the Andy Griffith Show, a renowned TV classic. The show ran on television from 1960 until 1968 thereby producing a total of 249 episodes. Andy Griffith performed the role of a widowed sheriff in a small community. The fictional setting is in Mayberry in North Carolina. Andy’s life is made difficult by an incompetent deputy named Barney Fife, a housekeeper and spinster aunt named Aunt Bee and Opie, a precocious son.

Andy Griffith was among the greatest performers in the history of television. He was well recognized for his portrayal of the ...

Question 1

Religion is an overarching theme in the Stranger. The antagonist, Meursault, in this novel is an atheist. He does not believe in the existence of God. He believes that the world is shaped and is as a result of fate. Meursault finds it difficult that there is the existence of a supernatural being that controls the world. The theme of religion is brought about in various sections of the plot in this novel. One of the main sections of the plot where the theme of religion is brought is during the funeral of Meursault mother. Meursault does not show any remorse ...

Managerial decision making is one of the most challenging activities of corporate America. As the business world becomes more competitive due to the establishment of a level platform with the advancement in technology and communication, managers are consistently under pressure to make sound decisions for the survival of their enterprises. With this regard, various strategies have been developed to aid managers in the decision making process. This paper will aim at revealing the various sound strategies and how to use them as a manager and deliver stellar performance (Bridge & Dodds, 1975). The strategies involve the use of various decision analysis tools, ...

When a person reads a lot, favorite writers and characters become a small family. Moreover, a person gets to know author’s style. Hence, in future, it will be easy for the reader to recognize the author. For this assignment, I had to compare two short stories of Stewart Edward White: The girl who got rattled and The two cartridges. In this comparison essay, I will suggest that the both short stories have a lot in common not only in the style of writing but in protagonists’ characters and actions.

The protagonist of both stories is Alfred. In the first story, Alfred is described as

“He was a little man, and he was bashful.” (White, The girl who got rattled) ...

‘Instructor’s Name’

Analysis paper ‘To a stranger’ is a poem written by Walt Whitman, which was published as a part of the collection of his poems titled ‘Leaves of Grass’, in the year 1855. The sexual nature of the poems in this collection fuelled a great controversy at the time of its publication, and in 1865, he lost his government job as a result of the ’indecency’ which his boss saw reflected in his works. In the ‘leaves of Grass’, there is a separate cluster of poems called the ‘Calamus’, and ‘to a stranger’, is a part of that cluster. The main theme discussed by Whitman in this ...

Institutution:

HEARTLESS EVIL Ted Bundy was one of the country’s most notorious serial killers. Just before his execution in 1989, he confessed to killing at least 30 young women, though it is uncertain how many other women he may have killed—possibly as many as one hundred, profilers have said. Biographer Ann Rule, who wrote, “The Stranger Beside Me,” described him as "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after." (Rule p. xiv) One of the main reasons that ...

Group dynamics creates solid and cohesive relationships within organizations or social friendship circles. In a social circle, each person has their respective skill sets and attitudes that make themselves stand out. It is not enough for any group just to know each other, and it is not enough for them to have their ways. Otherwise, then that specific group could be possibly be dancing with two left feet. What does this necessarily mean? Individuals within groups must know their strengths and weaknesses, in a way that friends and colleagues could use their assets to help one another. Hence, giving each group ...

The dictionary defines a stranger as “a person whom one does not know.” But what happens when the stranger is oneself? It seems like a contradiction, but this is the theme explored by Albert Camus in his novella “The Stranger.” Through the narrative of the protagonist Camus relates through his characters deep philosophical notions about identity and the self, and what we can fully know about ourselves in the world. The protagonist sees life as arbitrary. He attaches no emotion to the happenings in his life. As a result, he looses his self-identity, becoming a stranger to himself. The story is of importance because ...

Absurdism as a worldview theory is a part of the philosophy of existentialism; and as the fundamental philosophical concept it was firstly developed in the work of Albert Camus “The Myth of Sisyphus”. As a system of philosophical views, it claims the lack of meaning of human life (the absurdity of life existence). According to the absurdism, people have been trying to find the meaning of existence throughout their history. Traditionally, these attempts have ended in one of two ways: man has come to the conclusion that all life is senseless or he has started to understand that everything is predetermined by ...

Absurdity of human existence is a hard philosophical question. The problem of absurdity of human existence arises from the point of view that the universe is meaningless and there is nothing in the world worth living. According to existentialism the tragedy of human existence is that people are like abandoned in the world of physical pleasures. They don't know how to live in the world, aware of the impermanence of existence. In this essay I would like to highlight Albert Camus’, Richard Taylor’s and Thomas Nagel’s points of view on absurdity of human existence. Even though ...

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 ...

The critical lens aspect in the most basic sense gives the human beings and society an avenue to view and gauge the behavior of others using the set philosophical aspects. It categorizes another human being using already established rules, spheres and fronts. It is to say and imply that the human beings have the impetus and insight to gauge human character and behavior on one of the most common principles of human existence. For the purpose of this essay, I will use the existential philosophy and critique to give insights on the subject. Given the existential aspects and philosophical ...

Is religion oppressive or liberating?

The major theme in In the Stranger and Dead Man Walking is religion. The aspect of religion revolves around both novels. They indicate the importance of religion to people in the society. The absurdist claims that, “religion is constructed by man in an attempt to create meaning to a senseless existence.” When people believe in the doctrines of religion, they live with expectations of life after death and this may seem to mean that human beings have a chance to escape death. The Stranger, by Albert Camus’ point out the high naivety and hypocrisy linked with religious beliefs. The theme of ...

Introduction

Since its inception some twenty thousand years ago, human civilization has grown enormously and has spread all over the entire globe in past few centuries. The vastness of human civilization is managed through institutions – the institutions of education, state, law, religion, family, marriage etc. These institutions are all interrelated. Stability and order in the society are primary purposes of these institutions. The functioning of all these institutions is based on certain principles and the central to these principles is the principle of infinite value of human life. Killing of a human life stands in opposition to the principle of infinite ...

"Thus a good will constitute the indispensable condition of being even worthy of happiness" (Kant, p. 7). According to the Kantian philosophy, good will refers to the only thing in the society that is universally good. He further describes good will by reason, and reason must be a universally accepted law in the society, which is universally applicable to all members of the society. Kant indicates that nothing in or beyond the world can possibly be considered as good without the qualification of good will, which implies that a good thing must be universally acceptable in the society. According to this ...

English: Critical Thinking

The first reproach is an invitation to the people to dwell in quietism of despair as if all solutions to a problems are barred, all actions in this world would be declared ineffective. This is a lead to the contemplative philosophy and as the contemplative philosophy is a luxury, this is another bourgeois philosophy and the reproach made by the communist. Another reproach that is ignominious in the human situation for neglecting things that possess charm and beauty and belongs to the brighter side of human nature. A man is considered in isolation in both the reproaches and the reason as per ...

Part 1

The contributions of four sociologists are considered as the basis of the modern day sociology; they are Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Vilfredo Pareto and George Simmel. This paper is intended for tracing the comparison and contrast of theories proposed by Emile Durkheim and George Simmel. Their theories are one of the bricks of the foundation of Sociology as an independent discipline. While reading the works of these sociologists, it is quite conspicuous to find the transition of thoughts from social philosophy to sociology proper. Here, the contributions to sociology by these great proponents are examined in brief. Though both ...

‘Instructor’s name’

A Woman Bound by Gender Roles – the Feminist Voices in Short fiction Today we live in the so called post-feminist generation, yet, it can be said that, in today’s society, it is easier being a man than a woman. Even today, women are discriminated against in certain jobs, forced to obey obsolete religious doctrines, refused basic rights in many societies, and are generally expected to put their families first, sometimes at the cost of their individuality. If things are this bad today, then they were much worse in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Historically, literature has always served ...

No one likes to have their well-deserved privacy to be intruded upon at any level. We live in a world that compels us to perform within a stringent regime to survive, and this not only cause a lot of physical torture, but mental as well. In such a situation, a person who finds time to escape from the mechanized world to find time some time for him/herself will unwelcome any form of intrusion into their personal space This is precisely what happened to me when, in my attempt to pick up a conversation with a stranger at the park one day. It was one of those ...

Biographic Information of the Author

The topic, which has been chosen for this paper is Oedipus the King. The author of this piece of writing is Sophocles. Sophocles was the innovator of drama. He has well known as the master of tragedy. Sophocles was appreciated because of his multiple roles including a political, priest and the leader of the military (Zachrisson pp. 313). There are several writings, which are associated with Sophocles. However, most of these writings are ancient. Therefore, it is not possible to consider them trustworthy. The biographical information of Sophocles, presented in this paper, is related to the general information, which is ...

Facilitator:

We meet many people in the journey of life but most of the times we do not take note of them. Some of the people we meet in life have the ability to change our lives considerably. However, when you meet a new person, you have the chance to make a new friend, a new partner, a new admirer, or a new enemy. Currently, I am a professional counselor. In my life, I have met various people, who have affected my life in various ways; however, the experience with one person who I coin the nickname the “golden stranger” remains in the memory of my ...

Analysis of some Stories in “The Best of Lady Churchill Rosebud’s Wristlet”

- What familiar restaurant forms the basis for the setting of this story? What details make this clear to you? Egghead’s restaurant forms the basis for the setting of this story. This is so because the restaurant bears the décor of the Wizard of Oz which features prominently in the story ‘Heartland” by Karen Joy Fowler. - What popular film is referenced by the final images of the story? How do these allusions function to establish the story as something other than realism? The popular film referenced Wizard of Oz. The allusions in the ...

Mark Twain, in The War-Prayer, portrays very simplistically how the wish for one’s victory is actually in a way the desire for the disaster of others who stand against the side. The stranger expresses the rationality which is ignored by the people who are only concerned about their prayer to the Almighty for the victory. The irony reaches its transcendental dais when at the end it is declared that the stranger was actually “a lunatic” and “there was no sense” in the things he said. Twain has also utilized this craft in other literary works penned by him. Similarly in ...

It was a beautiful fall of 1876 and New York City was just starting to get its present looks and shapes. In this city, that was growing and developing so rapidly, lived our character by an interesting name of Leopold. At a first glance you could say that he was living a life of a common rich man of those times, Duke of Albany he was, simple and interesting. This young and very ambitious man was charming, very well educated, and what is the most outstanding thing about him – he was an inventor. Life could not be better, you might think. But unfortunately, ...

In philosophy, the absurd describes the inability to find a meaning in life, and all people who try to find purpose in their lives will eventually fail. Life itself is not absurd, but when people are faced with existential questions, they inevitably face absurdity. In response, they can commit suicide, turn to religion for answers, or accept life and its absurdity as it is. Albert Camus claims suicide and recovery are the methods of dealing with the absurd once existential questions cause people to encounter it (“The myth of Sisyphus and other essays” 12). Other philosophers also agree with ...

The stranger

The societies in which we grow play a considerably large role in developing our character, as well as our attitudes and approach to different day to day settings in which we come into contact with. As a result, this is one of the reasons why various societies have been described as conservative, while others, particularly in the west, have been described as permissive. This is normally due to the fact that the different societies have been brought up through different traditions that have been passed on from one generation to another. This is as a result of the different organizations in the ...

English Literature

Introduction Literary interpretation is an important tool of analyzing any genres and characteristics, and the sterling domains of literary analysis and presentation are short story and novel. So, it is in this context, a short story “The secret sharer” written by Joseph Conrad - deals with the challenges of maintaining secrecy in deep sea, a ship, its new captain, and an interesting experience of aloofness aboard the ship. All these form the crux of the story that mirrors the human touch with which a new captain shares the secrecy, and save a life of person. On the other hand, the novel "Wide ...

The stranger which is also known as The Outsider (L’Etranger) is a novel that was published in the year 1942. As much as the author never at any one point consider himself a person with different perspective in nature his book essentially explores a variety of tasks that he may consider as deterministic, stoicistic or all that same. In the book The Stranger the main character is center staged by a person named Meursault, whom is an Algerian by descent but is considered somewhat of differentials this cannot be equated from his hard headed nature hence he goes ahead and does of ...

Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin instills the pangs of revolution in the hearts of the audience who bask in inspiration after watching the Odessa steps sequence in the film. A film, wherever it is made, has the reflection of the society and history of the community. Habermas has argued in his essay, Modernity: An Incomplete Project, that with the transition to modernism, art has made an endeavor to dissociate it from the social constrictions and become liberated, in the sense that it would be art for art’s sake. The avant garde artist would like to immerse the soul ...

Meursault is the main character of the novel “The Stranger,” in which Camus wanted to emphasize the problem of belief in contemporary society. According to Camus, the most serious issue is the inability to believe in reality, observe what happens in the moment, and the inability to live life as it is rather than being concerned with nihilism and contemplating the absurd (Francev, 2010). The novel shows three stages of development, through which Meursault eventually learns to deal with the lack of meaning in life. In the first part of the book, Meursault is an isolated being who ...

Introduction

Children require a lot of attention from their caregivers during their early stages of development. The lack of suck attention leads to certain detrimental effects on the development of the child. Attachment disorder is among the disorders that children develop when they are brought up by individuals who do not care about them. According to Pearce, the formal diagnostic terms for attachment disorder as “Reactive Attachment Disorder of Infancy or Childhood (RAD)’ (31). However, this depends upon the diagnostic conventions in the child’s country of origin i.e. the country of the child’s birth. This paper explores different aspects ...

Introduction

As a child grows, he/she goes through complex processes which develop the social and emotional abilities. This developmental process comprises of the child’s experience, expression and control of emotions. It also has focus on his or her ability to create and maintain healthy relationships with other people. The processes involved are both internal and external. Research processes have been carried out in an attempt to understand and manage the developmental process. Researchers have attempted to discover ways of enhancing and making this process more beneficial to the child. They have however experienced a series of challenges in their attempts to ...

In his poem “To a Stranger”, Walt Whitman delivers an impeccable piece of literary work that exalts the body, concepts of attachment, sexual love, romantic friendship and the comprehensive theme of homosexuality. “To a Stranger” signifies traditional ideologies of love at first sight as the subject of the poem speaks of his love for the stranger. This paper will examine the element of romantic friendship in the poem, discussing Montaigne’s idea of dialectical friendship. The poem highlights the implication of the possibility of new friendships or bonds formed between strangers who suddenly realize they have instantly fallen in love. ...

The beach at night feels completely different from the beach during the daytime. It is the same place, yet the atmosphere is changed. Gone are the daytime crowds of families, couples, groups playing volleyball, strolling retirees, and seagulls raiding unattended food. The darkness of the beach at night envelops with a sense of peace; the absence of the crowds illuminates other aspects of the beach not noticed during the day, it gives a feeling of freedom, and a little fear in contrast to the dominant sense of peace.

Stepping through the dunes and onto the beach itself overwhelms with darkness, the brief ...

The Stranger is a novel by Albert Camus. The main character in this novel is Meursault who is also the narrator. The title “The Stranger” helps to explain various strange happenings in the novel. Meursault is involved in various instances which show his emotional detachment with his surrounding environment (Albert, pp 12). Although much has been explained about this novel, little has been done about the interpretation of the title “The Stranger”. This paper will thus focus on the interpretation of the title of the novel “The Stranger”. In this novel, the stranger is Meursault, the narrator of the ...

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 ...

Albert Camus’ novel The Stranger offers a portrayal of a character who exemplifies the author’s philosophical notions of absurdity. Meursault is an automaton, whose existence bears little, if any, meaning, and whose actions resonate in an equally hollow purposelessness of being. Thus, Camus endeavored to portray, in a fictional work this time, his philosophy of the absurdity of human life, its utter lack of rational meaning and order. Meursault’s story is one of a man who agrees to die for the truth (cited in Sagi 90). Like everyone else around him, he was living in a make-believe world, where he created a ...

What makes this book distinctly American Literature?

Several types of literatures exist in the contemporary world. This includes the different genres. However, most of the literature are classified or grouped together according to their origins and time. In this paper, we will analyze the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in a bid to categorize it as a distinctly American literature. Before we get to analyze the book, it is paramount we understand the characteristics of American literature. Many writers added in to American literature between 1865 and 1914. Even though these writers came from various parts of the country and had dissimilar life styles, ...

INTRODUCTION

In Camus’ The Stranger, one of the more interesting characters is Meursalt, a strangely detached, numb, borderline misanthropic figure who does not have any sense of right or wrong, good or evil. It is as though he feels nothing; he is an atheist, and reacts with cool detachment to proposals of marriage or the death of a family member. At the same time, he is filled with turmoil, particularly once he is given the death sentence because of a murder he commits. Meursault is the quintessential existentialist; he sees no point to the world, and attempts to merely view it as it ...

Richard Wright had every reason to consider himself an outsider. He was born in 1908, an African American in the segregated South, and as he grew up witnessed lynchings and other manifestations of racial prejudice. In the segregated South at that time, it was commonplace for African Americans to feel themselves to be outsiders. It could be argued that as his life proceeded Wright continued to find himself, either through circumstances or his own actions and beliefs, in the position of an outsider. His childhood was deeply unsettled with his family often moving house, and at one point Wright ...

In the 1960s, following John Bolby’s article The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, many psychoanalytic figures criticised his work. They claimed that attachment theory was “mechanic, nondynamic, and explicated according to thorough misunderstandings of psychoanalytic theory” (Fonagy, 2001, page 1, p2). Critiques felt that Bowlby treated his human subjects like animals, and used too many labels and categories when reporting on experiment results. When examining the attachment theory today and, in particular, Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation experiment, it does appear that the critiques’ points were valid. The personalities and behaviours of human beings are extremely diverse, ...

In this paper this paper will examine very closely four stories by Flannery O’Connor and justify the use of the phrase ‘the pain of the past’ in the title. O’Connor’s life and background will be briefly examined, as will the historical context in which she wrote her stories. I will also examine other common features that are characteristic of her stories. The use of symbolism in her stories will be considered. The four stories I have chosen are ‘Geranium’, ‘The Barber’, ‘Greenleaf’ and ‘Everything that Rises Must Converge’ Each of the four stories will then be ...

The tradition of arts and crafts in Africa dates back thousands of years and is still strong today. African arts and crafts commonly encompass mediums of woodcarvings, brass and leather. Wood is particularly popular among many African artists as it is versatile and easy to obtain. Also familiar outlets are sculpture, paintings, pottery and ceremonial and religious headgear and dress. African masks, for example, are part of ancient history and are important to many cultures, particularly in West Africa.

In the majority of African art certain culturally significant themes appear. Popular examples include a woman with a child, a couple, a man with an ...