As I Lay Dying Existentialism Analysis
Existentialism in As I Lay Dying
In Ggreat Bbooks since 1700, a large portion of the materials was devoted to Camus’s take on existentialism. Many of the other texts we read and evaluated were looked at through the lens of an existentialist as explained by Camus. Since taking that course, I have noticed existential themes in much of the literature I have read. I have also noticed existential thought patterns in myself and others in the real world. In the limited amount of Camus’s writing that I have read, Camus sought to show the absurdity of life and the random objectivity of the world and how an existentialist navigates both the outside world and the subjective inner personal world. There are notes of existentialism in both Woolf’s, To the Lighthouse, and Eliot’s , Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but I believe that it is most …show more content…
Darl narrates the most sections of the novel resulting in the reader getting an in depth look at his thought process. Darl is highly thoughtful and is constantly seeking to understand the world and his place in it. He openly contemplates his very existence and wonders about his very being. He concludes that if he is able to contemplate his “being”, then therefore, he must be. He seems satisfieds with this answer, as if being, and nothing more, is good enough. In a state of subjectifying the objective world, Darl tells of his mother’s dying in a romanticized and poetic way. He may be attempting to give a meaning to what is a meaningless situation. Darl spends much of the novel viewing the world through a lens of self-exploration. Perhaps this heightened awareness is too much and he is driven to insanity, or maybe the world he has created for himself sits too far outside of cultural norms. Either way, it is easy to imaging Darl sitting in an infirmary, content as he accepts his current state and continues his journey to come fully to grips with “being
In Ggreat Bbooks since 1700, a large portion of the materials was devoted to Camus’s take on existentialism. Many of the other texts we read and evaluated were looked at through the lens of an existentialist as explained by Camus. Since taking that course, I have noticed existential themes in much of the literature I have read. I have also noticed existential thought patterns in myself and others in the real world. In the limited amount of Camus’s writing that I have read, Camus sought to show the absurdity of life and the random objectivity of the world and how an existentialist navigates both the outside world and the subjective inner personal world. There are notes of existentialism in both Woolf’s, To the Lighthouse, and Eliot’s , Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but I believe that it is most …show more content…
Darl narrates the most sections of the novel resulting in the reader getting an in depth look at his thought process. Darl is highly thoughtful and is constantly seeking to understand the world and his place in it. He openly contemplates his very existence and wonders about his very being. He concludes that if he is able to contemplate his “being”, then therefore, he must be. He seems satisfieds with this answer, as if being, and nothing more, is good enough. In a state of subjectifying the objective world, Darl tells of his mother’s dying in a romanticized and poetic way. He may be attempting to give a meaning to what is a meaningless situation. Darl spends much of the novel viewing the world through a lens of self-exploration. Perhaps this heightened awareness is too much and he is driven to insanity, or maybe the world he has created for himself sits too far outside of cultural norms. Either way, it is easy to imaging Darl sitting in an infirmary, content as he accepts his current state and continues his journey to come fully to grips with “being