EXISTENTIALISM: ABSURDITY OF LIFE AND LITERATURE
INTRODUCTION: THE ROOT OF EXISTENTIALISM
Existentialism has had unquestionably as significant effect on the philosophy, literature and comprehensive view of the world and human life of the 20th century as no other philosophical movement. This movement begins officially during the World War I. Among the number of the philosophers who have contributed into development of existentialism, it is Jean-Paul Sartre who can be accredited the most. However, the movement in fact is a resurgence of the ideas of Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher and writer. Kierkegaard has noticed that throughout the history many philosophers and thinkers like Socrates put forward their hypothesis of the existence of soul and risked their lives with the thought that soul might be immortal. He named this exercise “truth as subjectivity”. Kierkegaard implies by this a personal unshakable belief in something on which a person is inclined to risk his/her life without need for evidence or proof. As an evidence for the previous statement Kierkegaard´s entries in his journal can be examined:
What I really need to do is to get clear about what I must do,* not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.
(Kierkegaard 1978, 34)
Kierkegaard formed his existential perspective out of interplay of opposing tendencies, such as piety and autonomy, and idealism and romanticism. According to him, “truth as subjectivity” is based on obscurity, one cannot claim his/her opinion as an ultimate truth. People who internalize Kierkegaard´s view and seek for their religious essence within themselves begin to their ruthless face-off with void. In such a pathetic state where nothing is certain these people can only hope that they are superior to any other force in the universe. To internalize Kierkegaard´s point one should experience existential leap, according to Kierkegaard. The religious phase is portrayed by the existential connection of individual and faith in God. Religion is a concern of individual subjective strong emotion. It cannot be and should not be intermediated by the reverends or anything else, and this faith cannot be questioned by objective knowledge or rational perceptiveness. It can be questioned only by individuals in their own relationship to life, to themselves, and to everything else. Kierkegaard´s primarily objective was not to state something about religion, science, or “objective truth”, but to illustrate the significance of “subjective truth”. However, there are divergences between Kierkegaard and the French existentialists, and a French Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, splits existentialism into Kierkegaard´s “existential existentialism” and “atheistic existentialism”. This opposition between these two existentialisms advanced confrontation between religious subjectivity and philosophy. Maritain comments in his Existence and the Existent:
[t]he existentialism of Kierkegaard, of Kafka, of Shestov, of Fondane, was an essentially religious irruption and claim, an agony of faith, the cry of the subjectivity towards its God. It was at the same time a revelation of the person and of his anguish in the face of the nothingness which is nonbeing in the existent, “the crack in the existent.” But because of the historic circumstances in which it was born, and particularly because of Hegel and the implacable fascination of his totalitarianism of the reason, it was the misfortune of this existentialism to arise and develop within philosophy.
(Maritain 2015,201)
The 19th century writers accept that freedom is a terrifying condition which man must come to accept, that in rejecting the world in a passion of nihilism, he/she must develop new and practicable values from that very spirit of negativism, even if they are the values of despair. There are many philosophers whose views on existentialism are worthy nothing, yet this paper covers only the brightest one. For example, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Karl Theodor Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul-Charles-Aymard Sartre are among those who have contributed into setting the characteristics which appeared in the modernist fiction, whose strong disorganizations have extended to a crisis literature. All are concerned in varying ways, with showing how an individual can become him/herself and what it means to be. For instance, Sartre did this by defining people´s freedom and the conditions in that. In his Being and Nothingness, Sartre thinks of freedom as having a constitutive idea that has the lucid state which is essential for action to be performed with awareness: consciously and intentionally. An individual needs to understand that if he/she had undertaken alternative actions then the present situation could have been different than it actually is. In this manner, the potential situation in future is not actual yet, but it can be actualized if certain actions will be undertaken. And in case an individual does not realizes that as a consequence of his/her actions, the situation she/he is in could possibly be different by hook or by crook, this individual would not be able to act, in the sense act with awareness. Therefore, such an intentional denial of the assumption of inevitableness of the given situation points freedom that establishes action. Even though views of the existentialist philosophers may vary at some point or another, they all have one major characteristic, which is a serious concern with the questions “From where do we come? What are we? Where are we going?” The following quotation elucidates the thoughts of Sartre:
[w]e are like actors who suddenly find themselves on stage in the middle of a performance, but without having a script, without knowing the name of the play or what role they are playing, without knowing what to do or say — yes, without even knowing whether the play has an author at all — whether it is serious or a farce. We must personally make a decision, to be something or other — a villain or a hero, ridiculous or tragic. Or we can simply exit, immediately. But that is also choosing a role — and that choice, too, is made without our ever knowing what the performance was about.
(Gunnar Gilje 2001, 444)
This philosophy, if it can be called so, formed itself not without scientific discoveries like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle which says that “there´s an inherent uncertainty in the relation between position and momentum” (Holzner 2009, 29). To illustrate, light demonstrates characteristics that suggest it is both, a wave and a particle, and yet neither exclusively. “The number of absurdities and contradictions is so high that there is no hope of repairing relativity theory and the wave or particle confusion” (Persson 2011, 7). As a consequence of facing absurd in science, contemporary writers reflected this state of absurd when an individual looking for happiness and rationality faces a meaningless universe, what Albert Camus, a French philosopher, author, and journalist, calls the “unreasonable silence of the world.” To grasp existentialism fully, the impact it has made on literature will be analysed, with a particular focus on Camus’s The Stranger and Waiting for Godot of Samuel Beckett, another existentialist.
EXISTENTIALISM IN LITERATURE
Firstly, when we examine existentialism in terms of literature, existentialism indicates a literary movement of the 20th century. In that period, man had full of freedom to decide his own fate. In other words, the actions decide his/her existence. Some existentialists accept that an individual cannot determine his/her essence since God made him/her in that way. In addition, an individual is a part of a big human community with general characteristics. He or she is unique and independent. Those qualities show that he/she is a special individual. The fate of an individual belongs only to himself/herself. One should make the right choices for oneself. That is particular individuality which actually allows one to exist at all. Existentialist literature deals with a theme of alienation, as existentialists think that every individual is essentially alone. He or she is essential deficiency of communion with others. That makes the individual essentially responsible for his own determinations. Therefore, existentialists avoid principle and ideology. One of the most visible traits of existentialists is rejection of authority. The only authority that reader has is himself or herself. Reader is accountable only to him or herself too. In addition, existentialist has gathered on unjust standing for pessimism. And also, this standing is quite understandable. The idea strikes some as ultimately meaningless or absurd. Some of the popular hints related to existential philosophy like boredom, fear and anxiety. Literature could not ignore this problem of the era. In relation to that Alfie Kohn, American author and lecturer, says:
The “pessimist” epithet is even less appropriate. Those who use it usually have Sartre in mind, so its validity is at best very limited. But even Sartre pronounced his philosophy optimistic on balance, although the claim is surely debatable. He, along with Nietzsche and Camus, explicitly repudiated nihilism and sought to construct alternatives to it.
(Kohn 1984, 3)
“Existentialism is rooted in both affirmation and rebellion, and Camus brilliantly described how the two interpenetrate. But humanistic psychology virtually excludes revolt.” (9) Richard E. Johnson as an American publisher and editor, mentions about existential choice in a good essay:
In defiance of every obstacle — not, as the new humanism preaches, ‘in harmony, in alignment with everything else’. . . . There is no way to reconcile this strain and tension of the individual self and the creative will . . . with a calm surrender to passive faith in the wisdom of the organism and the probity of the situation.
(Johnson 1975, 25)
Also, Albert Camus is one of the most known names in existential literature despite that he rejected this label. According to Camus, life is absurd and full of unfairness. Yet, when he/she realize that life is absurd, it cannot be an end. It can be only a beginning. His novels are related to this issue. Sisyphus is one of the absurd heroes in his works. Another example is the protagonist of The Stranger, Meursault. In the novel, Meursault randomly commits murder on the beach. He seems to lack profound human feelings. He does not feel remorse or sadness for his act. “Meursault is incapable of any sort of epiphany regarding his actions or place in the world — all that he understands is absurdity. The absurd and the isolated nature of human existence is definitely a recurring theme for Camus”(Kohn 1984, 10). There is another name worth noting in existentialist literature, which is Samuel Beckett. His Waiting for Godot is one of the most known absurdist plays. “Beckett uses his characters to show that waiting is truly anguish and one must actually pursue the meaning in their life.” (12). Humanity struggled to overcome new challenges. To illustrate, “[t]he threat of sudden nuclear destruction; the overwhelming loss of community brought about by increased social mobility; the disintegration of the family — all have reinforced man’s sense of alienation and fear.” (18) “Existentialism, which freely admits these situations and offers no palliative, has been considered to be a rather dismal philosophy for dismal times” (19).
ALBERT CAMUS AND THE STRANGER
Albert Camus was a French-Algerian philosopher, journalist and author who is generally described as an existentialist writer. He started to his career as a journalist, and he is also known as a playwright and actor in Algeria. He worked for an anti-colonialist newspaper while he was a journalist, and he also wrote about poverty in Algeria. Then, Camus went to Paris in the time of World War II. From 1944 to 1947, he worked as editor-in-chief of the Combat, which was an important underground newspaper. By the time Paris was in the war period, he developed his philosophy of absurd. In Camus’s point of view, life has no meaning. Due to the World War II, many writers started to think of similar concepts. Millions faced the horrors of Nazi regime, they saw the unprecedented slaughter of this war, and nobody could accept that human beings have a purpose or a rational meaning. This life is absurd as Camus says. Some philosophers like Sartre, Heidegger and Kierkegaard also use this term to explain people’s strangeness to life and world’s meaningless. For example; according to Sartre, absurd means that there is not any reason to live. In Jaspers’s view, it is people’s unavoidable situation, it is being condemned. When we look at Camus’s definition of absurd, he says that it is contradiction of human beings. He says that we cannot give a meaning to life in this world. There is absolute misery in this life. Wars, famine, starvation… On the one side, there are some people who are starving. On the other side, there are some people who live in luxuriousness. The war has never been over. There is no explanation for these problems. In the light of these situations, we can say that people do not have a mind and logic. It is not mind to direct people´s lives because people cannot explain these terms with logic. If they are clever, they would see that they get hurt as result of this of these problems, and bring an end to them. If they are clever, they would not want to have more than they consume. We can clarify this situation by giving an example on sustenance. While people are starving in one continent, the others are wasting their food. It shows that human beings are not clever. People do not have any purpose and any function as a part of a smart project. Thus, it is fair to say that people are strangers to this life. The reason for it is that it cannot be explained and these problems cannot be solved, unless one thinks of an utopia. If one is to think about the other absurd situation in one´s live, then an example of people’s being in search all the time can be given. For instance, religions give meaning to life. They create “the other world”, and they make people act “good” in order to get a reward in afterlife; consequently, one´s live becomes meaningful. While existentialists see the life as absurd, some Marxists like Lenin think that absurd comes to light in order to belittle some opinions. According to Albert Camus, who thinks that life is absurd, main problem of human beings is whether we can endure this absurdity or not. How can people live despite all of these problems? They are trying to find a meaning to live in this world. It creates our basic instinct. Human beings are trying to give meaning to this meaningless life; in fact, it is a consequence of our desperation. This despair constitutes dualism during one´s live. And it is clearly shown in Camus’s works. One can easily see the contradiction in his works; happiness and sorrow, life and death, darkness and light. For example; in The Stranger, one can see two main themes together: life and death. While one sees the death in life in his mother’s funeral, he/she also sees his life in the next days. It is beneficial to focus on Camus’s masterpiece, The Stranger, to understand his philosophy.
The Stranger which tells Camus’s philosophy best was written in 1942. The term of absurd is the best concept of telling his philosophy. Actually, The Stranger is not a complex novel in terms of its structure but the meaning of The Stranger is open to discussions. The main character of the novel is Meursault who is considerably passive. He does not make judgements about the quality of actions. In his novel, Camus successfully fictionalizes his key concept or in another words “the absurd”. As it is stated above, Camus thinks that life is absurd. There are some absurd situations, and people generally grasp it by emotions not by mind. Therefore, people keep going to give meaning to life instinctively. While one is trying to find a meaning to his/her life, he/she becomes helpless, so the world becomes absurd. Under these circumstances, people generally complete three phases. Firstly, they realize this world is completely absurd. Then, they accept the fact that everything is absurd, and there is nothing to do to change it. Lastly, they struggle with this concept of absurdity in the meaningless life. The most important thing is succeeding in this stage of struggle. If one does not strive, if one does not make effort, his/her life will have lack of meaning. Hence, people should move to the struggle stage. It is the main problem in The Stranger that Meursault could not move to this phase. He realizes that there is something wrong in his life, since his life is full of nonsense. After he notices this fact, he easily accepts it. He lives just as the other people do; he goes to work, he gets a girlfriend and make some friends- even if he does not care of being friends with them. From this point, we can understand that he does not make an effort to gain anything. He has a girlfriend whom he does not love, and he does not hold back his thoughts from her since he does not care his girlfriend’s feelings. When she wants to marry, he accepts this proposal even if he does not really want to marry which is the proof of the fact that he does not care at all. He is driven away in this world carelessly. There are some given roles in life, and everyone has to act according to these roles to have a place in society. For example; if someone dies in your family, you have to mourn; if you have a girlfriend, you should think of her in the first place; if you have a family, you are expected to be more close to them. Otherwise, you will be alienated from the society just like Meursault. In The Stranger, he did not mourn when his mother died. He went to her funeral, smoked cigarette and drunk a cup of coffee. He does not know even his mother’s age. He is aware of the society’s reaction, but he does not stand up to them, he does not care about anything in this life. Even though the struggle part is the part of giving its meaning to life, we cannot observe this effort in Mersault’s acts. In reality, after we start to give a great value to something, hope can be seen on the horizon. Even if every single day is the same with the others, we always cherish the hope. Otherwise, we would be the same with Meursault. Does he become estranged or are we the ones who become estranged? Do we grasp the truth or is he closer to the reality more than we are? Life can be absurd, but people have instinct to survive like the other living creatures despite all of its absurdity. To bear the nonsense of life, they try to give a meaning to life. Does a person have to give that much meaning to life? These questions and the concept of existentialism are examined in The Stranger masterfully.
SAMUEL BECKETT’S WAITING FOR GODOT
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet and theatre director who had notable experimental and innovative works in both English and French. His plays had made him one of the most important figures of “Theatre of the Absurd”, the movement which offers its audience the idea of existentialism and the theme of absurd. Beside the fact that he had an influence over other writers, he was also influenced by some, in particular by Albert Camus. As it is said previously, according to Camus, mankind was sent to the world without an aim, therefore life has no meaning. Still, people have been struggling to find a purpose to live in vain, which is absurd. These existentialist views and definition of absurd of Camus manifest themselves especially in one of the most known works of Beckett, Waiting for Godot. The themes like lack of rationality of the way of people live and the quest for meaning of human existence are handled in the play so artfully, that Irish literary critic Vivian Mercier state:
. . Godot [is] remarkable by the mere fact of being a popular play on an unpopular theme. It popularity is a smack in the face for all those who say that to be a skillful playwright one must first be a “man of the theatre.” As far as I know, Mr Beckett may never have been backstage in his life until Godot was first performed. Yet, this first play shows consummate stagecraft. Its author has achieved a theoretical impossibility — a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What’s more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.
. . . Godot makes fun even of despair. No further proof of Mr Beckett’s essential Irishness is needed. He outdoes MM Sartre and Camus in skepticism, just as Swift beat Voltaire at his own game. . . . About the only thing Godot shows consistent respect for is the music-hall low-comedy tradition. (Mercier, 1956).
To understand how Beckett managed to convey existentialist views to his audience skilfully, it is better to analyze the play.
The central idea of existentialism is that existence precedes essence. Since humankind is not the project of god or some other divine power, people form their essences by their own actions. Experience is the only element to define a person, so according to existentialism, people have freedom of choice. Throughout the play, protagonists Vladimir and Estragon always choose to wait for Godot. Although they are not sure if Godot comes or not, they keep waiting for him determinedly. Another characters who make their own decisions are Pozzo and Lucky. Even if Lucky is treated cruelly by Pozzo and has the freedom of leaving him, he decides to stick to Pozzo. Lucky’s determination to stay with Pozzo is also related to the fact that people try to find their purposes in this meaningless life. There is no reasonable explanation of why we exist in this universe, that is why people have been struggling to create meaning for their existence all the time. Even though Pozzo and Lucky do not get along well with each other, they have a mutual understanding which has never been spoken out loud. Both of them need one another to feel whole as a person that has an aim in life. The reason that Lucky does not escape from Pozzo is the fact that he needs this purpose to live. In the play, the thought that life has no meaning is also stressed with the concept of time. Waiting is the main action in the play, however this action leads the protagonists to nowhere. Throughout the play, the act of passing time makes Vladimir and Estragon gain nothing. They do not achieve what they expect to do, their attempts are futile as in real life, because according to existentialism, the struggle of man to create meaning is pointless. To have a life that is worth to live, people create some concepts bigger than themselves, set their rules and try to obey them. In Kierkegaard’s opinion, when people understand that all of their efforts are ephemeral and not absolute, they turn their steps towards religion. In the play, Godot can be seen as a symbol of God, since he has a power to punish and save people. Vladimir thinks that Godot would punish them if they drop him, and he also defines Godot’s coming as their salvation. Thus, Godot is the symbol of heavenly power that people search for throughout their journey of living. However, with or without this belief of divine power, sometimes people come across troubles and open their eyes to the absurdity of their lives. They begin to question who is responsible for the good and the bad. In Waiting for Godot, readers are also exposed to some questions such as; “Who is Godot? Why does not he come to save Vladimir and Estragon? Is he real? In which place Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot? Who beats Estragon and why?” which are the equivalents for “Is there a God? Why are people suffering? Is this world the real one?” Yet, since people have the instinct to survive, they keep struggling to find a meaning, even if they do not find any answer. In the play, Vladimir and Estragon sometimes decide to hang themselves, however they put that thought away every time and keep striving. Apart from these, Beckett uses some repetition of speeches, such as “Nothing to be done.” to emphasize that life is pointless despite every single effort. In these ways, Samuel Beckett reflects the ideas of absurdity and existentialism skilfully in his masterpiece Waiting for Godot.
CONCLUSION
The 20th century was a traumatic period due to horrors like World War I and II. Also, the emergence of philosophies like those of Nietzsche and Freud, which directly denied the existence of god and that a human is a being superior to any other force. Along with it, the discoveries made in quantum physics rendered the world in minds of the contemporary people in such a way that they had nothing else to do than to cling on subjectivity and accept it as truth in order to have a glimpse on a bright future in their minds, which does not have to be questioned by objective knowledge. Certainly, it left a trait on literature. Existentialism has become a salvation for all those who found themselves, as Sartre says, in the middle of the play without a script. Even though it can be debated whether existentialism brings salvation or not, it definitely makes people get rid of their erroneous interpretations of the world, and forces people to face the very essence of themselves, the essence that comes after existence.
WORKS CITED:
Holzner, Steven. Quantum Physics For Dummies. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2009. Print.
Kohn Alfie, Existentialism Hear and Now, The Georgia Review, Summer 1984, 3–20.
Persson, John-Erik. Great Confusion: Wave or Particle? S.l.: Lulu Com, 2011. Print.
Richard E. Johnson, The Future of Humanistic Psychology, The Humanist, March/ April 1975, p.6.