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Jean-Paul Sartre
• Born 1905• From France• Worked with the French
Resistance in World War II
• Wrote novels, short stories, and plays
• Became a Marxist• Turned down Nobel Prize
(1964)• Died 1980
Sartre’s Contributions
• Popularized existentialism• Argued for absolute freedom and responsibility
for human beings• Author of many memorable quotations and
examples– “Man is a useless passion”– “Hell is other people”
• Existentialism is a philosophy of human existence
• The existence of a human being is prior to that human’s essence
• What I am now is a matter of the free choices I have made
• “Subjectivity must be the starting point”
Atheist Existentialism
• Denies the existence of God• If there is no God, there is at least one kind of
creature, the human being, in whom existence precedes essence
• There is no human nature, because there is no God to conceive of it: man is only what he wills himself to be
Subjectivity• The starting point for humans is subjective because humans make themselves what they are
• Making ourselves what we are leaves us responsible for our own actions
• Humans are responsible not only for themselves, but for all humanity, since we “create an image of man as we think he ought to be”
• We always choose the good, which is good for all
Forlornness
• Heidegger described humans as forlorn because we must face the consequences of the non-existence of God
• It is distressing because there is no ultimate source of values if God does not exist
• Dostoyevsky: If God does not exist, everything is permitted
Reality Alone Counts
• An person is of a certain kind (e.g., writer) only insofar as he engages in that activity
• What a person hopes or wishes to be does not matter; only the produced realities do
• In assessing a person, we must take all his activities into account
• For man is the sum of his undertakings
Optimistic Toughness
• Existentialists write of people with character flaws
• They do not attribute these to circumstances or heredity, but to free choices
• The existentialist keeps open the possibility of change in anyone in any circumstance
Subjectivity Again
• The only firm beginning is “I think; therefore, I exist”
• Everything else is mere probability• This prevents man from being reduced to an object
Universality• There is a universal human
condition: mortal being in the world
• This is objective, and the situation of any human can be understood
• But it is subjective, as the human condition is always being built through individual human choices
The Novel (Defined)
Extended work of fiction writtenin prose; Foer’s novel includes: • detective story • humor writing• first-person testimonials• epistles (letters) • photographs and concludes
with a reversible flip-book• Walter Kirn on Foer’s work:
“Everything is Included” like an “overstuffed fortune cookie”
Literary Terms
• Stream of Consciousness: the uninterrupted flow of impressions and perceptions, thoughts, and feelings
• Especially popular among the Modernist writers post-WWI (i.e. Woolf, Joyce and Faulkner)
• This technique mingles memories, feelings, and seemingly random associations
• Also termed free indirect discourse• Technique is reflective of human mind
Synonyms for “coming of age”• Aging
• Growth (esp. “growing up”)
• Development
• Maturation
• Initiation
– Protagonist: 9-yr-old boy who invents
– Setting: Post-9/11 NYC– Tension: Loss of father,
obsession– Style: groundbreaking,
demanding
Themes• Growth after loss
• Finding meaning and one’s place in the world
• The human experience- we all have an unspoken human connection
• Father-son relationships
• Mortality-life and death