Essays on Existentialism

If you know what existentialism is, then you know how hard it is to think like an existentialist. The movie that I watched is “The Perks of being a Wallflower” and the director of the film is Stephan Chbosky. The plot summary of this film...

Death has been a prevalent theme in literature of all cultures throughout the centuries. In The Thief and the Dogs, the author Naguib Mahfouz explores the realm of death and its interconnections with life. Witnessing the turmoil of the Egyptian revolutions since childhood, it is...

While Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is known primarily as a feminist text, it is Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy that influenced Beauvoir’s writings. As existentialists, these philosophers argue that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject and not the thinking subject alone. Sartre argues...

The film Forrest Gump has hints of Existentialism. Forrest Gump’s story shows that human life is not pre-determined. The film shows three existential tenets: Religion, Ethics, and Nature of reality. Existentialism is the existence of an individual as a free and responsible person that determines...

Jack London writes a tragic story about a man who has decided to journey along through excruciating sub-freezing temperatures of the Yukon and how that man becomes victim to the power of nature that happens to be unrelenting and unforgiving in the short story “To...

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (William Shakespeare). Kurt Vonnegut’s pessimistic view reflects...

In Questioning Racinian Tragedy, John Campbell takes issue with analyses of Phaedra that simplistically map Jansenist belief onto the play, or make assumptions about authorial intent as, “an uneasy amalgam of theology, biography, and tragedy” (153). Campbell sees the conventional Jansenist reading of Phaedra, which...

Though brief and comedic, Jean-Paul Sartre’s play “No Exit” offers great insight into the basic ideas of his existentialist philosophy. The commonplace setting of the work and the diversity of the basic character types allude to the applicability of the themes to reality. The main...

Philosophers of all ages have had to come to terms with the existence of God. If God exists then ideas of philosophy such as determinism and a perfect ideal of existence are concepts which can be effectively discussed. However, if there is no God, then...

Every decision, every breath one takes, and every step one ever walks brings one closer to a single goal — to find the meaning of life. The summation of one’s decisions, steps, and movements through life shapes one’s individual existence and leads to proliferation of...

The title of Beckett’s play, ‘Act Without Words I’, betrays an immediate awareness of its dual status as a text on a page and as a thing intended to be used for performance. The title, lacking an indefinite article preceding it, could be read either...