Beasts Of The Southern Wild: Existentialism

I don’t know where to start? Firstly, “EASY RIDER”, is one of the movies I love, it represents the eternal question about us as humans, it is bright example of an existential movie, conveying in an unmatched way, the message: “Existence precedes essence”. Moreover, the existential message, here is displayed in a perfect way in front of all viewers, related to some other masterpieces: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979); Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979); Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999); Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936), The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946), Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952), Taxi Driver (1976), directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader, stars Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, just to mention few, of many

            Toni Morrison has written several novels, many of which show the influence of existentialist thinking; however, Beloved and The Bluest Eye both strongly illustrate all of the major existential themes. Beloved is a novel about a woman, Sethe, who escapes from slavery with her children. She is haunted both physically and psychologically by her experience, as evidenced by the scars she carries on her back from a severe beating, and the scars she carries in her mind from the horrible treatment she suffered. A few weeks after her escape, Sethe's owner hunted her down to reclaim her as his property. Under the fear of capture, Sethe decided that for her children, death

These are lines from the dialogue of Mr. Fox and Kiley the Opossum, from the film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Where Mr. Fox in the moment of questioning the purpose and the meaning of his existence. This is what it calls it an “existential crisis” or “existentialism”. However, these question did not prevent Mr. Fox from planning to do ‘one last job’ which is robbing a near by farms (Boggis’s chicken farms, Bunce’ a dwarfish duck and goose farm, and Bean’s turkey and apple farm ) but someone may say it actually encouraged him. The term “existentialism” used for first time by Jean-Paul Sartre and his associates, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus during the cultural movement in Europe in the 1940s-1950s . Clearly Mr. Fox is not satisfied with his job as a writer even though the one can notice that he like to give speeches, lecture and advise everyone around him, but that does not satisfied him and he is still looking for a meaning for his life. For Sartre “existence precedes essence” is the cure idea of existentialism, which means that the person is the one who create his identities and values . In another word the individual is the one who create what or who he is and why he is practicing a particular activity. Therefore Sartre may say for Mr. Fox you are in a good situation and these questions are meaningless because the existence come first and later on comes the essence.

Although the fundamentals of existentialism can be applied to numerous works throughout history, existentialist thought, which places emphasis on authenticity and the ability to control one’s own growth, largely rose to prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries. Notable among these works are Voltaire’s Candide, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Although all three texts span dramatically different time periods, the themes of existentialism and free will remain consistent in opposition to the despair and pessimism that life ultimately imposes on us all. According to The Second Sex and Candide, we must work towards our happiness and fundamentally seek it out on our own, while Coates claims in

Theistic existentialism begins with acceptance of all the propositions of theism. It’s main differences concern human nature and our relationship to God and the cosmos.

Existentialism is a Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre, was published in 1945 at the height of Existentialism's cultural resurgence. As Sartre states in his opening line, his purpose is to “offer a defence of existentialism against some charges that have been brought against it.” (Sartre, 1945) At a time where Existentialism was heavily associated with wearing black and smoking (Fahlenbrach, 2012) Sartre felt the need to draw attention to its philosophical and more meaningful aspects, beyond it simply being a passing trend. Sartre outlines, “Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism” (Sartre, 1945) This is rooted in what Sartre believes to be the basis of all Existential

American Beauty is a movie that sets in suburban America. The story is about Lester, whom is a middle-aged writer working in a magazine company. He was having a midlife crisis where he felt lonely and numbed by continuous unchanging routine of his everyday life. In the movie, his wife portrayed as a successful real estate agent, but she was also going through her own midlife crisis in both her career and personal life. Lester’s daughter, Jane Bumham had alienated her parents and was going through puberty. They have a new neighbor who is a U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Frank Fitts, and he has a son, Ricky Fitts, who is a drug dealer. Lester was going to get fired from his company that he had worked for fourteen

As humans, do we consciously form our own identities? After all, one is rarely who they aspire to be. Take, for example, John Gardner’s character Grendel. Although Grendel seems to intentionally perpetuate his wretched state of being, it is also clear that this process creates, or is the product of some sort of internal struggle between what he considers to be the “two dark realities, the self and the world” (Gardner 47). For many individuals, including Grendel, existence appears to be nothing more than a never-ending series of conflicts, mostly between the actual state of things and our idealistic perception of what they should be. These conflicts, whether realized or not, generate a great deal of emotional and psychological turmoil. This idea is present in nearly every religion and school of philosophy and has been given many names throughout history, but the more recent technical term for this flaw in human thought is “cognitive dissonance”.

Who are you? What defines who you are? Why makes you who you are? What is your personal identity? Have you ever sat around pondering the meaning of life, or maybe just your life? Have you asked yourself any of these questions? What were your answers? These are questions that people have been trying to answer since the beginning of time, before me and you were ever born or thought of. People live their whole lives trying to figure out exactly who they are and what their purpose is in life. In the field of philosophy, many philosophers have had theories on personal identity and a person’s “self.” These people have gone down in history books for their theories on a person’s identity: John Locke and Rene’ Descartes. These are two of the most

The existentialist is one who is concerned only with that intense moment of awareness with only his senses at his disposal, never looking to the future – the most living awareness. McCandles, the protagonist, in Into the Wild has come to the realization that existence is already being dead and accepting the fact that life is absurd and marvelous. He embraced the sublime absurdity of existence by renouncing the language games society plays. What is so enticing about the existentialist is that he is not concerned with the pressure of appearances and small talk which society employs to lie about what they think and feel. Existentialism is accepting the inevitability of death and living life for the moment without entertaining hope or falsities that distract one from living and accepting truth. The existentialist sees the simplicity in life and the absurdity of complicating it with pretences and lies, the existentialist is a naked man, he is one who becomes one with the rest of creation in accepting his fate on this earth and not hoping for anything more – he simply exists.

By the definition of existentialism, it is the theory that one gives an action a value by the virtue of choosing said action to begin with. It is an approach that emphasizes any existence of an individual that is “condemned to be free” (McCutcheon, p. 91) and are therefore agents who have no other choice but to be accountable for those actions in which they produce. In a way, it is as if existentialism is contrary to essentialism. The idea that existence precedes essence manifests itself in the movie Fight Club. This movie shows many themes of existentialism, where the main character struggles between his “everyday self” and the “inner self” he longs to become. The Narrator soon learns that it is only when one strips away everything they thought they knew about themselves—down to an empty shell of who they are—that you may build back up into a new and complete person with a real identity and the capability of decision making. The three themes of existentialism that the movie portrays are: (1)) the awareness of what you are and assuming responsibility, (2) the aspect of choosing how one may define themselves with respect to the world they exist in, and lastly, (3) the confrontation of mental pain in order to reach a genuine state of “being for itself”.

Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story (1958)is an absurd as well as existential play. It comes out is existential terms the life situation of the modern man, the meaninglessness and absurdity of human situation. The complete breakdown of values, the utter incapacity for creative action is regarded as the malaise of the modern man. The absurdist viewpoint and generalized question concerned with existence self have been at the very heart of the inspiration of the play. The play may also be studied a picture of the problems and conflicts of an existential character. Albee(1928-2005) is the only American dramatist to introduce absurdist troubles and situations to the American theatre: his criticism of the American ethos is outstanding and it annihilates the very foundations of its value structure. In his plays Edward examined a sterile world either suffused with cruelty or lacking in compassion and love. We find this view of Edward in all his plays, in which civilized institutions are represented as sentimentalized conventions family schools, marriage house exude false values.

   Freedom and liberalism are catchwords that appear frequently in both philosophical and political rhetoric. A free man is able to choose his actions and his value system, to express his views and to develop his most authentic character. What this kind of idealistic liberalism seems to forget, however, is that liberty does not mean a better society, better life or humanistic values such as equality and justice. In his novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), Anthony Burgess portrays an ultimately free individual and shows how a society cannot cope with the freedom which it in rhetoric so eagerly seeks to promote.

For this paper, both movies used to explain Existentialism are adapted from real stories. The first film is Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed and the second is Into the Wild, starring Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless. In Sartre’s definition of existentialism, human existence precedes essence, therefore leading to meaning, purpose and identity. When Chris and Cheryl leave their family, friends and everything else they know from the society, they are attempting to find a meaning and purpose to their lives.

Existentialism developed in the more extensive feeling to twentieth century rationality that is focused upon the investigation about presence and of the best approach people discover themselves existing or their existence as a whole. Existentialism takes its name from those philosophical topic of 'existence ', this doesn 't involve that there will be homogeneity in the way presence will be on be comprehended. On simpler terms, existentialism will be an logic worried for finding self and the intending from claiming an aggregation through spare will, choice and also personage obligation. Existentialism turned into prominent following those Second World War. In spite of seeing its philosophical viewpoint is little spot complex,