Existentialism In Hemingway And Camus
1730 WordsJun 9, 20177 Pages
People like to get stuck in what they find comfortable, and don’t want to push the boundaries. Literature was stuck in a rut, until Modernism came around and broke the standard mold that authors thought they needed to follow. This movement brought in new styles, dynamic characters and topics that centered around ground breaking theories. Many of these authors looked for their own individual way to break from the tradition. Hemingway and Camus were just two of these authors that took their novels, The Sun Also Rises and The Stranger, in directions that others hadn’t. They developed characters that broke away from the typical stock characters everyone was used to. Hemingway looked at the crazy lifestyles and the consequences that the war had…show more content… Jake states early in the book “Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people” (Hemingway 150). This is a clear example of how alcohol is used by not just him but all characters in this novel to numb their pain. They all are seeking out the opportunity to shy away for them real world and the pain that it brings with it. For him to appear happy, Jake needs to have something to numb him to the other feelings he had battling inside of his mind. Hemingway’s group of characters don’t see the value that life has to offer them, so instead they choose to create fake value by drinking. The alcohol driven state allows him to appear happy to the outside world.
While it might appear that the characters in the book are alcoholics, it could be countered that these young men have been accustomed to consuming large amounts of alcohol as a means of escaping their lives (Djos 64). In a journal article, written by Matts Djos, he claims that Jake and his companions are “terrified that fate and circumstance might shatter their facade of civilized deference. These people lack the skills and the sanity to break their addiction to self-sufficiency and their destructive loop of unmanageability. Instead, they seek refuge in broken relationships, in changes of scene, in drunkenness and the illusion that, however meager, they can find some pleasure