Existentialism and the Power and the Glory

The Seventh Seal is a 1957 Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. The film offers interwoven storyline. It starts with a game of chess between a medieval knight, Antonius Block, and Death – in which if Block won, Death will prolong the knight’s life. This game goes on in intermittent times.

During the Mexican Revolution, Mexico as a nation torn in many directions, people gave up simple farming lives to take up arms against causes that many of them did not fully understand. Gender roles during the period in Mexico were exceptionally degrading towards women. Having little more rights than slaves and treated as trophies or property more than human beings, women role in society was nothing near that of a man’s. In The Underdogs, Mariano Anzuela highlights the issue of gender roles by continuously illustrating the punitive role of women and their mistreatment. Augmenting Anzuelas work with citations from Oscar Lewis and Stephanie Smith will paint a picture of the degrading gender roles for women during the Mexican Revolution. Highlighted points brought up by Azuela are how men speak with and treat women, women’s place in society, and general disregard for women’s feelings.

Psychotherapy and counselling are inseparable. The effectiveness of a counselling program is not just based on the connectedness and interaction between a therapist and a client, but also the framework of the counselling approach in helping the client improving his mental health or overcoming personal problems. There are an extensive number of psychotherapies developed by past researchers, with each therapeutic concept offering unique contributions in understanding human behaviour and useful implications for counselling practice (Bedi et al., 2011).

The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela is arguably the most important novel of the Mexican Revolution because of how it profoundly captures the atmosphere and intricacies of the occasion. Although the immediate subject of the novel is Demetrio Macias - a peasant supporter of the Mexican Revolution -, one of its extensive themes is the ambivalence surrounding the revolution in reality as seen from a broader perspective. Although often poetically revered as a ‘beautiful’ revolution, scenes throughout the novel paint the lack of overall benevolence even among the protagonist revolutionaries during the tumultuous days of the revolution. This paper will analyze certain brash characteristics of the venerated revolution as represented by Azuela’s

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

In his essay “Existentialism”, Jean Paul Sartre discusses the main beliefs of existentialism. Perhaps the most important belief of existentialism is that there is no human nature, and there is no God. This means that each individual man has control of his own destiny. The definition of each individual man is the sum of his life and all he has accomplished in his life. He is also responsible for all the choices and actions he makes in his life. These types of choices and actions can be seen in the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel. This book is a story about a boy, Wiesel, who is taken to a concentration camp with his family. It follows him and his father through their trials and movement from Auschwitz

The world is a simple place, but often at times, it seems more complicated than it really is. People exist in a world where others do not know about them because the world is so big. Existentialism is the belief that a person creates one’s self with the influence of external factors. However, more importantly, it is how a person is able to cope with these factors that allow a person to live their life. Existentialism is a key factor that is prominent throughout the story. The main characters in the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, are all influenced by outside factors that include a pregnancy substitute to make babies and pre-plan their futures, living in a controlled environment and by making the citizens live in a constant hallucination of “happiness”.

The film Beasts of The Southern Wild is a film that showcases several beliefs from the philosophical school of thought of Existentialism. Existentialism is seen in many aspects of the movie most particularly from the characters and their way of life. The people of the Bathtub don’t belong to the modern industrialized world. They define themselves through their own views.

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

Tanner Dean Mr. Hulings History of the Americas 3/8/15 1278 words Historical Accuracy of The Power and the Glory The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene, is about a Mexican priest on the run from the authorities who are out to kill him and every other Roman Catholic priests they can find. The story is based on a true happening in history in Mexico back in the 1920 to 1930s. The government ran a campaign of religious persecution and hundreds of priests were rounded up and murdered, their churches destroyed. (Miller)

In Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, setting is essential in understanding the spiritual conquest of the main character. The story takes place in post-revolution Mexico of the nineteen-thirties, where Catholicism has been banned. The government has shut down all of the churches and established anti-Catholic laws, jealous of the rising power of the church, and nervous of the corrupt ways in which the church has been dealing with sin. The main character, a nameless "whiskey priest," hopelessly roams the desolate plains of southern Mexico, on the run from the law, as the only priest left who has not denounced his fatherhood. The surrounding communities in southern Mexico refuse to

Existentialism is highly regarded when it comes to artists and artwork. Sartre is a well-known prominent advocate in the post war period. Sartre wrote essays about artists work which helped viewers translate philosophy into visual art and by doing this viewers are able to understand the reasons behind the artwork and along with the understanding comes a deeper appreciation for the art. If man is unexplainable it is because we make ourselves so if he is “indefinable it is because at first he is nothing” (Sartre) he must create who he will be.( www.theartstory.org) Sartre spoke these words to the artwork of the post war period. Jean Dubuffet and Wols art work is able to address the coexistence of mind and body on which humans need. Ponty believes that art does not have to be perfect and symmetrical its science does not have to be exact as long as it captures the eye of the observers than it has done its job correctly. Existentialism in art is for the artist to be completely free with every stroke of the hand. The art of the artist is dependent on the time and place in which the artist is born. Following the first and second World Wars, the decades of fighting and relentless political turmoil it comes as no surprise that a philosophy that invokes man, the individual’s existence at its core had such an extensive following. This is why existentialist art flourishes after times of war because people want to express their feeling of freedom and the importance of the individual.

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”.

In his play, No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre examines basic themes of existentialism through three characters. The first subject, Garcin, embraces existentialist ideas somewhat. The second character, Inez, seems to fully understand ideas deemed existential. Estelle is the third person, and does not seem to understand these ideas well, nor does she accept them when they are first presented to her. One similarity amongst the three is that they all at some point seem to accept that they are in Hell for a reason.

Jean Paul Sartre is a philosopher that supports the philosophy of existentialism. Existentialism is a twentieth century philosophy that denies any crucial human nature and embraces that each of us produces our own essence through our free actions. Existentialists like Sartre believe there isn’t a God that determines people’s nature. So, existentialists believe that humans have no purpose or nature except the ones that they create for themselves. We are free and responsible for what we are and our engagements; even though we are mindful that this can cause agony.