Existensialism

I started writing a poem for my philosophy class on existentialism. I based it loosely on a book I had to read in high school. I can't remember exactly what book, but I think it may have been "The Stranger" by Albert Camus. Anyway, I wrote more than a page, depicting the character as the stereotypical existentialist, living in a shitty apartment by himself, his life consisting of working, eating, smoking cigarettes, sleeping, etc. A day later I went to work on it again and realized how cliche it was.

In literature, existentialists are often portrayed as lonely men who don't exert themselves, who don't do much except live. They are portrayed as helpless and hopeless. I don't think this is what existentialism is meant to be.

In high school, I took a College English course with this hard-ass teacher. We spent a month reading and discussing existential literature. The teacher constantly would talk about life as being this hopeless ordeal. She would say that we only live and die, that there was no purpose to living, so we might as well do what we want and accept the world around us as is. I went into this class believing that I was an existentialist, doing what I wanted to do, because, what the hell, it doesn't matter anyway. After hearing this teacher that I respected immensely tell us day after day that nothing matters, something inside me clicked. I realized that I didn't want to go through life without purpose or hope. Towards the end of the month, fed up with having a teacher tell a classroom full of impressionable teenagers that life has no purpose, no hope, I raised my hand and asked her why she was doing it. We got into an argument about it. She claimed that if I was getting the sense that I existentialism was hopeless, than I was completely missing the point. This may have been true, but the way she was teaching it to us sure as hell felt like it was. At the end of the argument, she assigned the class a paper on why there was hope in existentialism, saying "You can thank Jesse for this one." I wrote "There is no fucking hope. Its fucking existentialism." and turned it in. Needless to say, I failed the paper.

Looking back on it all, I realize that she is right. There is hope in existentialism. Though I don't necessarily agree with the philosophy, I see the validity of her argument. If their is no outstanding purpose in life, then we are free to make our own, free to think for ourselves. We are free to do what we please while simultaneously accepting the consequences, whatever they may be. This makes existentialism an entirely freeing way of thinking.

Tying everything together, existentialism in literature should not convey a feeling of hopelessness. It should convey the opposite. I plan to re-write my poem based upon this realization, full of hope and the freedom that existentialism creates.