Existentialism Essay -- essays research papers

Existentialism is a philosophy roughly life that says beingness is more important than the indispensable everyday occurrences. It acknowledges an individuals independence to choose and says with this knowing there comes an immense sense of responsibility. Despair, hopelessness and anxiety are characteristic of a person struggling with existential thoughts. nihilism sums up this condition by stating that all values are baseless, zippo is foreseeable and that life itself is meaningless. The characters in A dissipated Well light Place and A Days Wait show signs of being both aware and unaware of these elements of existentialism. In the first story, A Clean Well Lighted Place, the old drunk humanity represents someone who realizes he has no actual plan or fate. His despair is over the actualization that theoretically the afterlife does not exist. The drunken man and older server share this despair not only because they both realize a mans need for a clean, well-lighted place ex cept also because they both struggle to fill a void. The older waiters acknowledgement of nothingness in life is evident when he recites the prayer but fills in the perceived nouns God and heaven with aught or nothing. He feels a void with this realization that keeps him awake at night. His assumption that others share his insomnia is somewhat correct but what they, the drunken man and the waiter, actually share is a void. The young waiter has a married woman to go home to and a bed, the old drunken man ...