Existentialism Flashcards
Jewish Writers
For Jews living outside Israel, alienation was a daily experience, and so they embraced existentialism.
Existentialism
We are all responsible for finding our own reason to live. It’s not given to us by anyone else - we NEED to find it ourselves.
Jewish Literature
Roots in Immigrant Novel. Lack of adjustment, rejection, crisis of values, sense of responsibility for the world and others
Introspective - containing self-irony, intellectual speculation.
Saul Bellow
Writes picaresque and philosophical novels; responsibilities of characters of witnessing history, voices of consciousness.
Henderson The Rain King
Saul Bellow. A picaresque novel - Jewish-American character facing a midlife crisis.
He grows more and more violent, nothing gives him pleasure, can’t find a meaning in life - he travels to Africa - cradle of humanity.
He is confronted with basic situations, values of life, questions of life and death, and has to shed his civilized ego and reconstruct himself from scratch.
Henderson learns that he wants to live, love makes life worth living, and becomes capable of giving love; returns to America to give his knowledge to others.
Herzon
Saul Bellow, a philosophical novel.
A jewish intellectual, a profesor suffering from a writer’s block. He must rediscover himself, he is blocked by the problems that the world is facing; writes letters that he never sends.
Bellow explores mental instability and relations of it with genius.
Goodbye Columbus
Philip Roth. Regarded obscene, presented sexual taboo subjects with openness - shocking for contemporary reading audience.
Portnoy’s Complaint
Philip Roth. Controversial, just like his other work.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Born in eastern part of poland, migrated to America; writes about jewish community in Poland and America; magical realism, wrote only in yiddish; novels full of supernatural, demons, ghosts, vegetarian; criticism of meat-eating culture
The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosiński. Personal experience of a boy of unknown origin, wandering during World War II in unidentified areas of Europe - sometimes protected by villagers, sometimes threatened, full of of traumatic experiences of the boy.
Title: boy is a bird taken out of the group of birds and then painted, when returned won’t be recognised and will probably be pecked to death since he is a stranger - that’s a fate of the boy; realistic and cruel depictions of war.
Being There
Jerzy Kosińki. A gardener mistakenly taken for a philosopher - makes a career for speaking about garden - people think that it is philosophical.
Afroamerican Existentialism
They always felt like outsiders, so existentialism helped them find some comfort.
Richard Wright
By birthdate belongs to Lost Generation, American expatriate in France - friend of Sartre and Camus; laid foundations for afro-american writers to search for their own racial consciousness pride and self-realization; enabled other voices - e.g. Ralph Elisson
Native Son
Richard Wright. Based on authentic criminal case of a black man who murdered white woman; violent, shocking, brutal scenes of murder and rape; black man’s search for authenticity and self-realization in a racist society
Outsider
Richard Wright. Based on his own experience of being a member of communist party in America in 1940s
