Free Essays - The First Man :: first

Albert Camus’ novel, The First Man, shows how one man, Jacques Comery, who’s father died while he was an infant, and is forced to grow up in a poverty stricken part of Algiers with his mother, grandmother, brother and uncle in a small two bedroom apartment.   Has come to an understanding of love, death, poverty, and life.   The following passages are some of Camus’ best examples of how Jacques has come to this understanding, as well as some of Camus’ own opinions on these and other matters. This first passage is a conversation between Jacques and his friend Malan it tells us about Jacques opinion on life and death. â€Å"†At sixty-five, every year is a stay of execution,† Malan said.   â€Å"I would like to die in peace, and dying frightens me. I have accomplished nothing.† â€Å"There are people who vindicate the world, who help others live just by their presence.† â€Å"Yes, and they die,† Malan said. They were silent, and the wind blew a little harder around the house.†(Camus 35-36). In this passage Jacques has come to the understanding that all me die, whether they accomplish great things or not.   As long as you live a good life there is no use in regretting the life you live, because even if you do not change the lives of thousands, you will at least touch one other person.   In this next passage Jacques has comes to a realization about his mother.   â€Å"†Yes,† said Jacques.   He was going to say: â€Å"You’re very beautiful,† and he stopped himself.   He had always thought that of his mother and had never dared to tell her so.   It was not that he feared being rebuffed nor that he doubted such a compliment would please her.   But it would have meant breaching the invisible barrier behind which for all his life he had seen her take shelter-â€Å"(Camus 58).   In this passage Jacques has come to realize what it is that he loves most about his mother.   It is the fact that he does not need to tell her that he loves her, because he knows that she does not doubt his love for her, and her love for him.   In this passage Camus gives us insight into his opinion of war, â€Å"and each day hundreds of new orphans, Arab and French, awakened in every corner of Algeria, sons and daughters without fathers who would now have to learn to live without guidance and without heritage.

Human psyche Essay

The urge to compete is a large part of the human psyche. When this sense of competitiveness is taken to the extreme, a war may erupt. Throughout the history of humanity wars have been waged, even before the advent of writing, when poets where there to capture their essence. The epic poem The Iliad by Homer describes a war that took place almost two thousand, seven hundred years ago. The Greek society in which Homer lived was considered more violent than any in existence today. This gave him all the inspiration needed to create an epic war poem. By revealing to the reader the futility and horror of war, Homer’s Iliad offers an excellent critique of society, more specifically the fragility of human civilization and the savagery of human nature, when under the extreme pressures of combat. This masterful piece of literature, although written in many centuries ago, has much insight on ancient Greek society that can still be applied, with a modern twist, to today’s world. The style Homer used in his epic poem was unconventional and highly successful. Compared to many other novels or poem of its time, as well as most modern pieces of literature, The Iliad is much longer. This both helps and hinders the text’s ability to convey the messages and meanings of war. In order to capture and preserve the audiences’ interest during such a long poem, Homer took the reader on adventures beyond the Trojan battle field and into the life of each individual solider. By doing this, the reader feels drawn into the story and shares the horrors and futility the Greeks faced during the Trojan War. A large part of Homer’s work is dedicated to war and battle scenes. The main reason for this is because many believed Greek society, which took place seven hundred years before Christ, was brutally violent. Fighting was an everyday occurrence and brought honour among the warriors. The Greek gods did not dissipate the violent society; in fact they encouraged it by demanding animal sacrifices as part of daily rituals. It is this bloodlust, along with Homer’s original style, that has made The Iliad popular and highly influential to this day. War stories depict, through their graphic imagery, the horrors and tragedies taking place during a battle and The Iliad is no exception. The Iliad is most effective at portraying the futility and horrors of war throughout the text with all the gory details. Homer does an excellent job at capturing the realism of each battle scene in over five thousand lines of prose, nearly one third of the poem. As critic Martin Muller points out in Fighting in the Iliad â€Å"the poet and his audience like such [battle] scenes and their periodic occurrence require no greater motivation then bar-room brawls in a Western†. The following quote illustrates Homers ability to evoke graphic images during a battle:  The shaft pierced the tight belt’s twisted thongs,  piercing the blazoned plates, piercing the guard  he wore to shield his loins and block the spears,  his best defense-the shaft pierced even this,  the tip of the weapon grazed the man’s flesh,  and dark blood came spurting from the wound. (pg149, p2) This quote gives the reader a clear image of what is happening as the shaft wounds the unfortunate soldier. Homer also adds to the horrors of the war by telling us about the history of each individual solider before their death. With about two hundred and fifty names in the text, all with individual stories behind their life or death, the story may become murky but never unemotional. Many times a character will be introduced only to be killed off within the same chapter. This adds to the death, destruction and ultimately the horror of the war the Greeks and the Trojans are fighting. As well as reminding the reader of the horrors of war, Homer tells of the futility of fighting such a bloody battle. The sense of frustration and futility of the war is clearly sown as the Greeks fight the Trojans for more than nine years on end. With war comes death, a fact that resounds throughout the Iliad:  While Euchenor knew that boarding the ships for Troy  meant certain death: his father told him so†¦Ã‚  time and again the strong old prophet said that  he’d die in his own halls of a fatal plague  or go with the ships and die at Trojan hands. (pg362, p3) In this quote, describing the life of a solider before he is killed, we see that his efforts during the war appear pointless. He could have met a similar dishonourable death by staying home and enjoying his life. Death represents the futility of fighting a war because it is the only guaranteed result. Monarch Notes tells that â€Å"since death is a constant presence in life we may better see how men value their lives when they are close to that presence†. Homer does an excellent job of bringing the reader down to the battle so that the futility of war can be closely felt.

Analysis Of Ovid s Poem Metamorphoses - 1540 Words

Pena Ajena; foreigner’s guilt. A Spanish term that loosely translates to the agony on feels when witnessing someone else’s shame. It s synonymous with empathy. People usually come across this sudden sinking in their hearts when they witness someone dealing with the regret and desolation. A lover, family member, pet or sentimental possession. It s the feeling one receives unintentionally from someone else. To feel both sympathy and realizing it s ominous undertone. Ovid: Metamorphosis is an eloquent hymn about Greek Orpheus succumbing to depression following the loss of his wife. Along the way, he loses himself in suffering and impromptu his death. The interpreter of the original hymn uses his poetic language to give just to this classical. Ovid: Metamorphoses by Rolfe Humphries uses imagery, double-meaning, and diction to draw an emphatic and just response to Orpheus’s morose and ineluctable suicide. Humphries’ nouveau rendition of Metamorphosis c ouches death through vivid floral imagery. He also uses double meaning to suggest contradictions behind certain phrases., the modern translator’s constant use diction to humanize Orpheus and Eurydice. (The reader expects to hear about how the imagery and language help the reader understand Orpheus’s depression) To culminate these literary devices in classical works like this hymn enriches it as well as giving its message transcendence. (People expects to hear about how the imagery and diction help the reader understandShow MoreRelatedHesiod Versus Ovid1892 Words   |  8 PagesHesiod’s Theogony and Ovid’s Metamorphoses By Catherine Franklin To fully understand the poems; Metamorphoses and Theogony, one needs to understand more about the writers. Hesiod was a greek poet, who lived around 700BC, and was inspired by muses to write epic poetry. Theogony is considered one of earliest works and concerns itself with the cosmogony, or the origins of the world and theogony, or the gods, and pays specific detail to genealogy (West, 1996: 521). Ovid, on the other hand, was a Roman