C. S. Lewis presents very bold ideas about the nature of Hell, the consequence of sin, and the eternity people are allowed to choose. In The Great Divorce, the reader is given an image of a gray, dismal, rainy town where fights are constant and people are never able to satisfy their wants or their needs. This is how Hell is portrayed. Nothing is seemingly real.
Dante’s introduction to Hell begins with the gate outside, which inscribes itself as “the way into eternal grief… the way to a forsaken race” (2-3). This arranges Hell as never-ending sorrow for those who have abandoned the morals of the Bible, effectively setting a tone of suffering, at least for those who deserve it. The gate's inscription closes with the menacing statement: “Abandon every hope, all you who enter” (9). The antonym to hope is despair, so abandoning every hope is quite literally the inscriber (presumably God) telling all who enter to fall to despair, for there is no hope to hold on to here. After Dante passes the gate, the reader immediately feels through Dante’s senses the despair and misery that run so rampant in Hell, with mentions of “sighs and cries and shrieks of lamentation [that] echoed throughout the starless air of Hell” (22-23).
Imagine meeting a random person, then soon both of you became closer, not only you guys got to know each other better but were able to travel through doors to different places to escape your city which is tearing up because of war. Well in the book Exit West by Mohsin Hamid you would find that the relationship between Saeed and Nadia very interesting. From the beginning to the end you can tell that their relationship changes a lot by their actions. At the beginning of the book Saeed and Nadia were both strangers to each other then ended up together. After that during the middle of the book Saeed and Nadia traveled through doors and realize that thing between them became weird.
In America in the 1940’s society viewed men as the superior gender, despite women slowly gaining more rights. They possessed superiority in job wages, political positions, marriages, and education. Women faced continuous discrimination and inferiority. In Jean Paul-Sartre’s No Exit which takes place in the during this time, different power dynamics are implemented throughout the play. Garcin, a male protagonist, experiences this patriarchal superiority on earth.
In Dante Alighieri’s famous The Inferno, the author Dante makes himself the main character as he has the special opportunity to enter into Hell with Virgil as his guide and travel deep into the horrifying Nine Circles of Hell. As he travels further into Hell, Alighieri uses different literary methods to emphasize the importance of numerous events and people inhabiting the circles of Hell. While Dante continues his trek in Hell, Alighieri utilizes the use of Hell’s circles, the importance of human emotion, and the significant use of numbers as three different ways to represent the symbolic journey through Hell and to Heaven. The Inferno, a metaphorical poem on Dante’s voyage through Hell, uses many distinct ways to showcase how symbolic and fulfilling the expedition is through the utilization of Dante’s changing reactions towards the people in Hell, the deepening circles of Hell, and the
For Alighieri however he must travel through banishment from his home and suffer through the destruction of his name and legacy until he is to find the light, which is once again allegorically representing God. Alighieri uses allegory this early in the book to explain to the reader that his life is a living hell, but he must travel through this darkness to reach the light as all good people must. Throughout the rest of The Inferno he continues to use allegory to describe hell and people of special interest to
This helps show the readers that they saw death as the only escape from their cages because death is a constant; all-knowing, loving a blank slate. This is what appealed to them; this is how the setting affected them because it pushed them to question whether life was really worth living . It left them so vulnerable to manipulation and horrendous treatment because of their vulnerability. This, in turn, shows how place affects the character through the consequences of these actions.
Sartre argues the idea of human nature without God and a “heaven of ideas”, because there is no God to create us according to his plan. Human beings just appear on the scene for no reason and cannot appeal to anything above them to give their lives meaning or direction. This concept is forlornness. In Sartre’s eyes, man must come to grips with the fact that he is alone in his decision making. He states by saying that humans occupy the ontological category of “the for-itself.”
In Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit”, Garcin is characterized by his interactions with other characters which develops the ideas of existential angst and “bad faith” through objectification. Garcin feels the need to be judged others and leaves it up to Inez to define who he is. His desire to leave quickly subsides when the door flies open and he replies to Inez “I shall not go(43). ” His decision to remain in that room results from his need to have his essence defined by Inez who “knows what it means to be a coward(43).”
Sartre’s No Exit follows three characters and their experience in Hell, namely Garcin, Inez, and Estelle. Each character is placed in Hell for a different reason and have been assigned to the same room together and are damned to stay together for eternity. Through
As these numbers indicate a low society that is in need of help thanks to the influence of Nietzschean thought. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has shook the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality by way of the proposal of the Übermensch, the last man, eternal recurrence, and the will to power. First, the Übermensch, a German word translated variously as, “Overman,” “Superman, “ or “Super-human”. In his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche introduced the concept of a value-creating Übermensch who rises above the masses to in devoid of anything. The overman is the solution to a problem that humanity is not yet aware of.
This particular piece, No Exit, was written while Sartre was involved in World War II. Sartre was originally drafted into the French army as a meteorologist, but was later captured by German troops and was held prisoner for nine months. While he was held captive, Sartre wrote No Exit, which portrayed what Sartre had lived through during his encounter with the German army. Sartre wrote this iconic piece in order for his readers to interpret and to understand that the idea of Hell can come in all different forms - that Hell is not always the usual fiery pits and brimstone type of Hell like one is traditionally led to
The second aspect of the Situation one shall consider is My Death. Here, the restriction on one 's freedom is the facticity of death, because it is unavoidable fact of being a living being. Sartre sees that death robs us of creating meaning in life because once dead we no longer have a perspective. Following this, once we die we become beings-for-others, meaning that we become only what exists in the memories of others, thus making us an object. Meaning that once we die we are determined by the perspectives of others and thus their individual experience of us.
Existentialism, broadly speaking, it is a philosophy that posits itself against metaphysics. It claims to shift the focus of philosophical enquiry from the abstract to the concrete – that is, from an unchanging essence to the concrete, contingent human arena. This has been seen as the red herring of existentialism – if it speaks against an essence or an unchanging principle and focuses on concrete particulars, how can it be consolidated into a branch of philosophy? Existence is that which is; and essence is what it is. Philosophy has hitherto been the mediating point to explain the what.
The argument Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, presents on existentialism helps to prove the foundation which is “existence precedes essence”. Existentialism is normally understood as an ideology that involves evaluating existence itself and the way humans find themselves existing currently in the world. For the phrase existence precedes essence, existence’s etymology is exsistere or to stand out while the term Essence means “being” or “to be” therefore the fundamental of existentialism, literally means to stand out comes before being. This can be taken into many different ideas such as individuals having to take responsibility for their own actions and that in Sartre’s case the individual is the sole judge of his or her own actions. According to him, “men is condemned to be free,” therefore “the destiny of man is placed within himself.”
