ipl-logo

Summary Of Hannah Arendt's Teddy

931 Words4 Pages

In “Teddy”, J.D. Salinger articulates many ideas similar to those of Hannah Arendt, including those of solitude and meditation, essence versus existence, and the notion of jumping into a movement. Teddy, a young boy full of Vedantic and existential ideas thoroughly discusses important life questions with his foil, Nicholson. Teddy addresses the idea of existence vs. essence, stating that individuals today are influenced by the ideas of others starting as early as the day of their birth. Instead, Teddy believes that individuals should experience every fragment of sensory input without any expectation or bias from other humans. This idea that existence is solely birth and that essence is found through the individual is discussed by both Arendt …show more content…

Here, Teddy counters by stating that he and every human once had the ability to deliberately grow cells but now, after thousands of years, do so unconsciously. He supports his argument with Vedantic ideas of reincarnation and how his ‘soul’ had once known but has forgotten over the hundreds of thousands of generations. Similarly to Arendt, Teddy explains ideas of solitude and meditation, stating how one in isolation could actually remember how to grow cells. Arendt also believes that meditation helps guide individuals to finding their unique essence in life, while Teddy correlates meditation with looking back into one’s previous bodies for answers. This common idea of solitude is expressed when Teddy explains, “It would take quite a lot of meditation and emptying out to get the whole thing back-I mean conscious knowledge-but you could do it if you wanted to. If you opened up wide enough.” The phrase “open up wide enough” is similar to Arendt’s ideas that the individual must look within themselves and question their own beliefs and morals to find answers. “Wide enough” simply states the extent to which one must search: a seemingly great extent at that. “Open up” is Teddy’s rhetorical phrasing for one searching within themselves to create solutions. Arendt expresses similar beliefs of wanting individuals to look deep within themselves and question their own morals and ideas to eventually achieve a new, refined outlook on

Show More
Related
1743 Words | 7 Pages

Hannah Arendt’s work Eichmann in Jerusalem details the infamous trial of the Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann. Her work explores a number of different issues that pervaded Western Europe in the 20th century, but the notion of complicity is particularly elucidated. The complicity of Adolf Eichmann, or any German civil worker during the Nazi regime, is certainly a nebulous question. After a lengthy and frustrating trial, Eichmann is convicted of all fifteen counts of the indictment and sentenced to the gallows. The court’s verdict, which was based on facts and thorough examination, indicates that Eichmann was an active agent in the slaughtering of millions of Jews in Europe.

Read More
252 Words | 2 Pages

Within the graphic memoir, “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel there are connections to both existentialist and absurdist philosophy. Existentialism, as a philosophical momvemnt,

Read More
1043 Words | 5 Pages

“The Jungle” written by Upton Sinclair shares with readers the journey of the life of an immigrant Jurgis Rudkos who works in the meat packing industry. This historic novel greatly affected the food industry in America, Sinclair exposed the true evils of the food industry. Sinclair showed us how the meat packing industries worked, in humane conditions employees worked in, and the horrific products being produced from the plants. In the early 1900’s the meat packing factories were places where immigrants came to work so they could have jobs and provide for their families. They were set to one job and got paid low wages for what they did.

Read More
710 Words | 3 Pages

Teddy’s refuge takes the form of Danova and Upalia, two states in his imaginative world. From Teddy’s realizations of the fictional world and also the time he spends creating it, one can understand the way it creates a diversion from the unhappy life which is his reality. Despite it being made of nothing but, “matchboxes and the covers of exercise books”(Nowlan 1), Teddy still views it as, “more real than the town, the street and the home in which he lived with his uncle and aunt”(3). Nowlan presents a contradiction where a fictional world which exists only in Teddy’s mind seems more ‘real’ than the place where he lives, sleeps and eats. This contradiction demonstrates how

Read More
1431 Words | 6 Pages

Everyone at some point in their life wants to be included or have a place where they belong. It is common for people to shield who they truly are when they feel lost in the world. One will naturally reject or shun ideas and trends of those they do not understand. That is exactly what J.D Salinger manages to exploit in the novel “Catcher in the Rye” through the main character Holden. He is a perfect example of the awkward confusion’s that come with adolescence, expressed through three key ideas: it is not uncommon for one to have a hard time coming to terms with growing up and distancing yourself from one’s traditional behaviours, the desire for independence is a typical feeling during adolescences and one will be faced with new emotions and

Read More
1843 Words | 8 Pages

Hannah Arendt is a 2013 bio-pic directed by Margarethe von Trotta; about an important episode form the life of German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) who was one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century. She was born in a German-Jewish family and was forced to leave Germany in 1933. Actress Barbara Sukowa plays the role of Arendt as a complicated woman, who is a brilliant philosopher and also stubborn at times. This film revolves around Hannah’s controversial stand during the trial of ex-Nazi Adolf Eichmann, while she offered to report hearing for the New Yorker in 1961. This film was able to make an impression on audiences worldwide and won few awards as best feature film (2013, German film awards) and Barbara Sukowa as the best actress (2013, Bavarian film awards).

Read More
809 Words | 4 Pages

The harsh realities of the industrial revolution created a climate of fear and anxiety about the human condition, which made many people more receptive to existential ideas. The birth of the existential movement took place following World Wars I and II and influential philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Sartre, who were in conflict with the predominant ideologies of their time, were committed to exploring and understanding human experience. Existentialism has three main branches; Christian existentialism represented by Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Marcel and May; aethestic existentialism represented by Sartre, Camus and Nietzsche and Jewish existentialism represented by Buber, Yalom and Frankl. (Professor M.L.O Rourke Handout October 2016). The Humanistic version of existential therapy predominantly thrived in America, through the work of Yalom (Van Durzen,

Read More
423 Words | 2 Pages

J. D. Salinger describes the endeavor of a teenager named Holden who wandered the streets of New York in the 1950’s in his novel Catcher in the Rye. All throughout his novel Holden faces the same problems being around people who are “phonies” and dealing with loneliness. In the book he saids, “I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead” which describes his feelings to his situation. This feeling of loneliness and of being surrounded by “phonies” is something most teens go through nowadays.

Read More
1744 Words | 7 Pages

The way that such intricate, specific, and divergent books and life events relate is quite showing that the choices we make do affect others and ourselves, our passions define us in positive and negative ways, and being alone in an indifferent world makes us more aware in the end. Hardship and toil prove themselves to be worth it because for Marjane, Meursault, and myself, the results of our hard work with teach us more strength and independence than before. Existentialism exists more than we can see, and its philosophy promotes learning from

Read More
1626 Words | 7 Pages

CITR Rough Draft Essay World War II had ended for America and instead of trying to come together as a nation some felt the need to exist as individuals. The Existentialist evolution came from Europe during the 1950’s. Existentialism came along in the United States at the same time segregation in schools was ruled unconstitutional, the Korean War had begun, and the Warsaw Pact had been signed. Existentialism was a time in America where some people emphasized the existence of the individual as a responsible and free agent. Existentialist believed that their development was based off their acts of will.

Read More
1021 Words | 5 Pages

Scanning through his past several years, he returns to his mother’s death and analyzes her choice to seek a lover at the end of her life. While before he thought it was strange and even somewhat aggravating, he realizes now, being so close to death, that people will enter a desperate search for meaning when their time left is fleeting. But at the same time, he reasons potentially as a coping mechanism, there is no difference whether he dies by execution later that day or in 40 years because he will be dying all the same. Together, these two realizations, though somewhat contradictory, create his bridge to Existentialism. By establishing these two points, he can allow himself to, “open up to the gentle indifference of the world - finding it so much like himself”(122), and apply whatever meaning he wants to life in order to make it as rich and enjoyable as desired, rather than drifting along as a pitiful being waiting for some greater power to guide him along.

Read More
1714 Words | 7 Pages

In Fitzgerald’s postwar 1920s, American cultural critics and intellectuals focused in on Nietzsche’s philosophies of morality and tried to apply Nietzsche’s philosophies on modern subjectivity to modern American culture, something Fitzgerald himself addresses in The Great Gatsby. In Mailer’s postwar period, Nietzschean and Kierkegardian existentialisms remained a part of America’s mounting discourse on the applicability of existentialism to American culture, yet Mailer writes An American Dream at the moment existential psychology is substituted the traditional Freudian and Jungian approaches to psychoanalysis in America, a moment when Heideggerian philosophy and psychology flooded American discourse, a moment Mailer capture in An American Dream. Yet even though the explicit cultural moments and the precise philosophies each of these writers engage with diverge, they find frequent ground in their shared existential vision of the dilemmas of and remedies for the modern individual and the modern, “civilized”

Read More
1341 Words | 6 Pages

Obesity is a growing global health problem. It is typically a result of over-eating of unhealthy diet and the lack of enough exercise. We all know that very well. It is a very serious matter for this world yet people don’t take it as a serious issue. Over-weighted people can have dangerous effects, emotional problems, and take a lot of responsibilities to get back to their normal weight.

Read More
1014 Words | 5 Pages

Hannah Arendt born in Germany, worked as a U.S. political writer and philosopher. Her works were mostly related to political philosophy. In one of her work, “The Human Condition” Arendt suggests a three-way partition between the human activities as labor, work, and action. The activities have been arranged in hierarchal importance. Labor corresponds to that activity which are undertaken for fulfillment of biological necessities of human existence.

Read More
1773 Words | 8 Pages

Introduction Existentialists forcefully believe that one defines their own meaning in life, and that by lack of there being an upper power one must espouse their own existence in order to contradict this essence of ‘nothing-ness’. Absurdist fiction is a genre of literature which concerns characters performing seemingly meaningless actions and experiences due to no found meaning or purpose in their lives, and this prospect of uncertainty is key in both plays Waiting for Godot as well as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Writers Samuel Beckett and Edward Albee use different perspectives on truth and illusion in order to communicate a message to their audience and to make them question the society in which they live in. Truths and Illusions sub-introduction

Read More

More about Summary Of Hannah Arendt's Teddy

Related Topics

Open Document