Who is this Guy?

Meursault I believe is secretly a sad man , making his thoughts very dark and his relationships suffer. I believe he is human because he has feelings and thoughts, even if it is that everything is meaningless. It personally makes me feel depressed because the way he talks about of his life, makes him seem detached. Things are going on and he seems to be just the observer not really contributing anything. For example when he was at his mother's funeral, he observes the room, the smell instead of really mourning his mother's death during the funeral, " It was pleasant; the coffee had warmed me up, and the smell of flowers on the night air was coming through the door. I think i dozed off a little."This book kind of reminds me of perks of a wallflower because they both go through their life watching others live it. I don't know anyone like Meursault but maybe we all have a bit of him, sometimes we try to hide our feelings causing us to ruin our relationships or we can have a dark or detached feelings with an event of our life. I believe that one thinks people should be "normal" not weird or too dark because it's what society would like us to be. Maybe Camus made this character this way to makes us think of why this character is like this or maybe to make us see a different way a person can live his/her life. Everytime you meet someone it's like starting all over to make connections, to see if will be friends or maybe just 2 people who just know each other. But it seems like the character always feels like a stranger but doesn't do much to change that. I want to keep reading to find out why Meursault is the way he is??

Huckabees Blog Post Assignment

Do we live in a world that is meaningful and makes sense?

I believe we do live in a world that is meaningful but not really sure about the makes sense part. If the world weren’t meaningful, then what would be the point of living? Everything we would say or do would be meaningless, no possibility to connect with others or just share own thoughts, feelings and ideas. Like how Tommy’s girlfriend was like “ If nothing matters, how can I matter?” because how can one truly matter if everything is supposed to be meaningless. Or when Tommy said, “Once you realize the universe sucks, you got nothing left to lose.” I remember we were having a small discussion of how if the world was truly meaningless that we wouldn’t even bother to go to school or work because like Tommy said what do we have to lose. But we do because we believe to world is meaningful, that in school or work we are able to connect with others and these connection wouldn’t happen if we were really “ trapped in a dark room with no windows.” Caterine in this movie was like Banach; both believed that the world was meaningless. Part I found really funny in the movie was when after reading Caterine’s book Tommy’s girlfriend and daughter leave him but he tries to explain it to his like 5 year old daughter and screams “ always keep asking questions.” or something like that. But at the same time it was kind of sad because the book and this idea of the world being meaningless made him lose his family.

The world I think is meaningful because to me, people connecting at least for me feels real and if the world didn’t hold any meaning then life would be pointless. I like Bernard’s idea of the blanket and how “Everything is the same, even if it’s different.” because it shows we are same in the sense we all are somehow connected. I think it’s cool, even Caterine showed this was true because then she wouldn’t have found the connection between Albert and his door man; “He was orphaned by civil war, you were orphaned by indifference.” she told him. And if she believes everything is meaningless then why did she believe in connections?? Another great quote Bernard said was “Everything is connected and everything matters! Every atom of your body has been forged in the furnace of the sun, isn’t that cool?” We even have connections scientifically but at the same time there are differences between each other. Which I think are what the tiny cracks stood for but those cracks had tiny connections and they had tiny cracks as well and so on.

But at the same time I do not say that it always makes sense, sometimes there are questions that really can’t have an exact answer. Even Bernard and his wife couldn’t answer Brad’s question “ How can I not be myself.” Or can you really answer what the meaning of life is? No because everyone will have their own idea or thoughts but never an actual answer. But I believe we each find the answers to what doesn’t make sense to us with our own life experiences, thought, views, values, etc.

Hw # 4 - Part 3

Part three of Banach's Lecture talks of how " the value one gets from within is definitely better than the value one vainly attempts to get from outside." Meaning we must determine our own values. Also talks of how in the story of the Grinch he steals all the presents and tree but instead of the who people to be sad he heard joy and happiness because they discovered the true meaning of Christmas.

Maybe it means we shouldn't value what is unimportant, in this case superficial and focus on what is important. It evens speaks of how when we begin to face death or are facing death you discover or question the meaning of life and that our values can never be taken away not even in our death. And to find our internal values we must lose our external values first. What do you think this means??? And what are your personal values??