Self and Society Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Self and Society - Essay Example Each "healthy" society needs people capable of looking forward into the future and capable of showing us the path that leads outside the polluted atmosphere of intrigues of the group of the "little" people we all belong to. Namely, people who serve the truth and not the group or the public opinion are predecessors of the society who warn us of the dangers on our way to freedom. While the group is characterized with sluggishness and inertia, the individual is capable of rapid changes of his/her opinion towards the light that glows over the new facts and warns of new danger. However, those who serve the truth only, are rare and few. Many philosophers and famous writers have tried to find answers to these and similar questions concerning the individual versus society. Camus, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Thoreau and Emerson are only a few of those who have tried to criticize the society they have lived in, to cynically laugh at and mock their own time, to warn of the dangers of the moral and ethical erosion they have been witnesses of. Knowing the characteristics of existentialism to which Camus belongs, it is understandable why in his short novel "The Stranger" Albert Camus criticizes the judicial system and depicts the irony of a case when a man is condemned for his indifference and avoidance of societal code. Mersault, the protagonist, is condemned not only by the judge but the spectators in the courtroom as well for something else, that is, his lack of emotional response at his mother's funeral, etc., other than the crime he committed (killing the Arab) and the sentence is for him to be decapitated in the name of many people whom he has never known or whom he will never meet. Mersault is forced to be the outsider when he wants to speak on his behalf. Mersault's story is the story of everyman. To Mersault (i.e. to Camus) life's only meaning is seen from the death point of view. According to Camus, people strive to make their lives meaningful in the face of God but it is absurd, because hope and faith are only p ointless measures constructed by each individual to provide purpose and avoid responsibility. Yet, Mersault is not a person who avoids responsibility for his deeds. On the contrary, he accepts responsibility for what he has done, changes into a person readers would like him to be, i.e. he shows that he is fully capable of feeling, he has emotions, he comes to terms with death, and gives a clear picture of what others are like - people hiding their true selves behind the veal of moral and societal code, when in fact they are nothing else but people full of hatred. "With death so near, Mother must have felt like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration" (Camus, "The Stranger", p.76). Does not hatred equal less than zero "Someone must have been telling lies about