Jean-Paul Sartre Born 1905 From France Worked with the French Resistance in World War II Wrote novels, short stories, and plays Became a Marxist Turned.

Jean-Paul Sartre

• Born 1905• From France• Worked with the French

Resistance in World War II

• Wrote novels, short stories, and plays

• Became a Marxist• Turned down Nobel Prize

(1964)• Died 1980

Sartre’s Contributions

• Popularized existentialism• Argued for absolute freedom and responsibility

for human beings• Author of many memorable quotations and

examples– “Man is a useless passion”– “Hell is other people”

• Existentialism is a philosophy of human existence

• The existence of a human being is prior to that human’s essence

• What I am now is a matter of the free choices I have made

• “Subjectivity must be the starting point”

Atheist Existentialism

• Denies the existence of God• If there is no God, there is at least one kind of

creature, the human being, in whom existence precedes essence

• There is no human nature, because there is no God to conceive of it: man is only what he wills himself to be

Subjectivity• The starting point for humans is subjective because humans make themselves what they are

• Making ourselves what we are leaves us responsible for our own actions

• Humans are responsible not only for themselves, but for all humanity, since we “create an image of man as we think he ought to be”

• We always choose the good, which is good for all

Forlornness

• Heidegger described humans as forlorn because we must face the consequences of the non-existence of God

• It is distressing because there is no ultimate source of values if God does not exist

• Dostoyevsky: If God does not exist, everything is permitted

Reality Alone Counts

• An person is of a certain kind (e.g., writer) only insofar as he engages in that activity

• What a person hopes or wishes to be does not matter; only the produced realities do

• In assessing a person, we must take all his activities into account

• For man is the sum of his undertakings

Optimistic Toughness

• Existentialists write of people with character flaws

• They do not attribute these to circumstances or heredity, but to free choices

• The existentialist keeps open the possibility of change in anyone in any circumstance

Subjectivity Again

• The only firm beginning is “I think; therefore, I exist”

• Everything else is mere probability• This prevents man from being reduced to an object

Universality• There is a universal human

condition: mortal being in the world

• This is objective, and the situation of any human can be understood

• But it is subjective, as the human condition is always being built through individual human choices

The Novel (Defined)

Extended work of fiction writtenin prose; Foer’s novel includes: • detective story • humor writing• first-person testimonials• epistles (letters) • photographs and concludes

with a reversible flip-book• Walter Kirn on Foer’s work:

“Everything is Included” like an “overstuffed fortune cookie”

Literary Terms

• Stream of Consciousness: the uninterrupted flow of impressions and perceptions, thoughts, and feelings

• Especially popular among the Modernist writers post-WWI (i.e. Woolf, Joyce and Faulkner)

• This technique mingles memories, feelings, and seemingly random associations

• Also termed free indirect discourse• Technique is reflective of human mind

Synonyms for “coming of age”• Aging

• Growth (esp. “growing up”)

• Development

• Maturation

• Initiation

– Protagonist: 9-yr-old boy who invents

– Setting: Post-9/11 NYC– Tension: Loss of father,

obsession– Style: groundbreaking,

demanding

Themes• Growth after loss

• Finding meaning and one’s place in the world

• The human experience- we all have an unspoken human connection

• Father-son relationships

• Mortality-life and death