The New Journalism is a collection of articles in the style of new journalism put alongside an explanation of how this form developed, what characterises it and how it is influential in today’s media. It is not the traditional news report style of journalism, but more like fiction, using characterisation, description and narrative devices such as scene-setting. It was very much influenced by authors of social realism and has characterised not only journalism, but also non-fiction novels, for the last 50 years.
Some key devices include scene-by-scene reconstruction, dialogue to establish character, establishing the scene and the context which surrounds it and expressing opinion. The surroundings, characters and events are all important and in this way it dramatically breaks from the conventions of traditional ‘dispassionate reporting’ of events which relies on objectivity and brevity to avoid all biases and confusion. It also encourages the writer to interact with the subject and become actively involved in reporting it, which has become a corner-stone of modern journalism.
The novel is seen as a psychological phenomenon, an ‘obsession’ even, which captures the imagination and attention of readers and is seen as works of literary art. Therefore, it sits at the top of the literature hierarchy, as Wolf points out, before critical essays and journalism. This means that it was inevitable that these enviable qualities would be integrated into journalism to try to boost it up the hierarchy and make people see it as a valid and innovative form of literature. The 1960s saw this change happen and the notion of an article that reads like a novel was born. The novel style and its popularity were used as a device to draw in the reader and capture their interest and imagination whilst still educating them about the state of the world. One interesting point that was made in the seminar by I can’t remember who was that, if journalism can change its style, it stands to reason that it can aspire to more than the ‘slob’ of yellow journalism. However, many critics at the time argued that journalists were having ideas above their station (note that this was mainly academics!).
Wolf said that part of the reason that this new style of feature writing was so successful was because the ultimate triumph for many a feature writer was to produce and publish a novel; by using novelistic techniques, they were getting one step closer to realising their dream (although in reality it was still a long way off).
Therefore the idea of New Journalism is based on the premise that the novel is the ‘highest form of literature’, and that by breaking from tabloidization and ’scoop’ reporting, feature writers were closer to reaching the top of this hierarchy. Some have even linked the uptake of New Journalism to a form of social revolution along Marxist lines. Marx can be related to this because he formed a sort of ‘religion’ of communism which set out guidelines and rules to follow in order to create a successful society. In the same way, New Journalism has established a whole new way to approach reporting and a way to fuse techniques from a number of approaches. It has almost created its own ‘manifesto’ of writing for the people rather than the government or businesses which have vested interests.
However, it can also be argued that it has gone the other way in that the feature writer now has a lot of power to persuade, for example by picking and choosing what information to put in, what to leave out (to only show one side of the argument) and how to interpret it. This is reflected in another novelistic technique which is integral to New Journalism; not having an external narrator to explain the scene.
Another popular technique is to use aspects of relationships and personalities to create atmosphere and trigger reader’s reactions. This can be seen as innovative and also as a tool for social manipulation. By establishing scene and character, feature writing has the ability to reach reader’s emotions. By encouraging the use of imagination and setting the scene in the mind’s eye, the reader is drawn in and will be more receptive to the social ideas which are portrayed. By using dialogue (which is a common, and effective, technique), the reader feels like they are involved in the conversation and it becomes much more personal to them.
It is also controversial in that these techniques encourage the writer to take a side and to put forward their own opinions; whereas traditional news bulletins are objective and made up only of the key facts, feature writers take advantage of the opportunity to expand on this and give subjective opinions and points of view. They often set out to write a feature with the intention of changing attitudes.
This is in strong contrast to traditional news articles which are very structured and objective. They are simplified, often dry, and made up of the bare facts. While this approach is still used in traditional newspapers, feature writing has taken the world of journalism by storm and allowed for massive expansion into documentaries, magazines and blogging. We now take New Journalism techniques for granted because we have grown up with them. This style is often referred to as ‘gonzo journalism’ and includes many different areas such as investigative journalism, informative journalism and entertainment journalism. Blogging is the ultimate example of free, new journalism at work. It gives everyone in society a chance to share their views, and is often used as a form of extended conversation, with people responding to other blog posts, commenting and expanding on issues brought up by others.
Wolf also talks about competition between feature writers and the changing nature of their role in the world. New Journalism has involved in such a way, in tandem with technological developments, that nowadays anyone can claim to be a feature writer; blogging has exploded and has changed the nature of feature reporting. The whole idea of New Journalism has become an integral part of society, and my generation has grown up knowing no different (which made it sort of difficult to understand the concept as I have nothing to compare it to).
New Journalism has contributed much to today’s society, especially in the way that it sparks interest and debate where dry news articles would not necessarily make you sit up and listen, let alone take action. It encourages many different opinions and ideas and many see it as a source or ‘breeding ground’ for revolution because it is in no way controlled by government and often goes against their beliefs or decisions.
New Journalism is, therefore, literary, subjective, persuasive, manipulative and provocative. It encourages, thought, debate and action where traditional news reporting merely puts across facts. In this way, I see it as far more useful, but at the same time very dangerous if used for the wrong reasons or in damaging ways. We therefore need to achieve a careful balance. At the same time as being dangerous, I think it is very useful in encouraging us to be critical readers and not simply accept being spoon fed information and opinions.
Thursday 17 March 2011
Thursday 10 March 2011
Lecture 3: Existentialism and JP Sartre
This week’s lecture began with Chris playing “Heroine” by Velvet Underground and showing Edie Sedgwick (Twiggy) in “Screen Test” by Andy Warhol as examples of the Existentialist Movement’s influence in popular culture.
Horrie described Existentialism as “a movement in post-war arts and culture, especially in France and the USA” which mainly covered music, theatre and literature, although as with all cultural movements, it affected every part of popular culture and has had huge influence on today’s society. It is all about ‘abstract post-expressionism’, to do with phenomology, Freud and the development of psychology, and most importantly, drugs.
The term ‘heroin chic’ aptly describes the fact that it was ‘cool’ to be spaced out and the ‘in’ thing was the New York androgyny scene, of which Edie Sedgwick, Nico and Yoko Ono were poster girls. The drug scene seemed to go hand in hand with revolutionaries and protestors against the Vietnam War, with stunts such as spiking town water supplies with LSD and the Magic Bus that travelled across the US on this mission. This was in the midst of the Hippy movement, with icons such as Bob Marley, Leonard Cohen, Malcolm X, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters (on said LSD bus) and John Lennon. As Tom Wolfe’s The New Journalism describes, popular culture is full of heroin users and references to drugs. Camus’ portrayal of state of mind and outlook in The Outsider is very similar to that of someone on a heroine trip.
J.P. Sartre’s Existentialism is Humanism was based on his doctrine that you can judge the freedom of a society by how free and well-regarded its journalists are, regardless of what the constitution says. Sartre was a follower of Heidegger and Husserl, believing that consciousness is an act of intention, not an object, and that the world is will representing itself. This follows the ideas of phenomology that mind is action. This is opposed to Locke’s views and similar to Kantean ways of thinking.
Sartre is also known for rehabilitating Marxist and Hegelian ideas (in Critique of Dialectical Reason) which had become steeped in dogma and buried in meaningless slogans. Sartre believed that followers of Marxism had perverted Marx’s original meanings, and so goes back to his early work to look at Marx as a neo-Kantean moralist. He argued that Marx’s main message was that the point was not to come up with endless interpretations of the world and why we are here, but to change the world and make our mark on it, which I wholly agree with (or at least so far as I understand it).
Existentialism and Literature put forward the idea that ‘you cannot write for slaves’ because writing is the act of human freedom. It is not given to you, but something that you must act upon. This brings to mind the idea that you do not have to settle for your ‘lot’ in the world, if you are unhappy with what you have, strive to change it. In this way we are all equal because we have been given the ability to change our situation and make the most of the opportunities that surround us.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre puts forward his Ontological system. First of all, he talks of ‘things in themselves’ which are objects that are indeterminate but completely bound by their ‘facticity’ and which change constantly and decay. This constant change and decay, Sartre argues, is depressing which makes you feel angst.
Sartre’s answer is to face up to this and not be bothered by it: easier said than done! This rotting and decay is a constant theme of existentialist art, as well as Buddhism, the New Left and the Hippie movement. Sartre also spoke of ‘things for themselves’ which are self-determining, self-creating things, such as free people, which can do something about ‘being’ and not just accept it as a constant state. Linked to this are ‘things for other’s which are slaves/carers/wives (because, of course it is the women that are subservient to men) who don’t live for themselves but to do things for others. These ‘things for others’ are hated and feared by existentialists because they are not trying to be their real ontological being but are living in ‘bad faith’. This is similar to Heidegger’s idea of the ‘inauthentic’ life.
Criticism of Sartre which Horrie spoke about seems to have been mainly from Conservatives, and say that his doctrines are really just a re-working of Marxism, with the categories of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat being re-interpreted as ‘the determined’ (people as objects) and those who determine others.
We also talked about Simone de Beauvoir, who had an ‘open marriage’ with Sartre and can therefore be expected to have picked up on some of his key ideas. Her book The Second Sex describes being female as a narrative and argues that everything that is female is determined by men. She challenged prejudicial thinking as a narrative that can be re-written and so, in my opinion, was quite optimistic about human nature and the nature of women in particular.
The New Left, as I understand from Chris, is all about prejudice and being. It promotes personal expression and freedom, and can be seen, especially in France, in the fight for human rights for homosexuals, different races, disabled people and women.
Heidegger (a proponent of the New Left?) saw ‘being’ as a structure of previous decisions. This is linked to the drug culture of the 1960s as Heroin’s chemical effects keep you in the now, with no particular significance on anything as it removes the pain and pleasure neurons, or at least masks them for a while. Therefore, people on heroin have no past or future in consciousness.
This made existentialists, and New Journalists, very interested in junkies and drug users. When on drugs, you can’t trust your senses as often they are chemically blocked or changed. Heroin, for example, turns off the amygdala part of the brain, while LSD turns off the short term memory and slows perception mechanism, affecting the cerebral cortex.
Examples of the effects of drugs in literature include; Tom Wolf’s book in which he writes about the hippie movement as a ‘gonzo journalist’, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and loathing in Las Vegas which greatly influenced feature writing, and the development o f the Non-Fiction Novel by writers such as Truman Capote, Tom Wolf and John Steinbeck.
I will now sum up the political orientation of a few Existentialists which Horrie talked about:
Sartre/Camus were Marxist, to an extreme level in that they approved of Maoism. They both saw Capitalism as cultural repression and thought that the purpose of life is to fight for liberty.
Simone De Beauvoir was socialist, democratic, feminist and Kantean, supporting equal rights. She has been said to have started feminism, arguing that women are only restrained by the facticity of their reproductive organs, but partly blames women by saying that women are self-repressed by guilt and fear.
Fanon was Marxist, Maoist and terrorist, believing that violence is the answer and inspiring Malcolm X to use violence in the Black Civil Rights Movement.
Kierkegaard was Christian, moralising (nihilist – life is without objective meaning or purpose), subjectivist and anti-rationalist. His work can be seen as the end of Christianity as an intellectual force, and many have referred to him as the ‘first existentialist’. He worshipped jesus as is rock in an existentialist world; this was his way to come with the problem of being. He was totally against organised religion.
Nietzsche was elitist, anti-democratic and hermeneutic (it is only possible to interpret something in relation to its context) and had a great influence on existentialism.
Heidegger was fascist, anti-technology and ‘green’ and believed in the idea of ‘authenticity’ – being yourself not what others want to mould you to be.
The basics of existentialist politics are the ideas that you should not let other people determine who you are or change other people to how you want them to be. An apt statement is ‘don’t sum me up’ just let people be instead of constantly trying to interpret and pass judgement. It also emphasises the centrality of choice which is endless. Heidegger emphasised self-creation through the structure of choices. A popular existentialist saying is ‘existence comes before essence’. It is basically a rejection of all forms of teleology, saying that the past doesn’t matter and the future hasn’t happened yet, emphasising the ‘eternal now’ which drug users love. This is similar to Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence. Existentialism is full of Eastern influences and often rejects Western, capitalist values.
It is all about personal liberation and the fact that we are all in the same boat, trying to deal with the same problem of ‘being’ and we are thus liberated to create ourselves and allow others to do the same. A key quote from Chris is that “a truly authentic person who lives in Good Faith will determine themselves and have no expectations of others, and make no attempt to make demands on them”.
One of my favourite points of the whole lecture is that existentialists see people as bundles of opportunity, saying that we need to ‘just do it’ and express ourselves, work for our own freedom and set yourself free; “You cannot be set free by others, you must liberate yourself by a means of passionate commitment to something (anything).” This is how I want to live my life, not worrying about how or why we are here etc, just living life to the full and enjoying our circumstances.
Horrie described Existentialism as “a movement in post-war arts and culture, especially in France and the USA” which mainly covered music, theatre and literature, although as with all cultural movements, it affected every part of popular culture and has had huge influence on today’s society. It is all about ‘abstract post-expressionism’, to do with phenomology, Freud and the development of psychology, and most importantly, drugs.
The term ‘heroin chic’ aptly describes the fact that it was ‘cool’ to be spaced out and the ‘in’ thing was the New York androgyny scene, of which Edie Sedgwick, Nico and Yoko Ono were poster girls. The drug scene seemed to go hand in hand with revolutionaries and protestors against the Vietnam War, with stunts such as spiking town water supplies with LSD and the Magic Bus that travelled across the US on this mission. This was in the midst of the Hippy movement, with icons such as Bob Marley, Leonard Cohen, Malcolm X, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters (on said LSD bus) and John Lennon. As Tom Wolfe’s The New Journalism describes, popular culture is full of heroin users and references to drugs. Camus’ portrayal of state of mind and outlook in The Outsider is very similar to that of someone on a heroine trip.
J.P. Sartre’s Existentialism is Humanism was based on his doctrine that you can judge the freedom of a society by how free and well-regarded its journalists are, regardless of what the constitution says. Sartre was a follower of Heidegger and Husserl, believing that consciousness is an act of intention, not an object, and that the world is will representing itself. This follows the ideas of phenomology that mind is action. This is opposed to Locke’s views and similar to Kantean ways of thinking.
Sartre is also known for rehabilitating Marxist and Hegelian ideas (in Critique of Dialectical Reason) which had become steeped in dogma and buried in meaningless slogans. Sartre believed that followers of Marxism had perverted Marx’s original meanings, and so goes back to his early work to look at Marx as a neo-Kantean moralist. He argued that Marx’s main message was that the point was not to come up with endless interpretations of the world and why we are here, but to change the world and make our mark on it, which I wholly agree with (or at least so far as I understand it).
Existentialism and Literature put forward the idea that ‘you cannot write for slaves’ because writing is the act of human freedom. It is not given to you, but something that you must act upon. This brings to mind the idea that you do not have to settle for your ‘lot’ in the world, if you are unhappy with what you have, strive to change it. In this way we are all equal because we have been given the ability to change our situation and make the most of the opportunities that surround us.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre puts forward his Ontological system. First of all, he talks of ‘things in themselves’ which are objects that are indeterminate but completely bound by their ‘facticity’ and which change constantly and decay. This constant change and decay, Sartre argues, is depressing which makes you feel angst.
Sartre’s answer is to face up to this and not be bothered by it: easier said than done! This rotting and decay is a constant theme of existentialist art, as well as Buddhism, the New Left and the Hippie movement. Sartre also spoke of ‘things for themselves’ which are self-determining, self-creating things, such as free people, which can do something about ‘being’ and not just accept it as a constant state. Linked to this are ‘things for other’s which are slaves/carers/wives (because, of course it is the women that are subservient to men) who don’t live for themselves but to do things for others. These ‘things for others’ are hated and feared by existentialists because they are not trying to be their real ontological being but are living in ‘bad faith’. This is similar to Heidegger’s idea of the ‘inauthentic’ life.
Criticism of Sartre which Horrie spoke about seems to have been mainly from Conservatives, and say that his doctrines are really just a re-working of Marxism, with the categories of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat being re-interpreted as ‘the determined’ (people as objects) and those who determine others.
We also talked about Simone de Beauvoir, who had an ‘open marriage’ with Sartre and can therefore be expected to have picked up on some of his key ideas. Her book The Second Sex describes being female as a narrative and argues that everything that is female is determined by men. She challenged prejudicial thinking as a narrative that can be re-written and so, in my opinion, was quite optimistic about human nature and the nature of women in particular.
The New Left, as I understand from Chris, is all about prejudice and being. It promotes personal expression and freedom, and can be seen, especially in France, in the fight for human rights for homosexuals, different races, disabled people and women.
Heidegger (a proponent of the New Left?) saw ‘being’ as a structure of previous decisions. This is linked to the drug culture of the 1960s as Heroin’s chemical effects keep you in the now, with no particular significance on anything as it removes the pain and pleasure neurons, or at least masks them for a while. Therefore, people on heroin have no past or future in consciousness.
This made existentialists, and New Journalists, very interested in junkies and drug users. When on drugs, you can’t trust your senses as often they are chemically blocked or changed. Heroin, for example, turns off the amygdala part of the brain, while LSD turns off the short term memory and slows perception mechanism, affecting the cerebral cortex.
Examples of the effects of drugs in literature include; Tom Wolf’s book in which he writes about the hippie movement as a ‘gonzo journalist’, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and loathing in Las Vegas which greatly influenced feature writing, and the development o f the Non-Fiction Novel by writers such as Truman Capote, Tom Wolf and John Steinbeck.
I will now sum up the political orientation of a few Existentialists which Horrie talked about:
Sartre/Camus were Marxist, to an extreme level in that they approved of Maoism. They both saw Capitalism as cultural repression and thought that the purpose of life is to fight for liberty.
Simone De Beauvoir was socialist, democratic, feminist and Kantean, supporting equal rights. She has been said to have started feminism, arguing that women are only restrained by the facticity of their reproductive organs, but partly blames women by saying that women are self-repressed by guilt and fear.
Fanon was Marxist, Maoist and terrorist, believing that violence is the answer and inspiring Malcolm X to use violence in the Black Civil Rights Movement.
Kierkegaard was Christian, moralising (nihilist – life is without objective meaning or purpose), subjectivist and anti-rationalist. His work can be seen as the end of Christianity as an intellectual force, and many have referred to him as the ‘first existentialist’. He worshipped jesus as is rock in an existentialist world; this was his way to come with the problem of being. He was totally against organised religion.
Nietzsche was elitist, anti-democratic and hermeneutic (it is only possible to interpret something in relation to its context) and had a great influence on existentialism.
Heidegger was fascist, anti-technology and ‘green’ and believed in the idea of ‘authenticity’ – being yourself not what others want to mould you to be.
The basics of existentialist politics are the ideas that you should not let other people determine who you are or change other people to how you want them to be. An apt statement is ‘don’t sum me up’ just let people be instead of constantly trying to interpret and pass judgement. It also emphasises the centrality of choice which is endless. Heidegger emphasised self-creation through the structure of choices. A popular existentialist saying is ‘existence comes before essence’. It is basically a rejection of all forms of teleology, saying that the past doesn’t matter and the future hasn’t happened yet, emphasising the ‘eternal now’ which drug users love. This is similar to Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence. Existentialism is full of Eastern influences and often rejects Western, capitalist values.
It is all about personal liberation and the fact that we are all in the same boat, trying to deal with the same problem of ‘being’ and we are thus liberated to create ourselves and allow others to do the same. A key quote from Chris is that “a truly authentic person who lives in Good Faith will determine themselves and have no expectations of others, and make no attempt to make demands on them”.
One of my favourite points of the whole lecture is that existentialists see people as bundles of opportunity, saying that we need to ‘just do it’ and express ourselves, work for our own freedom and set yourself free; “You cannot be set free by others, you must liberate yourself by a means of passionate commitment to something (anything).” This is how I want to live my life, not worrying about how or why we are here etc, just living life to the full and enjoying our circumstances.
Thursday 3 March 2011
Seminar 2: The Outsider/ L'Etranger by Albert Camus
This short novel is based around a core existentialist theme where the main character exists in the present, and the idea of past and future only come into play in the second part, when they are forced upon him by society. Meursault is only concerned by sensory experience and the here and now.
Another main theme of this book is the idea that there is no rational order in life, as is exampled by Meursault; order and rationality and explanation are forced on an action or even by society. Camus can be seen to be commenting on the search for purpose in a rational universe; saying that nature and the universe are unresponsive to human action or reason. Camus is therefore rejecting both Nietzsche and Romanticism.
Meursault’s character is fascinating as he does not feel sadness or guilt until part 2 when he is forced by imprisonment to acknowledge the past and the future. However, I see this as a very selfish way of existing; many people living this existentialist way would mean that everything our society is based on would begin to crumble; who would organise health care? Or regulate the economy and currency so that we can still afford (just) to buy food and shelter? All kinds of planning for future needs, whether they be years ahead or minutes, would go out of the window because everyone would be thinking about their personal needs in the here and now.
Another interesting part of the characterisation is that he believes in the individual and doesn’t attempt to make connections with people. I find this strange because we need to work together as a society in order to gain knowledge, skills, run our lives etc, and it would be an awfully lonely world if everyone just kept themselves to themselves.
Camus used several interesting techniques by which to show existentialist thought; he only shows events and leaves out any kind of emotional reaction or reflection. So while we see everything from Meursault’s point of view, we never actually know what he is thinking or feeling and so the reader is distanced from the character.
An important point to remember about existentialism is that it is believed that no-one should have influence over you. Meursault is seen, at first, to be immune to the actions of others, until he is forced into the trial and imprisonment, at which point you could say that he has no control to make his own decisions. However, it can also be argued that the whole story is caused by the actions of others; by the death of his mother, his friend asking for his help, the Arabs turning up on the beach and carrying a knife. All of these events, and the way that he reacts to them, to an extent come together to mean that he commits murder, for which he must, of course, go to trial. Therefore none of his actions are completely independent; only the way he thinks about them is.
Another point that came up in the seminar was that existentialists believe that the body and soul (or mind) are connected, and that they both die at the same time. I found this interesting because it invalidates most religious views. I am not what you would call a religious person, but I can see that someone who is may well take offense to reading Camus rubbish one of the cornerstones of, say Christianity. I imagine that they would take even more offence at the depiction of Meursault as a Jesus-like figure, as a hero. He is shown as sacrificing himself and is shown almost as a martyr for his different way of thinking.
Meursault accepts his death as part of the status quo, seeing that he is different and that different doesn’t fit in and isn’t allowed to exist outside of society. While this shows he had integrity, especially in the way that he didn’t take the easy way out by just saying ‘yes, I am sad about my mother’s death’, he has stuck to his beliefs which can be seen as admirable. However, he was killed because he wouldn’t accept society’s standards and morals, which seems pretty ridiculous and on the surface, appears to go against his ‘live for the moment’ attitude. However, Jenni pointed out that it doesn’t necessarily go against this; it just means that he is taking it in his stride and accepting what life is throwing at him.
Another main theme of this book is the idea that there is no rational order in life, as is exampled by Meursault; order and rationality and explanation are forced on an action or even by society. Camus can be seen to be commenting on the search for purpose in a rational universe; saying that nature and the universe are unresponsive to human action or reason. Camus is therefore rejecting both Nietzsche and Romanticism.
Meursault’s character is fascinating as he does not feel sadness or guilt until part 2 when he is forced by imprisonment to acknowledge the past and the future. However, I see this as a very selfish way of existing; many people living this existentialist way would mean that everything our society is based on would begin to crumble; who would organise health care? Or regulate the economy and currency so that we can still afford (just) to buy food and shelter? All kinds of planning for future needs, whether they be years ahead or minutes, would go out of the window because everyone would be thinking about their personal needs in the here and now.
Another interesting part of the characterisation is that he believes in the individual and doesn’t attempt to make connections with people. I find this strange because we need to work together as a society in order to gain knowledge, skills, run our lives etc, and it would be an awfully lonely world if everyone just kept themselves to themselves.
Camus used several interesting techniques by which to show existentialist thought; he only shows events and leaves out any kind of emotional reaction or reflection. So while we see everything from Meursault’s point of view, we never actually know what he is thinking or feeling and so the reader is distanced from the character.
An important point to remember about existentialism is that it is believed that no-one should have influence over you. Meursault is seen, at first, to be immune to the actions of others, until he is forced into the trial and imprisonment, at which point you could say that he has no control to make his own decisions. However, it can also be argued that the whole story is caused by the actions of others; by the death of his mother, his friend asking for his help, the Arabs turning up on the beach and carrying a knife. All of these events, and the way that he reacts to them, to an extent come together to mean that he commits murder, for which he must, of course, go to trial. Therefore none of his actions are completely independent; only the way he thinks about them is.
Another point that came up in the seminar was that existentialists believe that the body and soul (or mind) are connected, and that they both die at the same time. I found this interesting because it invalidates most religious views. I am not what you would call a religious person, but I can see that someone who is may well take offense to reading Camus rubbish one of the cornerstones of, say Christianity. I imagine that they would take even more offence at the depiction of Meursault as a Jesus-like figure, as a hero. He is shown as sacrificing himself and is shown almost as a martyr for his different way of thinking.
Meursault accepts his death as part of the status quo, seeing that he is different and that different doesn’t fit in and isn’t allowed to exist outside of society. While this shows he had integrity, especially in the way that he didn’t take the easy way out by just saying ‘yes, I am sad about my mother’s death’, he has stuck to his beliefs which can be seen as admirable. However, he was killed because he wouldn’t accept society’s standards and morals, which seems pretty ridiculous and on the surface, appears to go against his ‘live for the moment’ attitude. However, Jenni pointed out that it doesn’t necessarily go against this; it just means that he is taking it in his stride and accepting what life is throwing at him.
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