Human Nature in Literature and Essay

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And, if one flees historical reality, then, is it not futile in that eventually it will catch up with us? As a "guest" of this world, then, what is the basic responsibility we have towards humanity? Daru chooses an isolated and ascetic life -- he flees society, but society catches up with him, and it is his decision that allows him to become -- more human. Of true importance in this work is that the original title in French, L'hote means two things -- the guest, or the host. Thus, the title refers to the struggle of both the prisoner and the schoolmaster; giving the reader a moral guide that is less than logical, but historically practical (Camus, 2000).

Gimpel the Fool is a Yiddish tale set down by Isaac Singer, and translated into English in 1953. In essence, it is representative of much of the Judaic culture -- the journey the individual takes, through trials and tribulations, to find faith, guidance, and ultimately self-actualization within a cruel world. Gimpel accepts that the town thinks of him as a fool, representative of the outside world having little trust in his acumen -- and as a fool, he is therefore boxed into situation (at the bakery where he works, the village understanding he could not possibly be his child's natural father, etc.). Instead, though, like Camus's Daru, regardless of what Gimpel does, he is at the mercy of trends -- of whirlpools of history that are inescapable. By narrating the story himself, Gimpel asks the reader to really decide who might be fooling whom? Who, in fact, has integrity, who treats everyone with respect, and when Gimpel says, "One can't pass through life unscathed, nor expect to," he indicates not weakness, but strength (Singer, 2006).

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Human nature, for Singer, is that acceptance, belonging, and even being lauded or persecuted is nothing more than temporal and environmental -- what might be rewarded in one society may be considered egregiously anti-social in another, and as culture and mores change, so do the definitions of appropriate humanity. The fluid nature, though, for both Camus and Singer is not complete -- instead, while history may be the guiding force behind trends (ala Marx?), there are still maxims that allow humans to interact with one another in a positive manner -- throughout history. It is almost as if both authors see history as both a lover and an enemy. A lover in that it provides infinite possibilities that take one on journeys of ecstasy and wonderment; an enemy in the roadblocks and inexplicable negatives that get in the way of actualization. However, for Daru and Gimpel, it is the search for happiness -- almost in an Aristotelian sense -- in that happiness is found along the way -- not at the destination.

REFERENCES

Camus, A. (2000). The Guest. In Y. a. Cummings, The Terrible Power of A Minor Guilt (pp. 41-56). Syaracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Roochnik, D. (2004). Retrieving the Ancients: An Introduction to Greek Philosophy.

New York: Wiley-Blackwell.

Singer, I. (2006). Gimpel the Food: And Other Stories. (S. Bellow, Trans.) New York: Farar, Straus and Giroux.

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