An Absurd Fall

          

            I felt that class this week was a little bit harder to follow than the previous week’s class. I felt that the points brought up were a little bit difficult to follow, especially when discussing The Fall. The Fall was interesting to me because how the story line progressed. I felt that in the beginning it was a little bit slow and I kept questioning when is something going to happen. As the story progressed I started to pick up on what was going on in the main characters life that drove him to have such opinions. I believe that the reason behind his fall is his self conscience. It seemed as though everything he did he reflected on it to the point where his good deeds appeared to be bad. His thoughts made him appear as a fake individual. Fake in the sense that he is not acting like himself but instead the way he wants people to see him.

For instance when he tipped his hat to the blind man, this gesture was geared towards the onlookers in an attempt to win their favor. I understand the mental thought of why he is cautious of what complete strangers think of him because I do it every day, and I bet most people do as well. We are constantly concerned about what others think about us. For example, we base what we decide to wear on any given day to appeal to the satisfaction of others. What I mean is that most of us choose to wear clothing that shouldn’t give onlookers a bad perception of us. We do not want to be stared at in a negative way but instead positively, or not at all. Now what I meant before when I said his good deeds appeared bad is that he over thought what others might have thought about him over a simple action.

            His self conscience leads him to degrade his own being to the point where he thought about suicide. Why is it that one’s conscience can create such a heavy burden on oneself to the point of such actions? I think it was the repetitive self loathing that made him feel like a lesser man. He then speaks about the way in which he would treat woman. He would make them promise to be true to him without returning the same affections in return. He would pretty much use woman to sustain his own needs with little regard to the woman. Forgive me if my thoughts are not clear in my writing, but this is what I believe would cause such a man to fall.

            I would now like to touch on the subject of the absurd. It was brought up in class that it was absurd to want to end your life quickly; it is this statement that I whole heartedly agree with. Our lives are full of meaning to say that we have no purpose in this life but to die is absurd. I look at it in a way that our lives have check points. As we progress from generation to generation we accomplish something. This is something that I feel is full of meaning, just think of all we had to do in order to reach our twenties we have come a long way from when we could only crawl. What meaning is there in suicide? We end our lives so that we can no longer walk this earth. At the point of death our past lives lose their meanings as the generations grow older until no one remembers who we were or what purpose we would serve in the present.