Nothing Matters in Life

Are you familiar with the question: what is a good life?  A teacher of mine once made a big to do about it.  Whilst analyzing certain characteristics of The Stranger I felt that I was having a conversation with that teacher.  That I was reliving the past.  But that is beside the point.   What is the point?  What is a good life?  What is our purpose?  One could spend an entire life dwelling on these insoluble answers, like Albert Camus evidently did.  But in the center of an existential universe, no one has the answer; and yet, everyone does. 

“When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that.  But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered.” (Pg. 41)

In this part of the book, Meursault starts to become passive.  He realizes that there is no such thing as being ambitious, because there is nothing to achieve.  There is no tangible reward.  The above sentence reflects an attitude that portrays Camus’ identity within the novel.  He takes the reins and becomes the main character.  At the center of Meursault’s life is an emptiness that can be traced back to the lack of authenticity in his identity.  He has lost himself in the philosophy of existentialism, which of course isn’t actually mentioned, but portrayed constantly, as is his lack of passion.  He refuses to let himself become ambitious, because he just one more.  Nothing “matters.”

“It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.” (Pg. 24)

Although I could take the same approach as I did with the excerpt from page forty-one, I think that Camus had something else in mind for this sentence.  Here he begins a theme, indifference.  Camus wants the reader to realize, through the absurd, that society is numb.  He exposes one example, the death of Meursault’s mother, and from there the reader must infer his message.  He sees death as an event, a checkout perhaps.  That is why he can go and have sex the following day, and laugh, and play.  But there is a conflict.  In a society that does not acknowledge its poorly oriented moral compass, the individual recognition of one man that isn’t affected by death is unbearable.  So what is a good life?  Meursault/ Camus would probably say that there is no meaning to life; therefore there is no such thing.

What do you say?   

Color in The Great Gatsby

“She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night.” (Pg. 96)

“…High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl…” (Pg. 154)

F. Scott Fitzgerald uses descriptions that are very detailed to orient the reader throughout The Great Gatsby.  He especially focuses on the use of colors to illustrate a certain atmosphere or cue a certain connotation.  The use of the color white throughout the novel is used in its traditional form.  That is to say, it symbolizes honesty, honor, and purity.  When describing Daisy, a character that is supposedly honorable, beautiful and morally unblemished, Fitzgerald repeatedly uses the color white.  Daisy is described as a "golden girl" in a "white palace" because she is royalty, yet she is pure.  An interesting way to put it is that the color white is transparent.  Fitzgerald describes Daisy's house, car, clothes and more as "white," no more than that.  When he calls upon white there is no need for adjectives or descriptions, it tells the reader that Daisy was elegant and pure. This can be proven by the excerpt from page 96 when Daisy is made out to be the most popular girl in town, and her entire lifestyle at age eighteen can and is brought down to the word white by Jordan, the person telling the story.  The color white in The Great Gatsby is used to denote honor, which is precisely why it is never used to describe Gatsby himself.  Overall, Fitzgerald's use of colors points the reader in a certain direction, if one were to keep track of every use of every color one would be able to create a new definition of white, or blue, or black, specifically for this book; and yet, every color is so broad, that he leaves the reader wanting more depiction.