The Books are Twains, McBrides, and Camus - Term Paper Example

15 March Assignment Books are a part and parcel of every human being’s lifestyle; they assist in providing experiences to people with respect to creating an impact on their lives. With every page turned, a book has dialogues, characters and situations that help people to escape the confines of their reality temporarily and think in the manner that the author makes them. Books provide for an excellent getaway for an individual and also help him to attain spirituality and understand individuality to a great extent. This paper helps to provide an insight into three books that have created a great impact personally by helping me understand an array of emotions as well as circumstances and have also taught me how to deal with certain issues. These books are Mark Twain’s ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg’, James McBride’s ‘Color of Water’ and Albert Camus’ ‘The Stranger’. Albert Camus first published ‘The Stranger’ in the year 1942 and the book has been known to be written along the lines of existentialism. The book is based on various schools of philosophical thought including absurdism. The book is about a murder committed by a Mediterranean character, Meursault, and the journey follows his narrative as the first part and the post murder story of his life as the second. This is how Camus tries to display him as a stranger to his own thoughts and feelings, throughout the course of the book. In the beginning, Meursault’s character is seen hardly even caring about his mother’s death; not full of grief, merely to display the nonchalance and callous attitude that he was going through; perhaps purposely in order to escape feeling sad sentiments for his mother. Furthermore, he begins to develop sexual relations with a character, Marie, and he even tries to help his friend out of an infidel relationship. Through these traits, one can easily witness that he had feelings deep within his heart and was not a cold hearted man because even he was looking for love; however, he was not able to express the same for fear of being rejected or left by someone else, especially after his mother’s death. This situation has helped me understand how it is important to open one’s feelings up regardless of the worst of situations at hand, because only when a man is completely vulnerable is he able to accept risks into his life and grow and learn from the same. Further down the story, he meets and shoots and Arab for which he is then condemned and made to explain himself and his actions in court; he is able to adjust to the prison life easily because he was already so detached to the rest of the world. This explains how an individual should be able to learn from the worst of situations. His attorney takes the situation of his mother’s death in order to explain his uncaring attitude, however is not able to get over his passiveness. Camus takes this occasion in order to brand Meursault as a man soulless monster, incapable of feeling for whatever he has done in life. The final decision made by the judges is that he has to be decapitated in public, and as the day approaches, he says, “As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with stars, I opened myself to the benign indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself – so like a brother, really – I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had to only wish that there be a large crowd of spectators he day of my execution and that they greet me with howls of execration.” This monologue given by Meursault is enough for any reader to understand the kind of trauma that he was suffering within the confines of his sub conscious mind. He demonstrates emotional detachment from the world because of his mother’s death prior to which as well he did not feel the love and affection that she had to give him during the course of his childhood. These situations are enough to turn any man bitter and make him feel completely helpless and away from feelings of love. He does not show emotion regarding Marie loving him or display remorse regarding the killing of the Arab man. However, despite the adversities that he has been through, a man like him has every reason to try and escape the consequences, but he does not. He faces them with truth, and speaks his mind wherever he has the opportunity to. This has helped me learn that no matter how wrong a person might be, there is always a reason behind the act that a common is not able to understand for the same reason that everyone does not think along the same lines. Moving on to Mark Twain’s ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg’, a different kind of a story has been portrayed along the lines of emotion once again. Written by Mark Twain and first published in 1899 in the Harper’s Monthly, ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg’ is a short story that revolves around the people of Hadleyburg, a town devoid of any kind of temptation and desire. The people living in this place do not have any qualms about owning a higher lifestyle or giving into desire and its other subsidiaries to obtain something. The people living in Hadleyburg are honest citizens free of any kind of corruption. However, the story takes a turn when a stranger passes the town and the citizens happen to offend them in their own way. Following this, the stranger decides to teach the entire region of Hadleyburg a lesson by turning them into corrupt citizens. He wants to make them aware of the ‘actual realities’ of life by making them turn to look at the kind of temptations and corruption that life actually contains. The stranger happens to have an entire plan of action in order to go about this process as well. This story has been written by the author as a pun on today’s world and different kind of people living in society. Living in an ideal world or a Utopian land is a concept not really known to mankind. Twain has tried to depict a very ‘clean’ society with citizens free from any bribery and wrongdoing. However, he also put in the character that tries to destroy this kind of perfect imagery and create havoc within the town. Through the eyes of this main protagonist Twain tries to tell his readers how it is impossible to live in a picture perfect world. According to the author, society is made up of all kinds of people, the bad and the good. This story however, gives an image of the good people that a society should ideally contain. Through this, Mark has tried his level best to make people understand that one cannot really live in such a place; and that such a society is not really something that would exist in today’s world. “It is an honest town once more, and the man will have to rise early that catches it napping again.” (Twain, Mark) The word ‘Utopian’ comes exactly from the meaning of this book on a different level. It is used to describe a situation, preferably a place or a region, where everything is perfect; where the people are living together in harmony, not fighting and are happy with everything that they have to offer to the people around them. However, this is not the case in real life because in reality, different kinds of people exist in the world. They each have their own views about living and surviving in the presence of others. Every person has his or her own plans as to how he wants to live his life. Everyone has their own ideal circumstances and itineraries as to what they want to achieve and how they want to go about doing the same. It can also so happen that a person’s plans clash with someone else’s. in today’s world of cut throat competition, it is very tough to find two people not having the same end goals. However, the difference lies in how the different people try to achieve them and the path that they follow in doing the same. In conclusion, ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg’ is a short story with a big ending; something that speaks in totality of the kind of sin that God meant to create on Earth, and how the same must learn from its mistakes. If one does not commit a wrongdoing, one will never be able to learn. To think that one can be born a good man is a value not worth measuring because it amounts to no hard work being done in order to earn the title or brand of being someone good. (Archer, William) Therefore, being good is a moral and very normative concept that cannot be achieved unless someone tries to earn it. Through the words of the author, this story has tried to explain exactly that, by putting forth the worst of sins and emotions that a person could feel and how those are also required, much the same way as the good feelings in life are crucial to a person’s existence. The Color of Water is an autobiography, beautifully written by James McBride, describing and portraying the life his mother, Ruth McBride had. World over, the book is known as ‘A Black Man’s Tribute to his White Mother.’ The book undergoes transmissions from McBride’s personal accounts on life to that of his mother’s. Mostly, it is about his mother’s travelling to America, coming from a family of Polish Jewish immigrants. With time, his mother had snapped all ties with her parents due to the suffering she was made to go through in her childhood days as her father was an abusive man, of which her timid mother was a victim. She herself was also a victim of sexual abuse and incest by her father. The book is an interesting account of different kinds of emotions and feelings that both the mother and the son go through during the course of their lifetime, mostly with respect to race and an identity in society. McBride had to face a lot of trouble in his growing up years with regard to the person he was and where he came from. Because of his mixed background, race-wise, the book provides the reader with a stark description about the kind of dilemma the man was in, and the kind of extreme emotions that raged on in his mind – all while striving to become the person he is today. The thoughts that have been collected in this book with respect to McBride’s mother, Ruth, are not concerned with her familial past. This is because of the harsh childhood she was made to suffer through. A vast amount of imagery and metaphors in the book help to understand how she feels hesitant to speak about her parents because of the embarrassment and shamefulness she was made to undergo. Throughout the book, she has tried to leave her past behind and start a new future with her black husband and son. James’ personal narration begins as one turns the pages to the second chapter. It is here that the reader is explained as to how the author attempts his best to find out the kind of incidents his mother was made to go through, and how they are different from his present and future. He tries to make a difference analysis of his mother’s experiences as well as his, with respect to his friends and other family members. The author has over here, made use of portraying his mother’s bicycle to the readers. This is both symbolic of the kind of freedom of movement that she longed to have, and the kind of liberation she felt after freeing herself from the clutches of her father. She was a carefree woman without giving much thought to societal norms and thoughts. The bicycle also helps the reader to understand the kind of free time the mother needed to get away from her children and husband, just to be able to spend some time on her own. This book written by the author is a sort of tribute to his mother, a memoir, consisting of gratitude for the kind of hardships she struggled through in life, despite which she put aside time for her own family and raised him so well. He mentions a number of times, about the kind of peril he felt from within because of his mother’s personality and carefree character, however, in his later years he began to realise how all that was a symbol of the strength she contained within despite having undergone some of the worst kind of struggles in life. The entire book runs along the lives of both mother and son, with chapters revolving between the two, in accordance with their respective ages. It is a comparative analysis of the stark difference the two had in their lives while of being the same age in their particular times. James writes about the nagging feeling of loneliness that kept playing at the back of his mind at all times with respect to ‘where he came from.’ He writes about his pleas and requests to his siblings and cousins regarding his mother’s background, and how all this inquisitiveness was met with dreary responses. The book moves to the life of Ruth in her childhood, and how she was made to live in a black neighbourhood in Suffolk. During this time, she felt much neglect, both by her parents as well as society, for being a Jew. However, she mentions the kind of struggles dark colored people were made to go through because of the discrimination they faced by the whites. However, what made her strong was an understanding and opposition of her father’s beliefs. He was an unreasonable and racist man, which made her realise how important it was to not discriminate against others, especially because she had felt the neglect and knew what it was like to face the wrath from the majority. James’ personal accounts of the same time period he went through in his life depict the journey of a young man caught between conforming to society and or retaining his individualistic morals and values. While trying to protect his mother, he was jeered at by his peers, and even though he felt horror at the thought of leaving or losing her, he did his best so as to not be ousted by his friends. What made the situation even tougher was the political climate brewing in the background. The title of the story becomes justified with Ruth’s saying “God is the color of water.” She tries her best to help her son understand how race does not matter, and how if there were a God, he would be unbiased and neutral towards all different kinds of people coming from various races and religions of the world. She had developed this understanding within herself because of being the victim of both sides of the same coin. She was one of the few women of her time that felt no need to choose between black and white because they had been caught within the shades of grey, in between. The book also gives an account of the kind of loneliness that Ruth was put through in her later years. Her parents had cut her off completely, proclaiming her to be dead for them. She had no help from any of her family members and had to raise eight of her children all by herself after her first husband had passed away. She finally received some assistance from her childhood friend Frances which helped her realise the kind of warmth and kindness the world still held. It is true that a person’s family environment helps to shape the individual into whatever he later becomes to be in life, and how he reacts to situations. The same goes for Ruth as her parents influence greatly rubbed off on her in two ways as described in the book – one was learning from her father’s mistakes regarding discrimination, and the other was adopting the excellent ethics that her parents had in terms of work. These attributes helped her to shape up into an independent individual, a characteristics which later went on to help her raise her children alone, without any help from others. She helped her children to imbibe the same values within themselves and taught them that the best way to live was to be self sufficient. She held great importance in her life for education and wanted her children to understand the same. The same is seen in James’ life as his stepfather helped to instil in him a sense of collective belonging and love for religion, faith and education. The book further goes on to relate the experiences that Ruth and Jack respectively had with their family members – aunts and siblings. Every argument and dialogue shared between the mother and son is a reflection of the different lives they had growing up. Finally, James writes about the kind of inspiration he received in his mind in order to write something for and about his mother. This may also be seen as a kind of depiction of breaking away from barriers – helping his mother to share her dreadful and joyous life experiences in order to break away from the shackles that were binding her to her painful past. James ends with a description of the successful lives of his siblings and connects their accomplishments in life to his mother’s doings. According to him, none of them would have been where they were – happy with their lives, had their mother not taught them and prepared them for reality. He portrays a dedication, in the form of his gratitude, towards his mother – a woman he was now able to fully understand and learn from. All his confusion regarding his identity finds a place within the pages of this memoir, as he comprehends how it is not important to find out where one comes from, as it is to establish where one finally goes in life. Works Cited Camus, Albert.’The Stranger’. Print. Twain, Mark. ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg’. Print. McBride, James. The Color of Water: a Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. New York: Riverhead, 1996. Print. Read More