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The Ideal Of The Self

Submitted by CRapollyon on May 25, 2006

Category: English
Words: 3140 | Pages: 13
Views: 213
Popularity Rank: 53,598
Average Member Grade: N/A (Add a Comment / Grade this Paper)

The Idealism of the Self
More important than where one is from and where one is going is who one is. Nothing can be known or experienced beyond the self. Why then do men constantly seek outward to find his meaning? Why must he believe what the world claims is true, when that truth is merely the fearful regurgitation of supposed facts enforced by a whirlwind majority? Since, perhaps, the beginning of civilization men have fallen in line for the "greater good" and those who did not were either called villain or hero. Obeying the self can bring both wonder and ruin; the outcome is mandated by the strength of one's will. In Ernest Hemingway's "A Clean Well-lighted Place," "A Soldier's Home," and A Farewell to Arms, the hero rejects the notion that foolish idealisms like marriage, patriotism and religion will force purpose into his life. Instead, he discovers that the only way to find any meaning in one's life is to live poised and dignified – true only to oneself.
First and foremost the code hero must either be separate or separate himself from the society in which he exists. Fredric Henry, in A Farewell to Arms, is able to emotionally evolve because he is an American soldier in the Italian Army. The distance between himself and his world allows him to surpass the superficial biases and prejudices which only serve to encumber the growth of the hero. As we can see in "A Clean Well-lighted Place" every character, the old and young waiter and the old man, is baffled by the motives of the others. Even the stoic hero, the old waiter, asks why the old man has tried to commit suicide (Kerner). He cannot know why for he is not of the same creed. He is alone in a world of strangers, and that is how it must be; lest he too falls into despair like the old man, or lives in ignorance as the young waiter does. And so the ignorance of the world's motives is but a signal of the hero's ability to transcend his world. But to be a man apart is not simply enough he...

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