Reflecting the Beauty of Humanity

What does it mean to be human according to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?

 

What essentially separates a human from an animal?  Is it our ability to reason, as scholars suggest?  Our ability to feel emotion, as some would argue?  Our ability to show compassion, or love?  Or, is it perhaps an understanding and appreciation for something that can encapsulate all of these: an appreciation for beauty, an appreciation for art?

In James Joyce's modernist novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce's protagonist Stephen Dedalus explores himself though various experiences and comes to decide what he defines as beauty and art.  However, Stephen does not give us a standard definition.  He explains that art is about perspective, as is beauty, and what may appear beautiful to one person may be simple and plain to another.  Stephen does give us one crucial distinction however.  He notes that there is an essential difference between "art" that is simply to produce a reaction (such as pornographic arts) and art that is designed for the purpose of beauty and observation.  The first type simply produces an animalistic response, while the second type can produce appreciation, empathy, concern, compassion, etc.  Joyce's novel seems to suggest that to be human, an individual must be able to show some type of appreciation for the arts, whether they are written, visual or experiential.

Stephen, unlike many scholars, also refuses to make a distinction between high and low art.  Stephen sees art as subjective, as merely art.  However, does Stephen’s refusal to make a distinction between what would be considered high art and what would be considered low art make him less human because it suggests an absence of reason?  I would propose that Stephen’s refusal to differentiate between the two shows not a lack of reason, but actually a presence of reason.  Stephen is able to reason that art, as well as beauty, cannot be given a single definition.  Art becomes beautiful when an individual sees it as beautiful, often because they can associate themselves or a specific memory to that art.

Stephen’s idea that art and beauty are subjective makes up an essential component of humanity: the ability to be an individual and the ability to have free will.  If beauty and art were able to be defined singularly, it seems possible that all of humanity would be able to be clumped together as well, without uniqueness and without the perspective that makes someone different from their neighbor.

There’s a reason that you love that song that your brother hates: maybe it makes you think of a good memory from high school or it reminds you of something about yourself.  There’s a reason that someone in your class loves the book you’ve been assigned and you can’t stand it: perhaps an element of it relates an idea that is particularly poignant to you, due to your own perspective and experience.  The ability to appreciate art means the ability to understand and value our own experiences; it means to be a conscious and self-aware creature.

Art is perhaps one of the most powerful ways for humans to communicate their own experiences as well as one of the greatest ways for humans to connect with others.  Art does not only function as a way to manifest beauty, but also a way to manifest the “terrible beauty” of our experiences and the uglier sides to humanity.  Art is one powerful way that allows us to cope with and understand the darkness of the human condition, sometimes in an attempt to reshape the human condition.  If there is beauty in art, it seems, according to Joyce’s novel, that this beauty exists only because it reflects the beauty of the humanity already within each of us.

Choose to Live Again

What does it mean to be human according to Beloved? 

A mother's love toward her children is seen as one of the highest, most powerful, and unconditional forms of love in a the modern world.  This love is not only seen in human mothers, but also reflected throughout nature as mother bears, lions, and almost all other mammals, fiercely protect their babies. Toni Morrison's Beloved, a magical realist piece, details a mother's love for her children, as well as the unconventional manner in which she displays her love. 

Morrison's protagonist Sethe, an escaped slave, is the first character whose humanity the reader may rightly question.  After escaping to Ohio with her four children, Sethe lives  a peaceful twenty-eight days before Schoolteacher, the master of the farm on which she worked, comes to Ohio to return her and her children to slavery.  Rather than allow her children to become slaves, Sethe takes a handsaw to the neck of her third daughter and murders her.  The initial reaction--shared by readers and Sethe's two oldest boys--is one of utter disgust.  A mother murdering her child, much less her infant daughter, is seen as one of the highest forms of cruelty and perhaps even insanity in our world.  However, Sethe is quick to defend her actions, claiming that she killed her daughter out of the highest form of love.  Sethe planned to murder herself and her family, allowing them to all be united on the "otherside," instead of subject to slavery. 

Sethe's actions raise the question of whether an act of cruelty can be outweighed by its motivation of absolute love.  Was Sethe's murder of her daughter, whom she refers to as Beloved, an action that, through her love, made her more human?  Or, did the absolute cruelty of her action outweigh her motivation and ultimately rob her of her humanity? 

I think the evidence for Sethe's humanity, despite the difficult circumstances that have plagued her life, is seen as Beloved reappears, in the flesh, eighteen years after she was murdered.  Upon Beloved's arrival at 124, Sethe obsessively cares for her daughter in a manner which is so self-sacrificing it actually becomes detrimental to her.  Sethe does everything Beloved asks, and even gives up her dinner portions to her daughter, wasting away while Beloved stays strong and healthy.  Here, I think Sethe's humanity--an image of a self-sacrificing mother at its pinnacle--is at sharp contrast with Beloved's lack of humanity.  Beloved is also obsessed with Sethe, but she fails to demonstrate her love in a way that contributes to her humanity.  As the only form of love Beloved has even known was violence (her own murder), Beloved in incapable of displaying anything but violence, anger, and selfish tendencies toward Sethe.  However, in obsessively caring for something that does not display the best traits of humanity (Beloved), does Sethe lose some of her humanity? 

Although Sethe does display traits of humanity, I propose that Sethe reveals a woman striving for humanity amid a world filled with a terrible human condition: the world of slavery.  Sethe has been dehumanized by the cruelty of Schoolteacher and later by her own obsession with her selfish daughter Beloved.  Sethe is representative of the difficulty of choosing humanity when one is surrounded by animalistic behavior on all sides.  Similar to how Beloved learned only violence in her short life, Schoolteacher taught Sethe violence and hate.  Instead of criticizing a possible moment of inhumanity in Sethe, the reader should perhaps focus on Sethe's incredible capacity to love after all the hate she has been taught.  According to Beloved, being human doesn't seem to involve the morality, but whether or nor one is able to step back after difficult circumstances and find the capacity to love again.  Being human is about the ability to recover, without resentment, without hate, and choose to live again. 

In fact, Sethe's youngest daughter Denver may demonstrate the best example of humanity.  Although Denver hasn't gone through the level of hardship her mother has, instead living a relatively sheltered life in which she has hardly left 124, Denver ability to face the world to help her mother demonstrates courage and love, two of the best pieces of humanity.  Denver's journey to get help for her mother demonstrates her own ability to recover from her mother's lack of attention and her own lack of experience by responding with courage to face the unknown and an overwhelming love for her mother.  By the end of the novel, Denver has taken on two jobs to help support her mother, who seems to almost be more childlike than Denver. 

Throughout Beloved, the past returns to haunt Sethe through memories and finally in the flesh with the appearance of Beloved.  However, it is Sethe's ability to recover from her past to look towards a future with Paul D, and Denver ability no only look towards the future but embrace it that make Sethe and Denver truly human characters.  Humanity is perhaps not always centered on overcoming vice with virtue, but knowing how to recover with love and hope for the future after the mistakes of the past. 

Nothing, Nothing Mattered

What does it mean to be human according to

The Stranger?

To consider what it means to be human is to also consider if being human involves being tied to a higher purpose.  Can one temper the violence and desolation of the human condition without a meaning in life, a calling greater than the urge to merely survive?  If one has no purpose, is he truly more comparable to the animals than to other humans?

In Albert Camus’s The Stranger, the protagonist Meursault seems to live off the philosophy that existence has no “true meaning,” with “true meaning” representing some sort of absolute truth or purpose than humans were created for.  Although many religions argue for the existence of an absolute truth and a greater purpose in life, is the knowledge of a greater purpose in life necessary for survival as humanity?  If humans do not subscribe to one of the many religions seeking to offer answers and consolation, then must they create their own greater purpose to survive?

Meursault seems to defy the argument that humans need a greater purpose to live.  Meursault is undefined by religious, political or societal views that offer a greater purpose in life, believing they are unnecessary to survive this chaotic existence.  Instead, Meursault looks to the small things in life for joy and himself for the answers to questions that trouble many others—if he even bothers to answer them.  Rather than finding himself tied up in questions such as, what is the meaning of life?  is there absolute morality?  do I have a greater purpose?  Meursault lives his life apart from confusion.  He simply lives.

When Meursault says, “Nothing, nothing mattered and I knew why,” he is not a depressed cynic with a bleak worldview.  He is a man at peace with his imminent death.  Meursault realizes that nothing matters because he is a small player on a large stage, because his life will be over and very few will remember him, because his life was comprised of small joys and not great ambitions.  But rather than mourning that he does not have a greater purpose in life, he accepts it calmly as simply a reality.

I propose that according to The Stranger, one does not need a greater purpose in life, an absolute sense of meaning, but rather the ability to find joy is the small things of the world.  The Stranger, in fact, seems to be a novel more about perception than about meaning.  One lawyer comments during Meursault’s trial that “everything is true and nothing is true.”  This proposal of the absence of absolute truth reflects an idea similar to the belief Meursault seems to hold: that nothing is right and nothing is wrong, it’s your perception that makes it right or wrong to you.  Meursault even seems to take this idea to the point of being amoral (although I think it is fair to say here that Meursault seems to sacrifice some of his humanity when he murders the Arab, in the context of Shelley’s definition “overcoming vice with virtue.”)

The Austrian existentialist Victor Frankl, who survived a Nazi concentration camp, wrote in A Man’s Search For Meaning that meaning is not given or created, but rather “detected.”  Meursault does not seem to believe in absolute meaning and does not seem to need absolute meaning to retain a degree of humanity, but he does seem to want some meaning.  However, rather than subscribing to any number of philosophies that promise meaning, Meursault detects that meaning all around him in the small things.

“I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn’t mine anymore, but one in which I’d found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells, of summer, the part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie’s dresses and the way she laughed.”

I propose that to be human does not require absolute meaning, but rather that one detects some level of meaning around them.  The meaning found in religion, in politics, or in social activism is no more necessary for humanity than the meaning in summertime, in the sea or in the sun.  To be human, one must detect the meaning place around them, for meaning can be found in one thing or many things, or any combination of things.  To be human, one must only find a degree of meaning that allows them to find joy in the chaos of the human condition.