Awakening Vs. Greenleaf :: essays research papers

A pissed critique by existentialist writers of modern society is the way in which humans live unexamined, meaningless lives with no true concept of what it is to be an unique individuals. In Kate Chopins novel The Awakening and in Flannery OConnors short story Greenleaf the characters Edna and Mrs. May, respectively, begin almost as common, descent characters living unful modify lives. They eventually converge, however, upon an steep life and death filled with new meaning done their struggle with their role as individuals contact by other important beings. Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1948) believed that humankind follows a certain evolution of mind and body. This ferment involves a beginning (komogenese), a development (biogenese), and then a peak (noogenese) in which humans telescope an Omega Point of higher being. Though his ideas were actually applied on a much broader scale of humanity over a monumental timespan, the theory can be applied to the i ndividuals process of human development. Single humans begin as common cl unmatcheds of one another. From this commonality many examine their lives and develop the things within them that make them unambiguously them. This development of the self only can be ended at death when the individual converges upon an Omega Point in which he has an elevated understanding of and meaning for life. The characters Edna from The Awakening and Mrs. May from Greenleaf encounter a uniform human development in which an individual is formed with an understanding of life. The agent by which they achieve this differ greatly. As the novel The Awakening opens, the ref sees Edna Pontellier as one who might seem to be a halcyon married woman living a secure, fulfilled life. It is quickly revealed, though, that she is deep oppressed by a male dominated society, evident with her marriage to Leonce. Edna lives a controlled life in which there is no issuance for her to develop herself as the individual who she is. Her marriage to Leonce was more an act of ascent from her parents than an act of do it for Leonce. She cares for him and is fond of him, but had no real love for him. Ednas inability to awaken the person inside her is also shown through her role as a mother-woman. She loves and cares for her children a great deal, but does not fit into the Creole mother-society in which other women baby and over cling to their children.