Meaning of Life
I told you a little about Mr. Zakary, my sort of foster grandpa who would always reflect that "we have no idea what it's all about," and then throw back his head and laugh heartily. Perhaps after reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Our Town, you suspect, as I do, that Leo Tolstoy and Thornton Wilder had ideas. I would even assert that each wrote his story specifically to communicate those ideas, specifically to wake us up from the soporific quotidian reality we go through life in.
What do you think?
Can you read these two books for deep meaning?
As we discussed in class, we should look especially at the epiphany of the main character at the very end of each book. How is his/her perspective changed? How does that fit into the vision of the rest of the book? If we look closely at that, then perhaps we can see what each author offers as an answer to our deepest existential questions.
Are we doomed to talk about these questions only through cliches? or do these books point us somehow beyond? How do they do that?Once you’ve read Our Town and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, go back through and gather quotations—at least six from each book. Choose the ones that feel to you at the heart of the book. A good indicator is the extent to which the quote makes you feel something. Write briefly about each quotation. How's it feel? Apply your own experience of life. What does it suggest about that author's values?
Reread this prewriting. What patterns are you seeing? Can you put into words what each author seems to be getting at?
Then write freely, in no more than three pages, a first-draft paper addressing Mr. Z's question: What is it all about, finally, according to each of these authors? Try not to spend more than a couple of hours. Discuss the intricacies of the question in relation to both books. What does each author seem to be implying? How do the books relate to each other? How do they seek to change your experience of quotidian reality? Importantly, how does each vision relate to your own? Do you see any synthesis between them?