Mini Essay

In both stories, the human condition is addressed, however, they say very different things about it. In Heart of Darkness we area shown how easily humans are able to praise ideas about someone especially whenever you have never met that person. Also, it shows us the human capacity for violence, driven only by employment. What Waiting for Godot tells us about the human condition is that it is simply made to exist. It is random and doesn't make sense most of the time on purpose. It is trying to show that life doesn't really have a meaning other than to live. It shows that people are just here to enjoy it and the human condition is just that, to be alive.

In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad we get a look at people from two angles. We get to see someone come to completley praise someone who they have never met and have only heard things about. It shows us how easily the human mind can be fooled into thinking that something is more than it is. That is exactly what we saw, the evolution of Kurtz from an idea that Marlow had which was the only thing that kept Marlow going as he continued down the river.He turned out to be just a normal, sickly man who was in very good with the natives. Another way that the novel addresses the human condition is how the natives were treated by the workers from the company. Cutting off of hands and other cruel forms of punishment all stemming from the need for the workers to work. It was so important that the ivory be collected and the money be made that it was worth the lives of people. However, the Europeans didn't view it them as people, it was still so.

In Heart of Darkness by Samuel Beckett something kind of extreme is said about the Human Condition. This is a play where nothing happens, it takes place in one place, the same time, and the characters do the same thing throughout the entirety of the play. The play tells us that human life has no meaning, but in real life humans will create distractions and diversions, trying to form patterns and purposes and meanings to get meaning in their life even if and when there is none. The two characters spend the whole play repeating themselves and acting foolish and saying random things all trying to tell us that life really has no meaning and we spend the whole thing trying to find out what it is. It is paradoxical I think.

In the two plays we have two things getting said about the human condition. On one side, we are told that humans are violent creatures who are able to completley praise something they know nothing about except stories. On the other side we are told that life has no meaning, and that people will try to pull a meaning out of it. it tells us that people, more than anything, need something concrete that they can believe in. As long as they know it's true(like the arrival of Godot) than they will cling to it. That is what the two stories tell us about the human condition.