Self-fulfillment Through Inner Pureness

Michael Cunningham’s well-known work, The Hours, based on oneof Virginia Voolf’s masterpieces, Mrs. Dalloway, tells things happened inonly a day in lives of three ladies living in three different times of the20thCentury. This work, The Hours comprises many chapters, each of whichis about one lady of the three. This paper analyses how the three heroinesstruggle in their plights and get self-fulfilled in the end, in perspectives ofKierkegaard’s Existence Philosophy, including his views of“Individualism”,“Either-or”,“Three Different Pursuits”,“The Foremostthing in one’s life: self-fulfillment”. Afterwards, this paper reaches atheme conclusion that one can struggle out of their plights by pursuingone thing, which are close to Kierkegaard’s concepts of ExistencePhilosophy.This paper consists of3parts that are introduction, body andconclusion. The first part includes the introduction of The Hours and Mrs.Dalloway, literature review of The Hours, the feasibility of this study,means by this study, the significance of it.The body part is composed of3chapters. The first chapter firstintroduces Kierkegaard’s philosophical view of “Three DifferentPursuits” and how people live if they consider for others, and thenanalyses the responsibility the three women in The Hours shoulder whenthey are determined to live for others. The second chapter first introduces what people usually do if they live only for themselves in Kierkegaard’seyes, and then analyses what are the three ladies’ inner appeals and howtheir wishes cannot be fulfilled. The third chapter first introduces“Either-or”, another Kierkegaard’s concept of philosophy, and thenanalyses plights, in which three ladies are confronted with differentchoices. The last part of this chapter introduces “Inner pureness” and “theforemost thing for humans: self-fulfillment”, a fourth philosophical viewof Kierkegaard, and then summarizes the three ladies’ journey toself-fulfillment and analyses their ways out of their dilemma, based onthe foundation of the former analysis.The Conclusion part comes to the theme conclusion of the study.