An Interpretation Of Stoner From The Perspective Of Sartre's Existentialism

John Williams(1922-1994)is an excellent American writer.Although he only writes a handful of books,they are worth to be chewed and digested.Stoner was published in 1965.After 50 years of silence,it returns to the public view and is sought after and appreciated by readers and critics.The novel tells a story of an university assistant professor of English spends his life with patience and dignity when facing the frustrated career and wretched marriage.Williams presents to the world the unique meaning and value of ordinary individual existence with his plain and unpretentious writing style.This thesis mainly applies Sartre's existential philosophy to analyze the existential crisis faced by the protagonists of the novel,their freedom of choice,commitment to their own responsibilities and their completely different outcomes.Faced with the same absurdity of the world and the nothingness of individual existence,Stoner and Edith make completely different choices.Stoner chooses to face the dismal reality and to have a deep understanding of himself.With courageous pursuit of true love and literature and actively taking the responsibility and accepting the moral constraints,Stoner involves in the actual situation freely and finally manages to transcend the reality and achieve his value of self-existence.While Edith abuses her right of choice and ignores her role as a wife and a mother and refuses to assume all the responsibilities.Eventually,she falls into a delirium and lives a miserable life.All in all,the thesis comes to the conclusion that the novel Stoner points sharply to the reality of life and emphasizes individual's existence and shows us how the most ordinary person follows his own heart in a world full of absurdity,nothingness,anguish and struggle by choosing freely and actively taking the corresponding responsibility without making cheap compromises to the external world.Finally,Stoner achieves the value of self-existence and embarks on a road to real freedom with a restrained and dignified gesture.By applying Sartre's existentialism,this thesis holds that people's essence is not determined by others or by God.Only by making free choices and taking action,no matter positive or negative to others,and taking the corresponding responsibilities,can people realize their essence and meaning of existence.