The Life of Jean-Paul Sartre Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The Life of Jean-Paul Sartre - Essay ExampleThe years that followed marked the life of a cosmos with great creativity, talent in writing, deep thinker and a man of strong political go forth and persuasion. All these characteristics coupled with his childhood experiences led to his astounding achievements through his plays, novels, books, essays and lectures.Sartres childhood was filled with much malignity and confusion. The first natural pain to deal with was having no father, after the first fifteen months of his life. Sartre was clearly woe by the fact that he never had a chance to be acquainted with his father, and was never told anything probatory about the relationship they had whether his father had ever taken him in his arms, or if he had even love him (The address 20).Sartre then grew up with his grandparents who were rather fond of him, or at least depicted that in their mannerisms (Experiential Influences, par. 5). However, he felt that it was just family play-acting, and a system that horrified him. (The Words 84 112 222).Sartre alike approach an identity crisis. Despite his familys claim of him being the miracle child and wonder child, he saw himself as ugly. His peers had also given him that impression. He was short, small-built cross-eyed and awkward in stature. Added to this, his mother treated him like a missy, non allowing him to play the seemingly rough games that other males would play, and keeping his hair long. It was his belief that she had silently prayed for a girl (Experiential Experiences, par. 7). He also felt forced into a lifestyle of reading and writing, because that was what his grandfather Charles admired, having been a writer himself. It however became a pleasant escape for him from the unhappiness he experienced at home. In his biography The Words, he states that By writing I was existing. I was escaping from the grown-ups. It also positively affected his intellectual breeding as he became familiar with famous autho rs of his time (qtd in Experiential Influences, par. 11).As if this was not fair to middling for Sartre to deal with, he also suffered from ill health. He notes in his autobiography, The WordsThings would have been fine if my personify and I had got on well together. But the fact is that we were an odd couple If he suffers bodily as a result of needs and sickness, his unjustifiable state justifies his existence. His right to live is based on hunger, on the constant danger of death. Breathing, digesting, defecating unconcernedly, I lived because I had begun to live. I was unaware of the violence and savage demands of that gorged companion, my body, which made itself cognize by a series of mild disturbances, much in demand among grown-ups I had almost died at birth (88).His father had actually been quite ill himself when he met Ann-Marie in 1904. At that time he was suffering from entercolitis, which he developed when he visited China. He however married her and soon after she be came pregnant with his child, Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre feels that his fathers illness had a major role to play in his own illness. He describes in The Words how his mother had stayed up many nights worrying and had stopped breastfeeding him very soon because her milk dried (16). He was thus sent away nearby to be nursed. He meanwhile was ailing from enteritis.His mothers re-marriage had a prejudicious effect on him as well. He felt alienated and lonely. Moreover, he was unhappy about having had to