Thursday, December 4th

Objectives:

• Understand major tenets of Existentialism
  
• Explore Meursault's character in the first two chapters of The Stranger

Starter/Journal #3
Read and summarize the findings in the article, entitled "Stanford research: The meaningful life is a road worth traveling"

• Briefly summarize 3 different ways the researcher distinguishes between happiness and meaning
  
• Overall, how would the researcher, Jennifer Aaker, define happiness? How would she define meaning?
  
• According to her definition of these two concepts, which do you think is more important? Why?

AGENDA
1. 4 corners: 

• Do you think pursuing meaning is more important than pursuing happiness?
  

• Do you agree with Aaker's definitions of happiness and meaning? In other words, are they as separate as Aaker makes them out to be?
  
  

2. Listen to an excerpt from this Radiolab podcast on "Bliss" (first 5 minutes, 40 seconds) and watch the youtube video of Aleksander Gamme's blissful cache discover

3. Partner chat: Have you ever been this happy?  What do you think is the relationship between this guy’s happiness and his pursuit of a meaningful life?

4. Begin the Existentialism Powerpoint presentation 

5. Discuss chapters 1-2 of The Stranger

• Do you like Meursault? What is your opinion of him?
• Re-read page 18: Why does M just want to sleep? Is he facing the reality of his mother's death? Why or why not?
• Page 19: As I was waking up, it came to me why my boss had seemed annoyed when I asked him for two days off: Today is Saturday......But in the first place, it isn't my fault."  What element of existentialism does M's attitude contradict?
• Read pages 22-24: Does Meursault take an active role in his own life? Why not?  
• Camus says that WWI was supposed to be the war to end all wars, but then we had WWII so nothing really changed.  This is the cold indifference of the universe that he and other existentialists were picking up on. Why sacrifice all those lives in WWI if nothing really changed? 

6. Time to read and annotate The Stranger, chapters 3, 4 and 5.