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Every person in the world has one thing in common and that one thing is death. Not many people want to face the fact that everyone will die at a certain point in time until that time is brought among them. Existentialism is the theory of being a living human individual and that ultimately life is meaningless because the world keeps moving on when death occurs. This theory is prevalent in the novel The Stranger by Albert Campus and the film Office Space by Mike Judge.
In The Stranger a shipping clerk named Numerals lives his life without caring about societal standards and he believes that paving faith in a higher god is a waste of his time. In Office Space a man named Peter Gibbons is programmer at a software company called Unhitch, he is fed up with a job and the lifestyle that he is living in. Although the characters in The Stranger and Office Space inflict with different plots and people, they share the same indifference to the world, choose their own path, and accept the consequences of their decisions.
Emotion and compassion are two main actions that are supposed to be expressed when a person dies. In The Stranger, Numeral’s mother passes away and so he takes a bus to the funeral home where his mother’s body is. At the funeral he did not cry or even get upset over the passing of his mother, almost like he didn’t care about her. A similar situation occurs in Office Space, Peter is at a hypnotherapies office receiving treatment from the doctor, all of sudden the doctor has a heart attack and all Peter does is watch the surrounding people try to help the doctor.
These two situations show the same indifference for the world by not caring or showing emotion towards someone that is in danger or passed away. Peter and Numerals having no emotion in those types of situations are contradictory to the societal standard. The people around Peter and Numerals at the time of the incidents criticize their actions of choice and they do not care what the people have to say about it. They also realize that death is bound to happen to everyone including themselves so they are not really emotionally affected by it.
People make many decisions each day and there is never a right or wrong choice to a decision. What does make it right or wrong is how the person accepts their consequences to the choice made. In The Stranger, Numerals confronts two Arabian men next to a spring by his friend Mason’s beach bungalow and fires a handgun killing one of hem. The next day Numerals is arrested for murder and put and trial and sentenced to jail. At trial, he was proven guilty and sentenced with death penalty by guillotine.
He knew that was going to be proven guilty and he is not afraid of dying because he was going to ultimately die sometime in the future. He is embracing his sentence without a care or worry. This shows how he faces the consequences that he is being given for actions. In Office Space, Peter and his coworkers hack into the Unhitch mainframe to steal fractions of cents every hour or so and in long term would make them lots of money. But meeting goes wrong with the hacking because when they checks his bank account bank account a couple days later it has about half of a million dollars in it.
Peter then realizes that he has to face the fact that he stole the money from Unhitch so he puts a check under his boss’s door with the amount of cash that they stole. He also realizes that he is going to have to move away and get a new job. Similar to Numerals, he owns up to his consequences of his actions. He knows the decision he made and does not regret it one bit. Numerals and Peter have completely different problems that they face but love and react in the same direction. One decision can determine the path that someone will take in life; a decision can also change a person’s life within a snap of a finger.
Both Peter and Numerals are loved deeply by their girlfriends and they back every decision Peter and Numerals make. In The Stranger, Numerals??s girlfriend Marie is in love with him and is by his side till he is no longer there. Marie asked Numerals if he would like to marry her and he has a simple response of “No, it isn’t necessary”‘ and she says k and does not worry about it. She does not get mad one bit and sticks by his decision. Most women would freak out and end relationship but she believes that he is saying it for the best of their relationship.
Pewter’s girlfriend Joanna is similar to Marie, by which she sticks by her man’s decision. Peter decides to tell her about his plan to hack the Unhitch system. She is not worried about the plan because she trusts him and believes that he will be just fine. Joanna and Marie accept the fact that Peter and Marvelous decisions may seem wrong but they trust what the guys are saying. The girls choose their own path by staying by their boyfriend’s sides even though they may be wrong. Joanna and Marie could have also tried to change the guys mind but they have faith in them.
Even the minutest decision can be a life changer and it shown in these pieces of literature. The characters in The Stranger and Office Space share the same indifference to the world, choose their own path, and accept the consent ounces of their decisions, although they inflict with different plots and people. Life is determined by the decision that a person makes for himself or herself. Whether people like it or not death is a reoccurring event in people’s lives and it cannot be stopped, it is just the force of nature.