t in the Existentialists of the 20th century. Meaninglessness is the problem of all of them. The anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness is, as we have seen, the anxiety of our period…When Heidegger speaks about the anticipation of one’s own death it is not the question of immortality which concerns him but the question of what the anticipation of death means for the human situation. When Kierkegaard deals with the problem of guilt it is not the theological question of sin and forgiveness that moves him but the question of what the possibility of personal existence is in the light of personal guilt. The problem of meaning troubles recent Existentialists even when they speak of finitude and guilt.” Existentialism as it appeared in the 20th century represents the most vivid and threatening meaning of “existential”. In it the whole development comes to a point beyond which it cannot go. It is expressed in all the realms of man’s spiritual creativity, it penetrates all educated classes. It is the expression of the anxiety of meaninglessness and of the attempt to take this anxiety into the courage to be as oneself.Finally, we look at the theological works of Sartre before discussing the two novels. Sartre speaks more on the concept that existence precedes essence. From Existentialism and Humanism, he affirms that “Atheistic existentialism…declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined be any conception of it, That being is man or, as Heidegger has it, the human reality… man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterwards…Man simply is…Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.”If it is true that existence is prior to essence, man is respons...
