Comments on Juan Carlos Onetti's "A Brief Life"

Juan Carlos Onetti, in “A Brief Life” creates a story with the essentials of Existentialism, by what the characters do and by how the characters view and live their lives.

The following Onetti passage captures the fundamentals of Existentialism and ironically the words are uttered by a character who is a clerical Bishop. What he calls the “laws of the game” represent the conditions of existence; “eternity is now” represents the temporal grounds for action by the individual, and, most importantly, the “strive to be himself” represents the commitment to the authentic self that is so significant and that must be in effect “at all times and against all opposition.”  His words are a worthy surmise of how each human being should confront life and confront death.

“I will kiss the feet of he who may comprehend that eternity is now, that he himself is the only end, that he must accept and strive to be himself, simply that, without need of reasons, at all times and against all opposition . . . I applaud the courage of he who accepts each and every one of the laws of the game he did not invent and was not asked if he wanted to play (198).”

The fact that meaning is necessary for life is the abiding notion of human existence. Much meaning is created through human connection with others, family, friends, relationships, work associates etc.  Good health and sufficient financial resources need to go together with good relations with others. As long as things are going well we tend to take our lives for granted.  It is when something is taken away that meaning goes too.  The break up with someone, an addiction we can’t shake free of, the death of someone we are close to are examples of losses that may cause us to realize what we had is gone.  It is the absence of meaning that we become painfully aware of.  The words that follow by one of Onetti’s characters articulate this idea quite well.

“What’s wrong with life isn’t that it promises things it never gives us, but that it always gives them and then stops giving them (87).”

The goal of Existentialism is the search for meaning by the authentic self. Not surprisingly some will never be aware of the necessity for the search because of religious indoctrination, and those who are aware may not do what is necessary to carry out the search as an authentic human being. So few of us that are about to die will be able to say, “I searched and thereby I got to know myself.”  The Onetti character sees others each with a look on their face that symbolizes a certain emotional bearing and says:

I saw the methodical, the jovial, the resolute, the resigned, the incredulous, I saw the sad; I saw all those who will die without knowing themselves(129).

Contrast “will die without knowing themselves” to an individual who has lived a life of authentic meaning and self discovery.  What could be more satisfying at the moment before death than an act of ritual anointment accompanied by the words, “I searched, I found meaning and in the process I came to know myself?