Rhetorical Analysis

Native American Youth Suicide and Albert Camus

        An activist, author,  journalist, Albert Camus can be seen as a multitude of things, philosopher being among them. What does Camus think about Native American children bringing themselves to their own demise? Albert believes suicide is not warranted under any circumstances and believes life is worth living despite their being so many hardships. In this particular case, Native American youth suicide would be considered a social epidemic by Albert Camus. 

        Back then, war and politics were the main concerns, but in today’s times, “There is only one really serious philosophical problem,” Camus says, “and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that” (Aronson, 2011). According to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center,“In 2021, a higher percentage of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) high school youth reported seriously considering attempting suicide in the past year, making a past-year suicide plan, and attempting suicide in the past year compared to youth in the overall U.S. population (American Indian and Alaska Native Populations – Suicide Prevention Resource Center, n.d)."Albert does not understand the idea of wanting to seek meaning in life where there is not one. “It is absurd to continually seek meaning in life when there is none; and it is absurd to hope for some form of continued existence after death, which results in our extinction” (Aronson, 2011). While Camus believes that trying to find the meaning of life is pointless, he does not condone killing oneself as it is an “insult to existence”(Hecht et al., 2016). According to Camus, people commit suicide “because they judge life is not worth living” (Aronson, 2011). He believes that people should continue living regardless of there not being a meaning. “The lack of overall purpose or goal does not imply that there is no value to living” (Hecht et al., 2016). From Albert’s philosophical point of view, he deems that life is absurd and that there is no escape from it, but the absurd is not necessarily a bad thing. “The absurd teaches us not to make the mistake of valuing certain kinds of lives and their experiences over other kinds of lives”(Hecht et al., 2016).

        Apart from Camus being a philosopher, he was also an atheist. Camus was not fond of the idea of an all-powerful being that people believed and followed in. “To believe in an eternal God, for Camus, is to commit oneself to a static, absolute value that men are expected to imitate. In the name of self-creation and temporal value Camus curses God” (Goss, 1974, 114-128). Albert understood that whatever choices people make, they were responsible for that choice. According to the book “The Myth of Sisyphus”,  “Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering” (Camus, 2006, 5-6). Camus rejected suicide but he understood that life was hard to endure. There are things like being isolated because of a person’s differences or people being cruel and unjust to others because of their ethnicity that drive people to the brink of wanting to end their life. Native Americans have endured these problems for years and it is especially bad in Native American youth. The atheist would have refused the onslaught of Native American children killing themselves to escape the ridicule from people. While Albert Camus does not find there to be a meaning to life, he would believe that the Native American youth should continue to live to experience the joyous moments of life. 

         The word activist would also describe Albert Camus since he lobbied for human rights and strongly opposed capital punishment such as the death penalty. Camus said [Contemporary man tends more and more to put between himself and nature an abstract and complex machinery that casts him into solitude. … With so much paper, so many offices and functionaries, we are creating a world in which human warmth has disappeared. Where no one can come into contact with anyone else except across a maze of what we call formalities (Illing, 2022)]. He came to the realization that there are so many problems being created that there is nowhere to go to feel secure. That is what some Native American kids feel like, they have nowhere to go so they take their life.  Camus wanted to end the violence and resolve the issues to better the world that he lived in at the time. “It was impossible,” he wrote, “to persuade people who were doing these things not to do them because they were sure of themselves and because there is no way to persuade an abstraction, or, to put it another way, the representative of an ideology” (Illing, 2022). In Albert’s era, it was tough trying to persuade people to not do things because they were too stubborn to listen to anybody that opposed them and now, this generation of Native American youth would listen to Camus because they want to free themselves from the chains of suicide and help themselves to become stable. Camus did not take a liking to violence, especially suicide in his times, so he would heavily reject Native American youth suicide in modern times. 

         Albert Camus could also be described as an existentialist. In two of his books, The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, they both contain the acceptance of what life has to offer whether it is bad or good. Of course suicide is one of the worst things life has to offer because it demoralizes the person and it gives a false solution to escaping reality. Camus supported the idea of every person deciding their destiny through their own actions of will. Having a bad day or a little comment that someone said can inadvertently cause someone to go over the edge. From the book “The Myth of Sisyphus”, ”What sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable”(Camus, 2006, 5-6). People can try to figure out why these Native American children are committing suicide but the problem is going to only rise if people do not figure out how to stop them from dying. If Albert Camus was here today, he would see as a philosopher and existentialist, that Native  American youth suicide can become lowered if people become more aware of the problem. 

         This world right now is being driven by violence and death and Camus would not stand for it. In his book “The Myth of Sisyphus”, he wrote “Society has but little connection with such beginnings” (Camus, 2006, 5-6). Camus understands that people and children are not happy with their life so they commit suicide to be free but because of this, the suicide rates for both Native American adults and Native American youth is extremly high. With Camus being an activist, he would fight for ways to help these Native American kids experience the good moments of life rather than the bad ones. The suicides among Native American youth has become a big social epidemic and it can only be fixed by our sheer resilience to end children dying by their own hand.