The main character in Henry V by William Shakespeare is a king and so might be seen to represent society, but he is also an individual and is restricted in some degree in what he can do because he represents the people and long-standing traditions which govern his actions. In Henry V, Shakespeare depicts a king he views as efficient and practical, though this is not his highest ideal of what a ruler should be. In effect, he sees Henry V as a serviceable leader who could not be said to have been a great ruler. The play is structured specifically to illuminate aspects of Henry V's character, and each scene in the play leads the viewer to take another look at that character.

Henry is presented as the ideal of England--not Shakespeare's ideal but England's notion of a hero-king. He is more than a simple human being in this regard. The scenes in the play, as noted, illustrate different aspects of Henry's character--one addresses his religious nature, another his sense of justice, another hi

In The Stranger by Albert Camus, the individual is in the person of Meursault. There is a concern with death and its inevitability in the works of Camus, and The Stranger is one such novel that involves a character faced with an ethical dilemma in the face of his realization that life is absurd and that it has no purpose. The issue of moral responsibility is a difficult one in the universe of the Absurd, since there is no God, no caring or concerned universe, and ultimately no meaning beyond death. For Camus, though, there is a responsibility placed on every individual for making this world more livable, and this is the moral responsibility that man should respond to in life. Camus's characters do not always follow this precept, however, for the absurdity of life overwhelms their moral sense. Meursault is the protagonist of The Stranger. He is an intelligent and thoughtful man who has examined life and who sees through the artifice by which others live to the underlying truth. Society sees him as rebellious, particularly after he kills the Arab.

Critics and reviewers saw Alan Sillitoe as a proletarian writer when he appeared with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and it was for this reason that he was placed with the other novelists who at the time were being labeled the Angry Young Men. However, looking back on that time, it is evident that this was not entirely appropriate. Sillitoe's hostility was of a higher order so that he might be called an "angrier young man." This anger and the identification with the working class can be seen in The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, containing stories written during a period of eight years from 1950 to 1958, and they include some of the finest short fiction Sillitoe has ever written, many on the theme of the alienation of the individual in society. The title story of the collection is considered a masterpiece of short fiction and tells the story of a race in a boys reformatory that becomes a battle between subjection and independence. Colin is the adolescent boy who works to wi

Some common words found in the essay are:
Long-Distance Runner, Greenleaf Europe, Arab Camus, England--not Shakespeare's, Absurd God, Ripley Ripley, Night Morning, Henry Shakespeare, Camus Stranger, , moral responsibility, win race, short fiction, individual society, character henry,
Approximate Word count = 1385
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)