## Context This is my IB English IO (individual oral) exam script. My global issue is the imapct of nihilism / lack of purpose. Goal = academic writing - demonstrates deep understanding into the two works - clear & logical analysis of specific and in-detail evidence - simple and clear language, no fancy vocab ## Literary Work Extract > There was the same red glare as far as eye could reach, and small waves were lapping the hot sand in little, flurried gasps. As I slowly walked toward the boulders at the end of the beach I could feel my temples swelling under the impact of the light. It pressed itself on me, trying to check my progress. And each time I felt a hot blast strike my forehead, I gritted my teeth, I clenched my fists in my trouser pockets and keyed up every nerve to fend off the sun and the dark befuddlement it was pouring into me. Whenever a blade of vivid light shot upward from a bit of shell or broken glass lying on the sand, my jaws set hard. I wasn't going to be beaten, and I walked steadily on. > > The small black hump of rock came into view far down the beach. It was rimmed by a dazzling sheen of light and feathery spray, but I was thinking of the cold, clear stream behind it, and longing to hear again the tinkle of running water. Anything to be rid of the glare, the sight of women in tears, the strain and effort—and to retrieve the pool of shadow by the rock and its cool silence! > > But when I came nearer I saw that Raymond's Arab had returned. He was by himself this time... On seeing me, the Arab raised himself a little, and his hand went to his pocket. Naturally, I gripped Raymond's revolver in the pocket of my coat. Then the Arab let himself sink back again, but without taking his hand from his pocket... > > It struck me that all I had to do was to turn, walk away, and think no more about it. But the whole beach, pulsing with heat, was pressing on my back. I took some steps toward the stream. The Arab didn't move. After all, there was still some distance between us. Perhaps because of the shadow on his face, he seemed to be grinning at me. > > I waited. The heat was beginning to scorch my cheeks; beads of sweat were gathering in my eyebrows. It was just the same sort of heat as at my mother's funeral, and I had the same disagreeable sensations—especially in my forehead, where all the veins seemed to be bursting through the skin. I couldn't stand it any longer, and took another step forward... And then the Arab drew his knife and held it up toward me, athwart the sunlight. > > A shaft of light shot upward from the steel, and I felt as if a long, thin blade transfixed my forehead. At the same moment all the sweat that had accumulated in my eyebrows splashed down on my eyelids, covering them with a warm film of moisture. Beneath a veil of brine and tears my eyes were blinded; I was conscious only of the cymbals of the sun clashing on my skull, and, less distinctly, of the keen blade of light flashing up from the knife, scarring my eyelashes, and gouging into my eyeballs. > > Then everything began to reel before my eyes, a fiery gust came from the sea... Every nerve in my body was a steel spring, and my grip closed on the revolver. The trigger gave, and the smooth underbelly of the butt jogged my palm. And so, with that crisp, whipcrack sound, it all began. I shook off my sweat and the clinging veil of light. I knew I'd shattered the balance of the day, the spacious calm of this beach on which I had been happy. But I fired four shots more into the inert body, on which they left no visible trace. And each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing. ## Introduction Today my IO is gonna be in the field of Beliefs, Values, and Communities, and my global issue is the impact of nihilism / lack of purpose. I chose this topic because nihilism can manifest differently across contexts: as existential detachment in individuals, as normalized violence in communities, and as institutional collapse in governance. I will explore this globlal issue first through The Outsider by Albert Camus, which Meursault -- a man whose complete indifference to meaning leads him to murder without motive or remorse. His disconnection from human experience reveals how lack of purpose corrodes moral consciousness and ultimately destabilizes the very systems designed to judge him. And then second, through the short film M.A.A.D City by Kalil Joseph, which uses fragmented documentary footage to depict communities where systemic violence has drained life of purpose. Joseph's work demonstrates nihilism's communal dimension—how entire populations experience psychological fragmentation, institutional abandonment, yet also possibilities for existential rebellion. Both works demonstrate pictures of living in a nihilistic world deprived of purpose and explored its impact of the human experience. ## Literary Extract First, let's look at the extract from The Outsider. My extract takes place at the novel's turning point, when Meursault walks down a sun-drenched beach and, overwhelmed by heat and light, fires five shots into an Arab man. ### Disconnection from human experience My first point is that through Mersualt's experience, Camus shows how a nihilistic lack of purpose leads to a disconnection from human experience -- when life has no inherent purpose, even morally significant acts lose their human dimension and become purely physical events. We see this right away in his motivation for walking down the beach at the end of line 10. He's not looking for a confrontation but just "thinking of the cold, clear stream behind" the rock. He's driven by a simple, almost animalistic desire for physical comfort—to get out of the heat and find "the pool of shadow." This complete lack of engagement with the human drama of the situation shows how his nihilism has emptied him of empathy and emotion connection with the world. After the first shot in line 38, he doesn't say "the man I just shot," but calls him an "inert body." The cold description reduces a human being to a lifeless object. As a result, nihlism breaks the connection between self and others and transforms a significant human encouter in a meaningless and deatched event. ### Sensory overload, Environment determinism My second point is that Camus uses the detailed descriptions of the environment in this scene to argue that nihilism leads to environment determinism -- meaning that when a person has no internal purpose to guide them, physical forces, rather than conscious choice, dictate action. Camus personifies the sun, turning it into an active enemy. He describes the light in line 3 as "presses itself on me, trying to check my progress." Meursault feels "a hot blast strike my forehead," as if he's being attacked. The verb choices—"press," "check," "strike"—personify the environment as an aggressor while reducing Meursault to a victim. When he finally shoots in line 34, he said, "The trigger gave" -- not that "I pulled the trigger" or "I decides to shoot", but as if the trigger pulled itself -- a passive, involuntary action. Camus uses passive description to suggests it’s not a conscious decision. This demonstrates the dangerous impact of nihilism -- Because Meursault's mind is a vacuum of meaning devoid of purpose or values, the physical world rushes in to fill it. He becomes a puppet of his environment, and his actions are determined by the heat and the light. ## Literary BOW ### Emotional Apathy Zooming out from the extract to the entire novel, overall, Camus demosntrates that nihilism leads to Emotional Apathy. In other words, Mersault is not able to put emotional signifiance to his actions. We see this in his relationship with Marie. When she asks if he'll marry her, he says, "I said it didn't matter much to me, and if she wanted to, we could get married." Marriage—one of society's most significant moral and emotional commitments—is reduced to complete indifference. He's simply operating in a moral vacuum where love and commitment have no inherent value. This apathy reaches its extreme during his trial, when Meursault is literally on trial for his life. You'd expect anyone facing execution to engage and to actively defend themselves, or at least to fear or regret. But Meursault remains utterly detached, observing his own trial as if he's watching someone else. Just as the lack of emotions during his murder, he is apathetic to the court's decision on his life. Meursault's apathy is the authentic result of living without purpose. He genuinely cannot access the moral and emotinoal framework that would make his choices significant—to mourn, to love, to value life, or to regret. ### Collapse of meaning systems Mersault's emotional apathy further reflects how his nihilism causes society’s established systems of meaning—like love and justice to completely collapse when they try to judge or define him. Again, we see this most dramatically during his trial. The legal system is supposed to be about facts and motive. But because Meursault has no conventional motive—he shot the Arab "because of the sun"—the system can't process it. So, the prosecutor has to invent a new logic. He ignores the murder itself and builds his entire case around Meursault's failure to perform social rituals -- around him not crying at his mother's funeral. Camus uses absurdism to highlight the system's collapse under nihilism. The legal system, a pillar of societal meaning, has to invent reasons to convict a man who refuses to play the game. So, the ultimate impact, and the link to our global issue, is that a life without purpose doesn't just exist in a vacuum; it actively challenges and dismantles the purpose-driven systems around it. Meursault's nihilism forces society to confront the fact that its sacred rules—about love, grief, justice, and God—are just conventions that it assumes everyone shares. When faced with someone who genuinely doesn't, those conventions are revealed to be fragile and, in this case, they collapse into absurdity. ## Non-literary Extract Next, moving on to the non-literary extract. ### Normalization of Death & Violence First, Joseph demonstrates that nihilism's erosion of purpose causes the normalization of death and violence—when life loses inherent meaning, brutality becomes mundane rather than shocking. In the arrest scene, Joseph employs documentary-style framing with grainy, handheld footage that resembles live-action ews footage, suggesting this violence is routine, not exceptional. The man on the ground is visually minimized -- his humanity also minimized while the officers' uniforms create a visual wall of institutional authority. Another standing figure's casual posture shows brutality has become so ordinary that witnesses become apathetic. The coffin scene reinforces this normalization. For context, there is a coffin by the window. Joseph positions the camera beneath the window and angled up toward a the harsh, indifferent light. Joseph uses misse-en-scene -- a coffin lying casually beside a mundane domestic space -- to show death has become domesticated. The bright, emotionless atmosphere reflects psychological numbness—repeated loss is normalized. Importantly, the chaotic rapping background music comes to an abrupt stop in this scene, signifying how life is short and fragile, and death can happen at any random moment. Together, these shots visualize nihilism's impact: when communities lack purpose or systemic support, violence transforms from shocking rupture into the expected rhythm of daily existence. ### Collapse of Meaning System Furthermore, Joseph reveals that nihilism extends beyond individual experience to corrode institutional meaning systems—when purpose erodes at the societal level, even government structures meant to provide moral order become complicit in violence through detachment and complacency. Joseph uses a tightly cropped, low-resolution close-up of a smiling political leader, filmed in warm lighting that softens the face and evokes comfort or ease. The leader’s eyes are half-closed, almost relaxed, as if in casual amusement rather than serious engagement. Stripped of context, the framing contrasts violently with the images elsewhere in _m.A.A.d_ of surveillance footage, death, and community trauma. This visual juxtaposition implies a structural disconnect: while marginalized communities endure cycles of violence and meaninglessness, the highest political authorities appear serene, untroubled, and even entertained. It exposes the moral numbness of institutions that should provide order, purpose, and protection. This emotional and visual dissonance embodies the collapse of the governmental “meaning system” as a result of widespread nihilism and violence at the grassroot. ## Non-literary BOW ### Fragmented consciousness Zooming out, across _m.A.A.d_ city, Joseph constructs a fragmented consciousness to show how nihilism shatters the ability to experience life as a coherent narrative, leading to fragemented consciousness. The film stitches together shaky VHS footage, sudden shifts between home videos and news reports, disorienting jump-cuts, and oscillations between intimate domestic spaces and chaotic public streets. The editing rarely follows linear logic, and the soundscape blends overlapping voices and sirens. These techniques uses sensory overload to overwhelm the audience and portray a world where meaning is no longer dependable. In environments shaped by nihilism, individuals cannot form stable stories about themselves or their surroundings because the world offers no consistent moral structure. Thus, through nonlinear editing, mixed media, and sensory disorientation, Joseph portrays fragmented consciousness as a direct psychological impact of nihilism—a mind trying to navigate a world that no longer makes sense. ### Existential liberation & rebellion However, Joseph suggests nihilism doesn't only destroy—it can paradoxically create existential liberation, prompting individuals to rebel by forging their own meaning when inherited structures collapse. In _Black Mary_, another short film by Kalil Joseph, he uses the scream of the female character as symbolic rejection of constraints. The raw expression becomes an act of defiance—refusing passivity and asserting her own presence when external systems are meaningless. The scream breaks through imposed silence, claiming agency in a world stripped of inherited meaning. In the film, there are two main scenes -- one is shot in black-and-white while the other in a warm, dim, amber-lit light. While the black-and-white scene symbolizes nihilism and lack of purpose, the warm lighting represents her newfound meaning. It visualizes the transformation from emptiness to self-authored purpose. Through expressive performance and use of color, Joseph portrays existential liberation as one of nihilism's unexpected outcome: when meaning collapses, the self can become its own author, breaking from oppressive structures to create new pathways of existence. ## Conclusion All in all, both _The Outsider_ and _m.A.A.d city_ explore the impact of nihilism on the human condition. _The Outsider_ examines nihilism at the individual level—how Meursault's lack of purpose disconnects him from human experience, makes him vulnerable to environmental forces, and ultimately causes society's meaning systems to collapse around him. Meanwhile, _m.A.A.d city_ explores nihilism at the communal and systemic level—how entire communities become numb to violence, how institutions fail to provide moral guidance, yet how individuals can still rebel to forge their own meaning. The issue of nihilism is of great significance in our present-day world fundamentally because we live in an era of collapsing traditional structures—declining religious participation, eroding trust in institutions, and increasing social fragmentation. Like Meursault and Joseph's subjects, many today struggle to find inherent purpose in systems that no longer provide clear answers. This makes understanding nihilism's impacts crucial: we must recognize how purposelessness breeds apathy and violence, while also acknowledging the potential for existential liberation—the opportunity to author our own meaning rather than passively inherit it from broken systems. ## Archive two other moments from Black Mary multi-modal -- sound, image, lyric, editing, etc. --- - Disconnection from human experience - Normalization of death & violence - Sensory overload, Environment determinism - Fragmented consciousness - Collapse of meaning systems / apathy to moral choice Existential liberation & rebellion --- use / describe your screenshots all modal of text (lyric, picture, music, etc.)