Existentialism: a Philosophy of Hope or Despair?

Existentialism: Hope or Despair? 11
was frankly puzzled by one of the pictures. It turned out that
the picture was part of an advertisement, as I recall, on the
subject of aluminum awnings, but it was not the awnings that
interested Claude; it was the little boy in the picture. He was
standing on a lawn in front of a house (equipped, presumably,
with the product in question) and he was eating an ice cream
cone. What, Claude wanted to know, is that? Nor was
Claude’s ignorance surprising, when one remembers that he
belonged to that unfortunate generation which had grown
up in a France where milk was rationed by the pint, butter
by the gram, and sugar by the half pound. So I gave him
what I thought was a very accurate and succinct definition
of the substance called ice cream. His reply was a look of
direst bewilderment. I decided to try again, this time attack-
ing the concept from the standpoint of ingredients. Having
failed just as dismally this time, I went into a long story of
why children like ice cream, when they eat it, and what they
will do to get it. All this met with not the slightest response,
and I had the feeling that I was trying to explain an obscure
problem of algebra to someone who had not yet learned
simple addition. The look of reproach on that boy’s face
haunted me for many weeks afterward, until one day I
heard that ice cream, if not ice cream cones, was sold at the
Paris chapter of the American Legion, which is just off the
Champs Élysées. I managed to acquire a pint of the precious
commodity and rushed home in time to stumble over Claude
playing the French version of marbles at the front door. His
mother, the concierge, promptly rushed out a spoon and Io
and behold, as spoonful after spoonful swept to their destina-
tion, the fight came over Claude. His eyes shone and his lips,
as besmirched as any child’s should be—chocolate was all I
could get—broke into a broad smile. This was ice cream: a

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