Existentialist View of Arendt

I just finished my Humanities class, fresh off discussing Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture by Arendt and was feeling very moved by it. So I'm just sitting in the empty classroom, typing away.

The catalysis for this text is Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat, who's trial she reported on. She is disturbed by not just his incrediblely efficient role he played in the Nazi regime, but, most critically, his automation in doing it. Eichmann does not think much of his actions; he doesn't necessarily have a wicked character or is an evil person in the way a villain purposefully acts is. He surrenders his humanity and instead defers his human aspect of thinking to social norms, to tradition, to clichés.

In the text, she talks about how Eichmann on the gallows founds no original words to say. His final words were simply a bag of tricks for him to get through this new situation he says complete nonsense, he claims he's an atheist yet speaks of the afterlife with finals words being "After a short while, gentlemen, we shall all meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany, long live Argentina, long live Austria. I shall not forget them." In his final moments, in this new experience, Eichmann fails to find any element of humanity in him to come up with something original, something authentic to himself and instead defaults to funeral oratory clichés. Arendt describes it well:

"Under the gallows, his memory played him the last trick; he was "elated" and he forgot that this was his own funeral."

To her, the most horrifying part of his crimes is the uncanniness in which he has done them. He has the resemblence of a person, the skills of a person, yet he lacks the mind, the conscienceness of a person. He lacks the freedom to transcend himself and become his authentic self, to rise above social norms and clichés. In this Arendt seems to find that the nature of being human, what it really means to live is to be free.