The Myth of Sisyphus

Guilt and Innocence in The Stranger “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.” (Camus 3) The perplexing tale of Meursault, an emotionally detached and seemingly amoral young man living in Algiers, stands notoriously as the introduction to “the absurd.” Albert Camus coined this school of thought, using The Stranger as a mechanism for expressing…

The Strange Character of Meursault In what perhaps is Albert Camus’s most notable work, The Stranger, the main character Meursault can be considered as a vessel for the philosophy of existentialism, an idea prominent in the time period in which the novel was written. Though at first glance Meursault may come off as a simple, uncaring man, as the story progresses, the reader is able to see Meursault as a complex and intriguing person. While in the beginning of the book Meursault is…

Humans have a natural tendency to be happy and to try to find meaning in their meaningless existence. In The Trial and The Myth of Sisyphus, characters are able to find happiness despite the circumstances that they are put in. This happiness is defined by The Absurd and the human ability to find meaning in life. Both main characters find a sense of control in their life by taking the reigns of their fate. In The Trial Mr.K, refuses to kill himself and denies doing what the cops want him to do;…

It is the challenges, struggles, and tribulations that energize Sisyphus and my spirit, not the prospects of reaching the top of the hill. Sisyphus found happiness and the meaning of life in pushing that rock. The meaning of life is simply living it. I live through my hikes, experiencing what life has to offer through getting up each morning and seeking…

“The Myth of Sisyphus,” by Albert Camus, addresses the importance of choosing to find value in life despite life being meaningless due to the inevitability of death, or in other words, absurd. Through the motif of consciousness and the paradox of powerlessness and rebelliousness, that convey the idea that consciousness and rebellion are interdependent, Camus suggests that consciousness of the absurdity of life allows the tragedy of the situation, that life is meaningless, to be transformed into…

universe as the setting of Winnie’s life. And just as you start to think “Well, what kind of life could you live being stuck in a mound of dirt?” you could begin to compare her story to that of Sisyphus in Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus and Camus’s three solutions to finding meaning in life. Where Sisyphus has his punishment of eternally rolling the stone up the hill just to watch it roll down for him to start the process…

In the very first line of the novel elevates the absurdist concept, " My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I received a telegram from the old people's home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Very sincerely yours.' That doesn't mean anything. It might have been yesterday '' This is not a normal reaction of a son to the news of his mother’s death. In the very first lines we find Mesusault’s strangeness to the normal feelings and emotions. Camus has portrayed a distance…

Albert Camus was an award-winning French author who expressed his absurdist views on the meaning of life and the purpose of humans in his esteemed novels, especially his 1942 classic The Stranger. The Stranger demonstrates Camus’ absurdist beliefs, sending a message to the world that life is meaningless and that personal values deserve to be defended. In this novel, Camus’ character of Meursault is the “stranger” that the title refers to because he is greatly misunderstood by his society due…

2) a,b : This passage is taken from "What is Enlightenment", by Immanuel Kant, from the first page of the essay. Kant is criticizing the over dependence of a grown up individual for nurturing and caretaking and possibly resisting the responsibilities brought to him. He says these deficiencies are caused by laziness and cowardice. Kant states that enlightenment is a man freeing himself from self-imposed nonage. He moves on explaining the reasons why this nonage takes place, and then moves on…

The Stranger is a philosophical novel written by Albert Camus during World War II. Having experienced the horror of war, Camus developed a sense of discontentment and skepticism towards the Western ideological beliefs, both secular and religious. Living in fear of the senseless atrocities, Camus developed his philosophy of the absurd based on the belief that humanity’s effort to search for meaning conflicts with the reality of an irrational universe. The protagonist of The Stranger, Meursault,…