The Myth of Sisyphus

Bryson Miguel’s “Until Something Happens” is a postmodernist, deconstructionist short story that depicts the entropic nature of language and implies that, despite efforts to apply order and meaning to our words, we are only as effectively understood as someone else effectively understands. Miguel’s story also suggests that the true significance of our stories and life experiences are often ambiguous. There is no single and objective meaning to discover, but rather the subjective act of…

Existential Crisis or Enlightenment? Does human existence hold any greater meaning? In the 1946 novel, The Stranger by Albert Camus, the protagonist and narrator, Meursault, a french man detached and estranged from humanity questions just that. In the first part, the story starts in the setting of the town of Algiers in 1940s French occupied Algeria. It begins with the death of his mother, to which Meursault does not feel much towards. He returns from the vigil held at the home that his…

Meursault; An Absurd Hero In Camus’ The Stranger Albert Camus portrayed his beliefs and values through Meursault in The Stranger and gave him the perception that life on earth is nothing more than absurd unless one finds meaning or something to live for. In the beginning when Meursault gets the telegram informing him that his mother has passed away, we don’t really see much of a surprised reaction from Meursault, but he makes the effort of taking off from work in order to attend her funeral.…

The author of The Stranger, Albert Camus, was born in 1913 in Mondavi, French Algeria. His father died early in his life, so he lived with his half-deaf mother. He married two women when he was young, but divorced them both shortly after. He did very well in school and continued on into university. He also completed some military service and had a short political career as well. As far as his literary work goes, Camus wrote novels, plays, and even performed with the theater. He was awarded…

THEATRE OF THE ABSURD BY ALBERT CAMUS Background An existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, wrote an essay “The Myth of Sisyphus”. This essay was published in 1942. In this essay Camus described human existence and called it to be “without any purpose: absurd”. Other writers of that era related to his work and subscribed to his work. These writers than wrote their own thoughts on the subject and their writing were named as Theatre of Absurd. There was no such thing as an Absurdist crusade…

In the story “Myth Of Sisyphus”, Sisyphus is punished by the gods and sentenced to a life of hard labor.I began to question if we as individuals can relate to the experience Sisyphus had. While I am almost certain that no one can relate to the physical labor Sisyphus endured. We relate to emotional and mental struggles Sisyphus faced. Similar to Sisyphus, we spend our days rolling our own rock up the same mountain. Once we reach the top of the mountain, our rock begin to roll back down the…

between the two reading assignments, because as I had always understood the story of Sisyphus it was truly a tragedy that had no hope to be found except for the schadenfreude of not being the man himself. Albert Camus always has been a monolithic figure for me because he is the founding philosopher of the school of thought for absurdism. Which helps put not just his own short rambling interpretation of Sisyphus into context, but also helped give a little more psychological weight to the ideas…

Albee uses foreshadowing to describe how the people who are alienated and isolated from the world are living. This is represented through Jerry's long speech and talk about his life at the rooming house, and his story with the dog. Zimbardo believes that Jerry's long speech about the dog and the foreshadowing used by Jerry shows the "pseudo-crisis" (120) that is used to explore Albee's preoccupation with man's failure to establish a relationship with other people and his anger of being isolated…

In the excerpt from the passage “Down the River,” Edward Abbey ventures through Aravaipa Canyon in New Mexico, while writing of his adventure. Observing his surroundings and by comparing the nature to life, Abbey establishes an attitude of wonder while also being judgmental towards nature. The author had many attitudes towards the Canyon. One of his many attitudes included wonder. Edward always showed a sense of wondering while going through the Canyon, always finding things. The passage…

Imagine rolling a large boulder up a steep hill, only to watch it roll back down again and repeat the agonizing work. This process was the punishment for Sisyphus in Greek mythology and Robert Camus likened this process to the human condition in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. Humans search for answers to problems, but are too blinded to find unity. Generally, an archetypal, blind literary character is given the ability to see the more important aspects of life, but the opposite is true for…