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www.arts-journal.com

The InternationalJOURNALoftheARTS

IN SOCIETY

Volume 5

Making Sense of the Absurdity of Life in Camus’sthe Myth of Sisyphus

Ashkan Shobeiri, Wan Roselezam Wan Yahya and Arbaayah Ali Termizi

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE ARTS IN SOCIETY http://www.arts-journal.com First published in 2009 in Champaign, Illinois, USA by Common Ground Publishing LLC www.CommonGroundPublishing.com. © 2009 (individual papers), the author(s) © 2009 (selection and editorial matter) Common Ground Authors are responsible for the accuracy of citations, quotations, diagrams, tables and maps. All rights reserved. Apart from fair use for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act (Australia), no part of this work may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. For permissions and other inquiries, please contact <cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com>. ISSN: 1833-1866 Publisher Site: http://www.Arts-Journal.com THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE ARTS IN SOCIETY is peer-reviewed, supported by rigorous processes of criterion-referenced article ranking and qualitative commentary, ensuring that only intellectual work of the greatest substance and highest significance is published. Typeset in Common Ground Markup Language using CGCreator multichannel typesetting system http://www.commongroundpublishing.com/software/

Making Sense of the Absurdity of Life in Camus’s theMyth of SisyphusAshkan Shobeiri, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, MalaysiaWan Roselezam Wan Yahya, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor,MalaysiaArbaayah Ali Termizi, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract: In his philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus delineates the concept of theAbsurd in his attempt to provide some explanation on the absurdity of life in postmodern view. Camusderives the truth of absurdity in human life from a gap between an innate human desire for clarity andthe irrationality of the world. Camus talks about the emotional and intellectual appearance of TheAbsurd when death annihilates all one’s desires for immortality. There is a “bad fit” between humanand the world; while one is looking for clarity in the world, yet the irrational world is totally indifferentto one’s demands. The Absurd arises when there is no compatibility between the human and an irra-tional, unreasonable, and indifferent universe. As the term ‘‘absurd” is always considered problematicand difficult to be discussed and defined, a critical review of Camus’s concept of The Absurd in TheMyth of Sisyphus is necessary to give a clearer picture of Camus’s philosophical ideas as well asprovide readers with tangible insights of the term. This effort is seen as an attempt to “make sense”of the absurdity of life in connection to one’s existence.

Keywords: Absurdity, Albert Camus, The Myth of the Sisyphus

Introduction

ALBERTCAMUSWAS one of the leading existentialist thinkers who was awardedthe Nobel Prize in 1957 for having illuminated the problems of the human consciencein his own time. He, however, greatly disliked being called an existentialist. Theterm “absurd” was derived from the existentialist ideas presented in some of Camus’s

literary works, mostly and unquestionably in his well known essay The Myth of Sisyphus(1942) and is adopted in other works such as Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurdwhich consists of a body of plays written primarily in France from the mid-1940s throughthe 1950s.Camus was not the originator of The Absurd. Many writers had written about the absurdity

of human condition; they had either described it directly or derived from their oeuvre. Thevariety of ideas and metaphors that Camus engaged through his own reading of the work ofother thinkers such as Pascal, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kafka, and Sartre allowed him to re-spond to his historical moment in a more appropriate manner (Skrimshire, 2006: 286). Camusin fact demonstrated the significance of The Absurd for his own moment, as well asproviding insights into how the absurd is connected to our own postmodern moment. Hisattitudes toward The Absurd inspired many other absurdist followers; however, the term isnot limited to Camus’s interpretation. Firstly, let us examine how the term has been understood

The International Journal of the Arts in SocietyVolume 5, 2009, http://www.arts-journal.com, ISSN 1833-1866© Common Ground, Ashkan Shobeiri, Wan Roselezam Wan Yahya, Arbaayah Ali Termizi, All RightsReserved, Permissions: cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com

and defined by critics, and then we will turn to Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus and devotethe rest of this study to the analysis of the concept of the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus.In the 19th century, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote extensively on the sense

of absurdity. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard’s famous literary work, he used the storyof Abraham, the biblical character, to show that through virtue of the absurd Abraham wasable to disobey all reason and ethical duties to reaffirm his faith. Kierkegaard defined theterm in an essay in this way:

What is the Absurd? It is, as may quite easily be seen, that I, a rational being, must actin a case where my reason, my powers of reflection, tell me: you can just as well dothe one thing as the other, that is to say where my reason and reflection say: you cannotact and yet here is where I have to act... The Absurd, or to act by virtue of the absurd,is to act upon faith ... I must act, but reflection has closed the road so I take one of thepossibilities and say: This is what I do, I cannot do otherwise because I am brought toa standstill by my powers of reflection. (Dru, 1938)

Jean Paul Sartre (1964) also recognised the absurdity of individual experience. Absurd, ac-cording to Sartre, is front row seat to the images of what we are. It actually is nausea whenRoquentine, a writer in Sartre’s famous novel Nausea, reflects, “Every existing thing is bornfor no reason, carries on living through weakness, and dies by accident” (Nausea, 182).Najuib Mahfouz, an Egyptian Nobel Prize winner in literature, dealt with the search forvalues in an irrational world, the lack of communication, the loss of individuality, and theproblems as isolation and alienation in his novels. Mahfouz’s protagonists are in search ofthe meaningful values in their lives. In Adrift on the Nile (1994), for example, Samara, ajournalist, decided to write a drama about the absurdity of the people’s lives that she visitedon the house boat (Al-sarayreh, 1998: 52). Samara wrote:

Absurdity is the loss of meaning, the meaning of anything. The collapse of belief-belief.It is a passage through life propelled by necessity alone, without conviction withoutreal hope. This is reflected in the character in the form of dissipation and nihilism….AllValues perish, and civilization comes to an end. (qtd. in Al-sarayreh, 1998: 92)

It is fair also to mention 20th century Czechoslovakian novelist Milan Kundera, who con-sidered the absurdity of life as a touchstone to the absurd experience which manifested itselfin his country at that time in history (3). Kundera posits in The Joke:

The errors were so common and universal that they didn’t represent exceptions or faultin order of things; on the contrary, they constituted that order. What is it, then, that wasmistaken? History itself? History the divine, the rational? But why call them historieserrors? They seem so to my human reason, but if history really has its own reason, whyshould that reason care about human understanding, and why should it be as serious asa schoolmarm? What if history plays jokes? And then I realised how powerless I wasto revoke my own joke when throughout my life as a whole I was involved in a jokemuch more vast (all-embracing for me) and utterly irrevocable. (2002:66)

Martin Esslin, a famous Hungarian critic, in his book The Theatre of the Absurd commenceshis discussion with the definition of the absurd with its dictionary meaning which is “‘out

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE ARTS IN SOCIETY

of harmony with reason or propriety; incongruous, unreasonable, illogical’” (1968:5). Healso continues with the common usage of the absurd which may mean ridiculous, but heimmediately points out that this is not what Camus discussed and meant. In order to give usa short and concise definition of the term Esslin posits:

In an essay onKafka, Ionesco defined his understanding of the term as followed: ‘Absurdis that which is devoid of purpose… Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, andtranscendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.(1968: 5)

Beckett’s, Ionesco’s, Genet’s, and Adamov’s plays were coined The Theatre of the Absurdby Esslin. Esslin called them Absurd based on Camus’s concept of the absurd; however, hebelieved that these dramatists better captured the absurdity of existence in their plays thanin literary works by Camus. These plays abandoned the traditional elements of literature ingeneral and theatre in particular as setting, plot, and character development in order to conveya sense of absurdity and illogicality in both form and content. These playwrights renouncedarguing about the absurdity of human condition; they merely presented the absurdity of theworld relaying that communication is difficult and individuality is lost.

Aim and MethodologyThe aims of the study are twofold: (1) to attempt to clarify the concept of Absurd based onAlbert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, and (2) to use the viewpoints of critics and scholarsto give a clearer picture of Camus’s concept of The Absurd as well as provide readers withtangible insights of the term. The study involves close and careful reading of Camus’smanifest of the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus. The text is analysed using philosophicalstudy of the absurd while utilizing the perceptions of some critics and commentators to givemore insight into the meaning of the absurd and to “make sense” of the absurdity of life inconnection to one’s existence.Camus’s philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus consists of four main chapters which

are entitled: “An Absurd Reasoning,” “The Absurd Man,” “Absurd Creation,” and “TheMyth of Sisyphus.” Some of these chapters are turned into subtitles to support our argumentin this essay.

Analysis and Discussion

An Absurd ReasoningThe opening lines of the book from “An Absurd Reasoning” begin with a consideration ofthe serious question about whether life is worth living.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judgingwhether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental questionof philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world has three dimensions, whetherthe mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards. (The Myth, 11)

ASHKAN SHOBEIRI, WAN ROSELEZAMWAN YAHYA, ARBAAYAH ALI TERMIZI

For Camus suicide is a “serious philosophical problem”, because it is related to the essenceof life in which whether it is meaningful or not. Accordingly, there are two sorts of suicides,“physical suicide” and “philosophical suicide”. He rejects “physical suicide” initially, becauseit “eliminates the problem, it does not solve it” (Thorson, 1965: 287). In fact, it is not asolution to the absurd, when man is negated in this way. Camus believes that if a personkills himself he actually allows both life and death to have had dominion over him. A human,Camus posits, must at the same time be aware of inevitability of death and reject it (Wood,1999: 94). Camus introduces his argument from the beginning with a question about theauthenticity of human existence and the absurdity of his life. In so doing, he preferred to puthis debate in a modest attitude of mind based on common sense and understanding than beinga conformist and present it in a classical dialectic. He then attempts to specify the humancondition and concludes that it has no rational foundation. He points out the alienation ofan individual in a universe divested of illusion and light:

A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But on theother hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien,a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a losthome or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actorand his setting, is probably the feeling of absurdity. (13)

In this regard Richard Kamber in his book, On Camus, explains, “In the fullest sense, theabsurd is the clear recognition that our longing for a world that can be fully understood inhuman terms is not satisfied by the world” (2002: 52).Camus talks about the feeling and the notion of the absurd, the emotional manifestation

of the absurd and intellectual basis for it. Camus firstly describes the feeling of the absurd.He enumerates the various ways that the absurd manifests itself by giving an example of thenormal monotony of working days from Monday to Saturday in which one day a personstops, and the question of “why” arises; he or she asks about the meaning of his or her routineand “everything begins with in the weariness tinged with amazement” (The Myth, 19). This“weariness” comes from our mechanical life which begins from Monday to Saturday. Aperson with these ridiculous repetitions of daily life, according to James Wood, is an absurdperson; his/her routine is gray and the calendar of his/her existence is stifling (1999:93).This may cause our conscious minds to think of ourselves, our routines, and our best wishesin relationship to our, “worst enemy”, time (The Myth, 20).Once we have a chance to find out ourselves through the passage of time, our eyes con-

sequently drop on the phenomenon of death, as it is the most overpowering evidence of theabsurd. This dualism appears to be the cause of the absurdity in our lives. We value our livesvery much, but at the same time we know we will eventually die; therefore, our endeavorsappear to be meaningless. Camus points out the inability of the human knowledge in explain-ing the absurdity of this world (Rhein, 1989: 12). In fact, human existence appears absurdbecause a person has a natural desire for understanding but knowledge is unattainable tohim/her. Logic, psychology, and physics provide human with truths, but do not give him/hertruth (McBride, 1992: 5). Therefore, Camus reaches to the truth of absurdity from an emo-tional (“feeling of absurd”) and an intellectual (“notion of absurd”) awareness of the fact ofdeath in contrast to the potent human desire for immortality and irrationality of the world.

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE ARTS IN SOCIETY

In his recovered and now studied lucidity, the feeling of the absurd becomes clear anddefinite. I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is notreasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of the ir-rational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurddepends as much on man than on the world. (The Myth, 26)

Phillip H. Rhein in his book, Albert Camus, concludes, “we experience the absurd as theunique and vital link between the world and us. And through the absurd we know what wedesire, what the world offers, and what unites us with the world” (1989:13). According toCamus, it is not the world but the human condition that is absurd. The world is just unintel-ligible. Camus says, “The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need andthe unreasonable silence of the world” (The Myth, 32).

Philosophical SuicideIn “Philosophical Suicide,” Camus turns to the writings of Karl Theodor Jaspers, Lev Shestov,Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Edmund Husserl who had recognized the truthof the absurd. All these great thinkers believed in the absurdity of life, reflecting the conver-gence between Camus and them. Nevertheless, Camus in this part attempts to explain hownone of these great thinkers remained true to the absurd once they faced it.

…all of them without exception suggest escape. Through an odd reasoning, startingout from the absurd over the ruins of reason, in a closed universe limited to the human,they deify what crushes them and find reason to hope in what impoverishes them. Thatforced hope is religious in all of them. It deserves attention. (The Myth, 35)

These writers belong to two philosophical movements, existentialism and phenomenology,which were influential in Europe before World War II. Kierkegaard, Shestove, and Jasperwere known as existentialist philosophers; however, “since the term ‘existentialism’ did notcome into general use as a term for both religious and atheistic existentialists until afterWorld War II, it is not surprising that Camus reserved this label for religious existentialists”(Kamber, 2002: 57). Husserl and Heidegger were, in essence, phenomenologists.Camus understands that these existentialist writers believed in incomprehensibility of the

world through reason, so that human should hope for higher power, such as God. They be-lieved that God does not need the support of reason or evidence. However, unlike devoutChristians and Jews, the existentialists did not bring God into the picture to make the worldintelligible (Kamber, 2002:57-8):

For Camus these strategies are a kind of “philosophical suicide”. Since reason revealsthe unintelligibility of the world and the futility of hope, these existential thinkers killreason in a desperate attempt to save hope. But Camus will have none of this. In hiseyes philosophical suicide is cowardly and self-deceptive. Better to live without hopein what theists call “sin and despair.”

Camus challenges phenomenology for the same reason that he challenges natural sciences.He initially describes the term phenomenology as a philosophy which “declines to explainthe world,” (The Myth, 44) as it wants merely to describe actual experience, so that “it con-

ASHKAN SHOBEIRI, WAN ROSELEZAMWAN YAHYA, ARBAAYAH ALI TERMIZI

firms absurd thought in its initial assertion that there is no truth, but merely truth” (TheMyth,44). He disagrees with Husserl in his attempts to extend and give a rational basis to the notionof truth. According to Camus, transcendental phenomenology of Husserl is another desertof thoughts, because it simplifies, reduces, generelizes, and summarizes situation into aunifying theme more real than the phenomena under investigation (Schroeder, 2003: 157).Camus, in fact, found no great distance between “abstract god” of Husserl and “dazzlinggod” of Kierkegaard. He says, “Reason and the irrational lead to the same preaching” (TheMyth, 48). He also believes that the world is neither as rational as Husserl thinks nor as irra-tional as Kierkegaard depicts. For Camus the world is only unreasonable.Camus eventually does not accept their justifications, when they attempt to escape the

truth of the absurd for something transcendent, or something that resolves the dissatisfactioncaused by their confrontation with the absurd. In every case, they take an unjustifiable leapto resolve the antinomy between human beings and the world (Rhein, 1989: 13). As a result,acceptance of their ideas constitutes philosophical suicide. Camus accepts the truth of theabsurd and maintains that he must follow this truth in all its consequences (Rhein, 1989:13).In this regard, Holly White(2006) says:

Some solve the disparity by invoking divine will; others employ elaborate logic to jus-tify the absurd. Neither of these satisfied Camus. Such quick fixes disguise the jolt ofawareness that can be instructive. Instead of the conclusion—Ah, why bother? Life’sabsurd!—the absurd is an honest place to begin constructing meaning. (556)

JosephMcBride also does not find philosophical suicide as a solution to the absurd and says,“To commit ‘philosophical suicide’ is not to resolve the problem posed by the absurd but todissolve it, by destroying the humanmind and thereby negating one of the terms of the absurdequation” (1992:44). Then Camus continues his debate by considering the absurdity of humanexistence as a truth of human life, and also declares that he must support it and follow thistruth. In this regard Kamber says, “For Camus, to live life in its fullest majesty is to live itfor its own sake in unflinching recognition of the absurd” (2002:59). Kamber then concludesthat a human should refuse hope (hope for something beyond this world), and affirm his/herlife. Optimism, therefore, can be seen in Camus’s philosophy when “there is a happiness, ajoy, and a repose in living with a consciousness of the absurd” (Oaklander, 1992: 385).Since he accepts the truth of the absurd, and rejects suicide in its two forms, physical and

philosophical then he chooses revolt as the initial consequence of the absurd and the onlylogical response in an absurd world. Revolt is a continual confrontation between the humanand his/her own obscurity. It challenges the world every moment and extends awareness tothe whole of experience (Rhein, 1989: 14). “It is that constant presence of [hu]man in hisown eyes. It is not aspiration for it is devoid of hope” (The Myth, 54). Revolt makes our lifevaluable and worthwhile, and it also puts aside our “blinkers” seeing that “there is no finersight than that of the intelligence at grips with a reality that transcends it” ( The Myth, 54).Joseph McBride explains revolt and says:

Authenticity then is to be realized neither in ‘philosophical suicide’ nor in physicalannihilation, but in ‘revolt.’ ….’Revolt’ as we have seen, is defined, negatively, by theabsurd [hu]man’s rejection of suicide as well as of faith and, positively, by his decisionto live his life in conscious awareness of its absurdity. This means that life does not

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE ARTS IN SOCIETY

have for l`homme absurde any religious meaning; there is, in his view, no God and nopossibility of an afterlife with God. (1992:46)

The “revolt” of which Camus speaks is the source of freedom, the second consequence ofthe absurd. It frees the absurd human from all hopes beyond this world. “But it also allowshim the freedom to live his life as befits the [hu]man who is aware of the absurdity of hismortal condition and is therefore conscious of the absence of the moral values” (McBride,1992:46). Camus explains about the problem of freedom and elaborates it in this way that“knowing whether or not [a hu]man is free involves knowing whether he can have a master”(The Myth, 55). Then he argues about “the alternative”, and that is either we are not free onaccount of God, “the all-powerful” who is responsible for evil, or we are free and responsible;therefore, “God is not all-powerful” (The Myth, 55). He declares that he cannot understandthe kind of freedom given to him. He just considers himself as a prisoner or an individualin the midst of the “State”; that is Camus’s conception of freedom. In this regard, when theabsurd roots out all his chances for “eternal freedom”, it builds up and grants him, on theother hand, a greater “freedom of action. That privation of hope and future means an increasein [hu]man’s availability” (TheMyth, 56). In such a case, he does not count on the “someday”of the future, because death is there as a mere reality. The absurd makes him aware on thispoint perpetually that there is no hope for future when death is waiting for you. He posits,“Henceforth this is the reason for my inner freedom” (The Myth, 57). As a result, an absurdhuman is free from the restrictions both internally and externally. In this regard, Oaklander(1992) posits:

The freedom Camus refers to is not a metaphysical freedom that can be bestowed uponan individual by God. It is not the faculty of free will or the eternal freedom that encom-passes the belief that ‘someday’ one’s aim will be fulfilled. The ‘absurd [hu]man’achieves an inner freedomwhen he abandons the illusion upon which he has been living.Previously we were restricted by the future, by our belief in what we could be, in whatwe could hope for. (385)

Camus continues his argument about the mystics’ freedom in comparison with the sort offreedom that an absurd human has. He believes that mystics find their freedom “by losingthemselves in their God, by accepting his rules, they become secretly free” (The Myth, 57).They actually recover a deeper independence in their spontaneously accepted slavery. Camusthinks that they only feel that they are free “but not so much free as liberated” (The Myth,57). But in case of an absurd human he says, “the absurd [hu]man feels release fromeverything outside that passionate attention that crystallizing in him. He enjoys a freedomwith regard to common rules” (The Myth, 58). Yet he considers “a definite time limit” (58)for this new independence, and that is death. He considers such a form of freedom as the“only reasonable freedom” (58), and also regards that death and the absurd as the principlesof “the only reasonable freedom” (58). Finally Camus posits:

The absurd [hu]man thus catches sight of a burning and frigid, transparent and limiteduniverse in which nothing is possible but everything is given, and beyond which all iscollapse and nothingness. He can then decide to accept such a universe and draw from

ASHKAN SHOBEIRI, WAN ROSELEZAMWAN YAHYA, ARBAAYAH ALI TERMIZI

it his strength, his refusal to hope, and the unyielding evidence of a life without consol-ation. (58-9)

Passion is the third consequence of the absurd. For an absurd human every single momentis valuable, because he/she is constantly aware of the approaching death. He/she says, “Thepresent and the succession of the presents before a constantly conscious soul is the ideal ofthe absurd [hu]man” (TheMyth, 62). In this regard, one should be well aware of one’s passinglife; “Being aware of one’s life, one’s revolt, one’s freedom, and to the maximum, is living,and to the maximum” (The Myth, 61). However, James Wood in his article, The SicknessUnto Life, considers these consequences of the absurd as a leap that Camus is forced to reactagainst the meaninglessness of the world (1999:89).Later on, Camus astonishingly claims that quantity of experience is more crucial than the

quality. For supporting his notion, he posits:

Quantity sometimes constitutes the quality. If I can believe the latest restatements ofscientific theory, all matter is constitutes by centres of energy. Their greater or lesserquantity makes its specificity more or less remarkable. A billion ions and one ion differnot only in quantity but also in quality. It is easy to find an analogy in human experience.(60)

Moreover, an absurd mind, accordingly, substitutes the quantity of experiences to the quality.In fact, what Camus counts is not the best living but the most living. This also is applicablewhen “A [hu]man’s rule of conduct and his scale of values have no meaning except throughthe quantity and variety of experiences he has been in position to accumulate” (The Myth,59). For having a more tangible claim, therefore, he gives us an example from Greeks thathad a code of their leisure as something which is in today’s societies. Yet the tragic destiniesof a great number of men cause us to foresee that a longer experience changes this table ofvalues. “They make us imagine that the adventurer of the everyday who through merequantity of experiences would break all records (I am purposely using this sports expression)and would thus win his own code of ethics” (The Myth, 60). Therefore, in other words,Camus means: the more one experiences the better. Yet Kamber (2002) in his book, OnCamus, considers Camus’s claim in preference to quantity than to quality “an unqualifiedgeneralization”, and inconvincible. Kamber posits:

Although people who prize life for its own sake prefer to live longer than shorter lives,few, I think, would agree with Camus that quantity is always more important thanquality. Compare, for example, forty years spent doing what one enjoys in the companyof good friends and family with sixty years spent alone in a prison cell. (2002:60)

Regarding Kamber’s claim in contrast with Camus, we think it is fair to mention that Camusdoes not mean that a sixty year old man may be one third more in experience in comparisonto a man who is forty. But the issue is the recognition of absurdity, and absurdity is maintainedby awareness and clarity in consciousness, which brightens experience and set it apart fromideal valuation. In this regard, Camus posits:

For themistake is thinking that that quantity of experiences depends on the circumstancesof our life when it depends solely on us…..To twomen living the same number of years,

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the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be consciousof them. (The Myth, 61)

The Absurd ManIn the second major section of The Myth of Sisyphus which is entitled “The Absurd Man”,Camus continues his argument on a more practical level, so that he gives us three examplesof his selected absurd characters that are the seducer, the actor, and the conqueror. He alsoadds that an absurd man considers the consequences of his actions of secondary importance.An absurd man is ready to pay up. He is responsible for his actions, because he is free, but“there are no guilty ones” (TheMyth, 65). He showed how these absurd characters have “anyillusions about a life hereafter” (Rhein, 1989: 15)Eventually at the end of this chapter Camus negates any moral codes or judgment.Hence, each of these absurd characters seeks momentary happiness and nothing further.

There is no attempt or hope to solve the problems of human existence. And it is this honestytowards life, this consciousness of the uselessness of their lives that has given them theirfreedom and their happiness:

Being deprived of hope is not despairing. The flames of earth are surely worth celestialperfumes. Neither I nor anyone can judge them here. They are not striving to be better,they are attempting to be consistent. If the term ‘wise man’ can be applied to the manwho lives on what he has without speculating on what he has not, then they are wisemen. One of them, a conqueror but in the realm of mind, a Don Juan but of knowledge,an actor but of the intelligence, knows his better than anyone. (The Myth, 85)

Camus considers human situation as a war in confrontation to the world, while an absurdman is aware enough to keep himself aloof from the contradiction. His consciousness to theworld’s absurdity on one hand and his endurance in this situation on the other is, as Camuspoints, “metaphysical honour” (The Myth, 86). Therefore, a conqueror, actor, or seducer allstrive in a war that they know they are already defeated in advance.

The Myth of SisyphusFinally, in the last section which bears the same title as the book The Myth of Sisyphus,Camus uses Sisyphus as the archetypal absurd hero. Sisyphus summarizes for us some ofthe tenets of Camus’s absurd thought. Kamber says, “Camus breathes into Sisyphus an after-life of passionate lucidity and everlasting revolt” (2002:61). Camus identifies Sisyphus asthe absurd hero, because “He is, as much through his passions as through his torture” (TheMyth, 108). He scorned the gods, hated death, and had great passion for life; therefore, hispunishment was a hopeless struggle for eternity. Sisyphus’s punishment was to roll a hugerock to the top of a mountain, whence the rock rolled back down of its own weight. Thegods thought that “there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labour”(TheMyth, 107). Sisyphus was condemned to do such a futile job forever. Camus is interestedat the time when Sisyphus is coming down the mountain: “At each of those moments whenhe leaves the heights and gradually sinks towards the lairs of the gods, he is superior to hisfate. He is stronger than his rock” (The Myth, 109). Camus concludes that this myth would

ASHKAN SHOBEIRI, WAN ROSELEZAMWAN YAHYA, ARBAAYAH ALI TERMIZI

be tragic as long as its hero is conscious. With this, Camus uses Sisyphus symbolically, andthe finding derives inductively from such a mythological subject is in a way that he sees thefate of workman of today no less absurd than the Sisyphus’s task and fate. In this regardJames Wood says:

….the absurd is, in part, the awareness that life is a comic dumb show. Then the absurdperson must begin the long, always repeated struggle against the terms of that dumbshow. This is a fight that is never over, that lasts exactly the duration of the life—whichis why the absurd person cannot commit suicide. And because it is a chain of repetitions,the absurd life may be hardly discernible as different from ordinary comic daily routine.(1999:93)

During the moments that Sisyphus descends the mountain to begin his struggle again, he iswell aware about the meaninglessness of his labour and tragedy of his condition. He is ableto foresee his future from his present, and that is clear for him that his struggle will get himnowhere. Sisyphus struggles toward the summit can be viewed as a symbol representing allof humanity. Man can neither hope to reach the rock to the top of the mountain nor can heleave the rock at the foot of it. Both of these attitudes are resignation. The absurd man iswedded to his life, to his rock. Sisyphus similar to any other absurd character has no hopefor future and no power for changing his grim destiny. But his awareness transforms historment into his victory. Kamber posits:

Sisyphus sees with perfect lucidity the meaninglessness of his labor and the tragedy ofhis condition. He knows that his future is indistinguishable from his present. All thathe can change is the attitude with which he confronts his fate. (2002: 61)

By changing his attitudes, according to Kamber, Sisyphus welcomes his labor and refusesto be unhappy. In so doing, Sisyphus is stronger than the gods. Moreover, he “is able to findhappiness (le bonheur) by defiantly recapturing his fate” (Kamber, 2002: 61)Sisyphus cannot surmount his destiny, yet his torture crowns his victory in the lucidity of

his condition. “If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take placein joy” (TheMyth, 109). Sisyphus’s fate is not horrible for him as long as he accepts it withoutany preferable alternative. His punishment is horrible if he hopes or dreams for somethingbetter; Camus considers it as, “This is the rock’s victory, this is the rock itself” (The Myth,109). Therefore, if he does not hope for something better, the gods have nothing to punishhim with. For the sake of justifying his claim, Camus alludes to Oedipus who “at the outsetobeys fate without knowing it” (The Myth, 109). But from the moment he becomes awarethat he has killed his father and married his mother, his tragedy begins. Camus eventuallyconcludes that happiness and the absurd are both linked to this world, while they are connectedwith each other as well. Camus says, “Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the sameearth” (The Myth, 110).Kamber has concluded it in this way, “To the extend that one can live without appeal to

any hope or help that a deity might provide, one becomes one’s own master and in thatmastery lies a pure form of happiness” (2002:62). Both Sisyphus and Oedipus are happy,because they “‘conclude that all is well’” (The Myth, 110). Camus considers such a remarksacred, because “It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man” (The Myth, 110). Camus

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suggests that Sisyphus’s fate is awful if he hopes. As long as Sisyphus accepts his fate andbecomes aware that there is no alternative, then his fate will not appear fatal anymore. Inthis regard, he posits, “Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silencesall the idols” (The Myth, 110). In such a way, life will be fully appreciated, because it is theonly chance and there are no more alternatives. Hence, Camus suggests, “the absurd mansays yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing” (The Myth, 110). Our absurd hero,Sisyphus is actually our tragic hero. His futile labour is heroic, and moreover his awarenessis a tragic hero’s recognition, so he is “the master of his days.” In here, Camus ends hisphilosophical essay aptly:

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. ButSisyphus teaches a higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He, too, con-cludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neithersterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flakes of that night-filledmountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough tofill a man’s hear. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. (The Myth, 111)

ConclusionCamus believes that only the human experience is real. Happiness is real and it is gainedthrough experiences. Consequently, we would be able to find happiness without relying onhope, faith, or anything else that goes beyond human experience. The Myth of Sisyphus isa philosophical attempt to show the practicability of this and it is concluded with a contem-plating sentence that “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” It is fair to see what Rhein (1989)has concluded about The Myth of Sisyphus:

The essay concludes with this optimistic portrayal of Sisyphus. Void of hope, he never-theless find life so fully satisfying that he is content to spend it in his eternal struggleto the heights. Through his consciousness of the world without the chance of appeal toany transcendental value, he has discovered a happiness that springs from despair, andhe has learned that the most appalling truths lose their power once they are recognizedand accepted. The attitude exemplified by Sisyphus is alien to any possible form ofphysical or philosophic suicide. (17)

This is Camus’s post modern view of living intelligently in an Absurd world. According toSimon du Plock (2005), today’s human’s situation is similar to Sisyphus’s condition. AlthoughSisyphus was doomed to roll a huge rock to the top of the mountain, whence the rock rolledback down of its own weight and he must recommence the whole process forever, Plockconsiders Sisyphus’s struggle as heroism. That is heroism especially when awareness is in-volved. Plock claims that this is heroism for modern humanity in a way that “our heroismlies in the lucidity of the absurd struggle” (Plock, 2005:18). This is actually a modern viewof heroism, which Plock has interpreted optimistically if we change our attitude toward theabsurdity of life by accepting it; by appreciating every single moment of our life, becausethat is all we have and there is no after life:

ASHKAN SHOBEIRI, WAN ROSELEZAMWAN YAHYA, ARBAAYAH ALI TERMIZI

We must now live without hope since our present state is our only state. There is notomorrow. But to live without hope is not to live in despair, it is to live without illusion.To live in hope for the future life is to reject the life that we have, and this- to Camus-is the ultimate sin. Why? Because the ‘aware’ human being rejoices in each successivemoment as part of his or her revolt against a meaningless and finite existence. So Camususes the Greek Legend of Sisyphus to show how we should accept our fate. (Plock,2005:18)

In order to understand The Myth of Sisyphus better, it is recommended to read Camus’s TheOutsider which was written a year later after The Myth of Sisyphus. These two texts supporteach other because in The Myth of Sisyphus the concept of the absurd was attempted to bedefined philosophically, where as in The Outsider, the concept is delineated through thecharacterization and viewpoint of the protagonist.

ReferencesAl-sarayreh, Dafer.Y. (1998). “Absurdity, Alienation, and Death : Existential Affinities in the Fiction

ofWilliam Faulkner, Albert Camus, andNaguibMahfouz.” UnpublishedDiss. Ohio Univer-sity.

Camus, Albert. (1981). The Myth of Sisyphus. Trans. Justin O’brien. London: Penguin.Dru, Alexander. (1938). The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Esslin, Martin. (1968). The Theatre of the Absurd. London: Penguin.Kamber, Richard. (2002). On Camus. New York: Wadworth.Kundera, Milan. (1992). The Joke. Trans. Peter Kussi. New York: Harper Perennial.Mahfouz, Najuib.(1994). Adrift on the Nile. New York: Anchor.McBride, Joseph. (1992). Albert Camus: Philosopher and Litterateur. New York: St. Martin Press.Oaklander, L.Nathan. (1992). Existentialist Philosophy: An Introduction. New Jersey: Michigan Uni-

versity Press.Plock, Simon du. “Albert Camus - Existentialist or Absurdist? And why it matters.” Existential Ana-

lysis 16.1 (2005): 15-23.Rhein, Philip. H. (1989). Albert Camus. Boston: Twayne.Sarte, Jean-Paul. (1964). Nausea. Trans. Lloyd Alexander. New York: New Directions Publishing.Schroeder, Carole. “It Happens When the Stage Sets Collapse” Nursing Philosophy 4.2 (2003): 155-

160.Skrimshire, Stefan. “A Political Theology of the Absurd? Albert Camus and Simone Well on Social

Transformation” Literature & Theology 20.3 (2006): 286-300.Thorson, London Thomas. “Albert Camus and the Rights of Man.” Ethics 74:4 (1964): 281-291.Wesley, Richard. (2004). “Absurdity in the Works of Milan Kundera.” Unpublished Diss. California

University.White, Holly. “Practicing Camus: The Art of Engagement” Cross Currents 55.4 (2006): 554-563.Wood, James. “The Sickness unto Life: Camus and Twentieth-Century Clarity” New Republic 221.19

(1999): 88-96.

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About the AuthorsAshkan ShobeiriAshkan Shobeiri is a graduate of Azad Universities of Roodehen and Karaj, Iran in the fieldof English Literature. His M.A. research was on Determinism and Tragic Elements in EdithWharton’s Major Novels. He is a graduate research assistant at the Faculty of Modern Lan-guages and Communication, UPM and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in EnglishLiterature on Absurdism in Selected Works by Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett.

Dr. Wan Roselezam Wan YahyaWan Roselezam Wan Yahya is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the Faculty ofModern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia. She is involved in sev-eral researches dealing with literature & culture, psychoanalysis & literature, literature inESL, and diasporic literature.

Dr. Arbaayah Ali TermiziUniversiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

ASHKAN SHOBEIRI, WAN ROSELEZAMWAN YAHYA, ARBAAYAH ALI TERMIZI

EDITORS Mary Kalantzis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. Bill Cope, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Robyn Archer, Performer and Director, Paddington, Australia.

Mark Bauerlein, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C., USA.

Tressa Berman, BorderZone Arts, Inc., San Francisco, USA; University of Technology, Sydney, Australia; San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, USA.

Judy Chicago, Artist and Author, New Mexico, USA.

Nina Czegledy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

James Early, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., USA.

Mehdi Faridzadeh, International Society for Iranian Culture (ISIC), New York, USA, Tehran, Iran.

Jennifer Herd, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.

Fred Ho, Composer and Writer, New York, USA.

Andrew Jacubowicz, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

Gerald McMaster, Curator, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.

Mario Minichiello, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, Birmingham, UK.

Fred Myers, New York University, New York, USA.

Darcy Nicholas, Porirua City Council, Porirua, New Zealand.

Daniela Reimann, Institute of Media in Education, University of Education, Freiburg, Germany; University of Art and Industrial Design, Linz, Austria.

Arthur Sabatini, Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA.

Cima Sedigh, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, USA.

Peter Sellars, World Arts and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.

Ella Shohat, New York University, New York, USA.

Judy Spokes, Arts Victoria, South Melbourne, Australia.

Tonel (Antonio Eligio), Artist and Art Critic, Havana, Cuba.

Marianne Wagner-Simon, World Art Organization, Berlin, Germany.

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