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Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is Albert Camus announced this in the Introduction to The Rebel (1951). Encompassing the author in his above mentioned predicament, it would be impossible, however, to unravel his being. We would, thus, begin this analysis on Camus with the Sisyphus-like pre-supposition of sure shot failure, philosophies by the great man himself. Camus was born in 1913 at Mondovi in Algeria & was fostered all through by extreme poverty.
He also played a vital role in the intellectual probes associated with the horrid World Wars. It was the publication of his essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) that transformed him from just a provincial essayist to one of the canonical modern & post modern thinkers. In that celebrated essay, Camus presents the idea of suicide- actual & philosophical as the two modes to attain the so-called existential freedom. Even in The Fall (1956), he communicates through Jean-Baptiste Clarence -- - Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to your skepticism. Coming back to The Myth of Sisyphus, There Camus comes up with the image of the absurd world.
It is absurd in its unrealized multiplicities which are not explicable within any single logical paradigm. It is essentially the vision of a universe, torn between numerous cross- currents (cultural, social, political, economic & metaphysical), where logical explanation is but an el dorado. Absurd is to Camus, the only animating link between the individual & the external world -- The absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in their presence together... it is the only bond uniting them. And so the only way to combat it is to learn to live with its lethal awareness. In this banal consciousness lies Camus existential credo -- This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists.
This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. So sensory experiences, in his opinion, end with those of the individual & his objective reality & this symbiotic existence makes & unmakes every other structure. Existentialism then is, as it were, a quest to touch, if not possess the still point of the turning world which perhaps Thomas Beckett felt reaching, as the swords came in, all together, in a quiet, subdued silence, in T. S. Eliot's The Murder in the Cathedral.
Camus regards artistic creation as a means to multiply life & thereby combat absurdity -- "The artist commits himself and becomes himself in his work. " His examples of the absurd hero in the essay are Don Juan, The Actor, The Conqueror etc. All of them have, in common, some fundamental nuances about life. They all feel that there is an absolute dearth of order in external reality. That is what Meursault, the protagonist of Camus novel The Stranger (1942), says -- Nothing, nothing mattered, and I know why, very much in the manner of Beckett's Vladimir who says -- Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it is awful! . Even Dr. Rieux, the absurd figure in Camus The Plague realizes so, because he too is under a death-sentence, trapped by a seemingly unending torment and yet, like Sisyphus, he continues to perform his duty, no matter how useless or how insignificant his action turns out to be.
Camus frames The Plague (1947) in the tropes of traditional fictional structure; somewhere down the line, it also operates as a prelude to The Rebel. The tale of collective suffering due to the intrusion of the plague into the town of Oran, on the Algerian coast, is also a tale of putting up a stolid resistance against the disease & thus a particularized instance of the revolt. Dr. Rieux, the central character, is left with a negation of the Christian concept of an all-powerful & all-good God as he comes across the horridly unjust death of the innocent little boy, owing to the murderous plague.
It is this notion of revolt, which he de-contextualizes in the mould of a semi-philosophical treatise in The Rebel. Hence, with The Plague, Camus starts his journey from the abyss of nihilism to a profound humanism. While Bertrand d Actor calls it a new humanitarianism, Marcel Thiebaut admires Camus for reintegrating into an absurd world, the moral principles which govern a world which is not absurd. As Sartre points out in his pamphlet- Existentialism is Humanism (1946), Camus observes -- -- I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again.
But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Each time the rock rolls down, he is able to look back upon his life and analyze it afresh. Nothing can be more existentialist. Bob Lane unlocks the key which opens up the struggle against the absurd in a three-tier climactic discourse -- Vladimir recognizes, Meursault confronts, and Sisyphus transcends. So there is no chaos in this absurd vision. To use the words of Bob Lane, -- the experience of the absurd is the proof of man's uniqueness and the foundation of his dignity and freedom.
In his 1941 -novel The Stranger, Camus depicts Meursault, an individual going through the motions of life without any emotive expectations from it. His existential resignation from the emotion as well as from the logic of emerging realities turns him into an atheist, viewing life as one views a movie Its all the same to me. He receives the news of his mothers death merely with a faint annoyance at having to ask for two days leave of absence from the office where he works. At the time of his mothers funeral journey, he looks rather automatically & objectively at all the disparate details around (the whiteness of the roots of the grave, the coffin, the nurses clothes etc).
But this indifference is certainly not an enjoyable construct on Meursault's part as he finally clarifies in the night before his own hanging -- -So close to death, mother must have felt liberated & ready to live her life aga...
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Research essay sample on Judge That It Exists Myth Of Sisyphus Camus
