The Myth Of Sisyphus

Katie Liu
Professor Evans
Existentialism
1 May 2017
Camus paper hype
Compared to the immortal world, an individual is insignificant. However, when faced with the triviality of their lives, people often wish to deny this fact. They begin to desire a comprehensible unity in the world and seek knowledge in order to diminish the size of the universe and increase their own importance. Yet, this all-encompassing certainty that explains life and gives life meaning is impossible to find. Ultimately, the conflicting idea of wanting universal acknowledge and the world’s inability to fulfill that need creates the feeling of the Absurd. This conflict with the world is a fundamental aspect of human nature, explored extensively in Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.
This directly conflicts what individuals expect from the universe. This perpetual state of disappointment and contradiction ultimately results from the comparing and juxtaposition of two incompatible ideas – our desire to have meaning in life juxtaposed with the idea that life has no meaning. They are faced with their inner desire to find reason and unity in the world, a world that provides nothing except for empty, meaningless phenomena. This contradiction creates the Absurd, which does not exist on its own in the desires of the individual or in the universe they live in, but within the confrontation between the two. People only feel the absurd when the need for answers is coupled with the universe’s silence. Faced with the feeling of the absurd, rather than perceiving themselves as individuals with free will and agency, people reduce themselves down to mindless followers of monotonous routine. Desires, choice, and actions become futile, and individuals conclude that life is ultimately
They can be free, receptive, and live with no goals. They can see unbiased truth and live with full awareness of the futility and beauty of life. By accepting their fate, they have harmony, living life without doubt. Because they live in full reality, they “must” be happy because they are equipped with their own experience. They draw their happiness from experience, and not an illusion of something better. The genuine happiness they feel, deriving from their own life, results in small moments of lucidity and freedom. Life becomes victorious because they concentrate on their freedom, the refusal to hope, and the knowledge of absurdity. After all, “the lucidity that was to constitute [their] torture at the same time crowns [their] victory” (121). When individuals abandon their hope, fate will not seem so terrible. Instead, they find genuine happiness. The Absurd is the conflict between human desires and reason, and the universe. This conflict exists as the individual in consciously aware. Thus, in order to fully understand and accept the absurd, the individual must maintain an awareness of the conflict without attempting to conquer it. The absurd fate is only terrible if there is continuous hope, if there is something that is worth reaching for. Only relative to something better is the individuals’ fate bad. Thus, with full