The Myth Of Sisyphus Analysis

The literature works of The Book of Job by an unknown author and The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus are similar because they discuss about life, however, they react so differently to life. The character Job overcomes this conflict by questioning God’s faith after a disturbance in his life while Albert Camus voices that we will never find the meaning of life the way we want it. Although they look at life differently, they have both agreed that life has challenges. Job is considered to be a good and prosperous man. He lives a good life with his wife, seven sons and three daughters.

By referencing the ancient myth of Sisyphus, Taylor made is clear that to him, life is meaningless. He gave us the definition of meaninglessness as being “essentially endless pointless, and meaningfulness is therefore the opposite” (Taylor 5). After being punished by the God’s, Sisyphus rolled a rock up the hill every day, time after time, only for the rock to roll down the hill once again. Taylor sees this

The Myth of Sisyphus tells of a mortal who was punished by the gods to push a rock to the top of a mountain which would then roll back to the bottom where he was to start pushing again. Sisyphus was to continuously repeat this task or all of eternity. Many similarities in philosophies can be seen between this myth and The Stranger, both authored by Albert Camus. In The Stranger, Meursault often noted what interested and disinterested him, similarly, the narrator of the myth mentions that Sisyphus return trip down the mountain peaks his interest. Additionally, Meursault never developed any faith in a higher power which correlates to the narrator of the myth stating, “...there is no higher destiny” (Camus, paragraph 9). Next, Meursault clearly

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Sisyphus is an absurd hero because he realizes his situation, does not appeal, and yet continues the struggle. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that The Stranger is, in narrative style, also showing us an absurd hero, or the beginning of an absurd hero in Meursault.

The Myth of Sisyphus caught my attention the moment I saw the word “gods”. I have always loved tales and myths of human who interact with gods. The human within this story was Sisyphus and his interaction with the gods was not so great. I loved how they showed the twisted side of a human’s wrath and greed. He wanted revenge on his wife but when he was shown the world again he didn’t want to leave. I found it interesting that he was punished for his deadly sins by the gods, to constantly roll a stone up a hill just so that it may fall back down and for the process to repeat for eternity.

Existential protest is the rejection of any destiny a person does not want for him or herself. It is denying the right of any negativity or dreary repetition in one’s life to take over one’s mindset. It is “that return, that pause” at the top of the hill in Sisyphus’ story, wherein there is hope, joy, and a sense of accomplishment. Though they are small and fleeting, these moments in life, these turns at the top of the hill, are what assign meaning to the human existence. They have to be enough, or else life has no point, no reward, and no hope: a truth that would be unbearable.

Sisyphus is a shining example of redemption and modesty. In vanity, the dead Sisyphus tricked the gods so he can continue living in the overworld. It was a life he could not get away with, and eventually Jupiter retrieved him and returned him to the underworld, where he was tasked with rolling a stone boulder up a hillside. However, as he reaches the top, the ball is fated to always return to the bottom, forcing Sisyphus to push until the end of time. Despite this soul-crushing eternity, Sisyphus continues to push. While any of us would be miserable with this monotony, Sisyphus is satisfied simply with the challenge. It is a pure modesty that you cannot find anywhere else. It also exudes traces of existential thought; after all, if it has no

The people of the world will do their jobs, but at the end of the day do they accomplish anything? Teachers, for example, will get a new batch of students every year and are required to teach the same syllabus as they did in previous years. This is repeated year after year. Perhaps what they are forced to teach actually sticks in the minds of the kids and is of value to them in the future, or maybe they just forget it and what they have learned is never put to any use. Unfortunately, all the teacher’s hard work goes down the drain. In the essay, “ The Myth of Sisyphus”, by Albert Camus, he speaks about a man, a storyteller, such as Homer, who was cursed by the Gods to push a rock up a mountain, but when he finally reached the top of his journey, he would have to repeat this cycle, because the rock would roll right back down all the way to the bottom of the mountain. He was condemned to do this absurd job for an eternity. A quote from the essay says, “At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.” All his effort, all his pain, wasted. A cancer researcher will spend hours on hours to attempt to find a cure, but his “rock” will roll back down eventually as well. The working class can relate to this. They will work for countless hours, through tough times and even through the holidays, but what do they achieve? Kids can even relate to the struggle with

at the outset feels the same symptoms of the first option of hesitation, fatigue and considering his mind a thousand times off a thousand times. It seems as if it pushes the Rock to the top, even if they hit rock to the top of the cliff, hairdryer comfort of mixed with tired of everyday. Similar rights in this option with the myth of Sisyphus in Greek mythology where unimaginable gods Alps to pay the Rock to the top of the Mountain, to arrive until the rolling to the valley and then back again thus forever in the chastisement, and says the legend.

“Existential angst prevents the protagonist from fulfilling his individual purpose.” This quote is justifiable to the extent that if a man views his existence as meaningless they tend to overlook and reject their point of living. According to sartre essence is a factor that classifies a being as existing. Thus, if one is in the state of angst they believe that their existence has no essence. Further more they lack enthusiasm and motivation that they need to achieve their individual purpose. In “The stranger,” Albert Camus depicts the life of a strange man whose absurd decisions averted him from achieving his individual effort. Similarly in “the myth of Sisyphus,” ———

Transition Statement: The futility of ones life is an evident theme in Homer’s and Camus’s interpretation for The Myth of Sisyphus.

Albert Camus is a famous writer who discusses a wide variety of topics in his works. His account of the myth of Sisyphus touches on a topic that most writers are either afraid of or unwilling to talk about. This is the issue of suicide and how to deal with it as an individual and as a community. The principal point in the story by Camus is the presence of absurdity in our very existence. The presence of life and all living things that we are aware of is an absurdity according to Camus, who questions the plausibility of some people considering suicide to be the best solution to this absurdity. Having an understanding of the elements of nature that make up our world does not mean that it will ever be possible to understand—and fully appreciate—the reasons why our world is as it is. Whether one believes in God and the creation account, in the evolution process or in the Big Bang Theory among others is irrelevant because of the underlying absurdity to all of these scenarios (Camus 3). He writes that it was his intention to find the relationship between suicide and the absurd. This essay by Camus leads the reader to make an assessment of life and arrive at a suitable decision. This paper will provide a further understanding of these thoughts. This paper will show that life is simply meaningless but must be appreciated nonetheless.

The passage The Myth of Sisyphus, while engaging to an extent, seemed a touch too confusing in its message for my tastes. I understood how Sisyphus’ eternal punishment in the underworld relates to the philosophy of absurdism, working and working to an ultimately pointless end, but the rest of the passage felt muddled in all the verbose language. In particular, I lost interest in the seventh paragraph, when Camus switches to another Greek myth comparison (that of Oedipus) with no real explanation. I found that quite jarring. His point about Sisyphus being happy during his punishment mystified me. His closing statement is that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” (Camus). Maybe it has to do with the translation to another language and another culture,

In 1942, Albert Camus chose this myth to illustrate his concept of the absurd man. In his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus affirms that the main character of this myth is an absurd hero because he is conscious

In a sense, Sisyphus’s acceptance of the repetitive acts as the ultimate defiance, allowing for the paradox of an open embrace of an assignment while defying the task simultaneously. Yet, the question at hand remains: how does Sisyphus’s mundane chore relate to Manfred’s existence as a man of constant sorrow? Though the two tales may seem as if no similarities exist, the two tasks the protagonists endure bear subtle comparisons. Manfred, sentenced to eternal guilt and days of never ending solace, pushes his own boulder each day up the massive hill only for it to spiral down to the beginning, just as Sisyphus had before him. Evidence of such a struggle exists throughout the text. Within his opening soliloquy, Manfred acknowledges his battle with guilt, stating, “My Slumbers – if I slumber – are no sleep, But a continuance of enduring thought... But Grief should be the Instructor of the wise; Sorrow is knowledge” (Byron. I. I. 3-4, 9-10). Using these small phrases of the soliloquy, Manfred’s acceptance aligns directly with that of Sisyphus and his respective acceptance of his own task at hand. Manfred attributes his sullen status to the fervent ability to gain knowledge by simply being sad, much like Sisyphus could possibly highlight his gain of muscle to the hard labor of boulder rolling. Each respective task has in some form strengthened the man being tested,