The futility of life
The Futility of Life
Since the creation of society, and with it, religion, humans have pondered about why we are on this Earth. Answers have come from all corners of the world and from a variety of people. In 1942, a man named Albert Camus wrote a philosophical essay called The Myth of Sisyphus. In this essay, Camus refined Kierkegaard's ideas about existentialism into a new philosophy called absurdism. Camus' most famous work, The Stranger, goes into greater detail as the main character struggles with many of the ideas behind absurdism. In this essay, I will examine the pillars of absurdism using The Stranger, in an attempt to offer a different way to live life. In The Stranger, Mersault takes absurdist ideas and uses them as the easy way out, instead of attempting to change his world. It is while Mersault is dealing with the death of his mother that we first learn of his morbid philosophy. We see for the first time his aversion to the heat and the sun. ”But today,with the sun bearing down, making the whole landscape shimmer with heat, it was inhuman and oppressive,”(15) thought Mersault, while he watched his mother’s dead body get buried. It becomes apparent that Mersault’s number one priority is ensuring his own physical comfort, not the mourning of his recently passed mother. Another interesting symbol is brought up during the funeral. His mother’s friend Perez serves as a symbol of the pointlessness of life. Mersault sees the effort Perez puts in trying to keep up with the funeral party. All for what? To see his best friend get buried. “Perez’s face when he caught up with us for the last time...big tears of frustration and exhaustion streaming down his cheeks.”(18) This sets up the rest of Mersault’s philosophy. He questions the point of striving for things in this life, only to die at the end of it. He sees the whole process as a futile display in an attempt to impress people who are as unimportant as he is. Mersault lives only to tame the
Since the creation of society, and with it, religion, humans have pondered about why we are on this Earth. Answers have come from all corners of the world and from a variety of people. In 1942, a man named Albert Camus wrote a philosophical essay called The Myth of Sisyphus. In this essay, Camus refined Kierkegaard's ideas about existentialism into a new philosophy called absurdism. Camus' most famous work, The Stranger, goes into greater detail as the main character struggles with many of the ideas behind absurdism. In this essay, I will examine the pillars of absurdism using The Stranger, in an attempt to offer a different way to live life. In The Stranger, Mersault takes absurdist ideas and uses them as the easy way out, instead of attempting to change his world. It is while Mersault is dealing with the death of his mother that we first learn of his morbid philosophy. We see for the first time his aversion to the heat and the sun. ”But today,with the sun bearing down, making the whole landscape shimmer with heat, it was inhuman and oppressive,”(15) thought Mersault, while he watched his mother’s dead body get buried. It becomes apparent that Mersault’s number one priority is ensuring his own physical comfort, not the mourning of his recently passed mother. Another interesting symbol is brought up during the funeral. His mother’s friend Perez serves as a symbol of the pointlessness of life. Mersault sees the effort Perez puts in trying to keep up with the funeral party. All for what? To see his best friend get buried. “Perez’s face when he caught up with us for the last time...big tears of frustration and exhaustion streaming down his cheeks.”(18) This sets up the rest of Mersault’s philosophy. He questions the point of striving for things in this life, only to die at the end of it. He sees the whole process as a futile display in an attempt to impress people who are as unimportant as he is. Mersault lives only to tame the