The Myth of Sisyphus

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1942

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Part 1

Part 2

Parts 3-4

Part 5

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Background

Literary Context: The Writing Cycle of Albert Camus

Camus did his major writing in three cycles. Each contained a book-length essay, a novel, and a play; each was symbolized by a character from ancient Greek mythology. The first cycle deals with the absurdity of life and whether suicide was the proper response; it contains The Myth of Sisyphus, the novel The Stranger, and the play Caligula. The Greek character Sisyphus symbolizes this cycle: He must push a rock up a hill only to have it fall back down, and he must do so endlessly.

The second cycle addresses rebellion as a response to the impossibly absurd situations inherent in social and political oppression. This cycle contains a lengthy essay, The Rebel, on the possibility of rebellion as an antidote to injustice; a novel, The Plague, about a pandemic and a forced lockdown; and a play, The Just Assassins. The second cycle’s symbol is the Greek god Prometheus, who was punished for bringing fire to humans.

The third cycle, interrupted by Camus’s untimely death in 1960, sought to understand love from the absurdist perspective. The cycle contains an unfinished draft of an autobiographical novel, The First Man; its symbolic Greek character, the goddess Nemesis, punishes mortals who become arrogant toward the gods.

The Myth of Sisyphus laid the philosophical groundwork for Camus’s three writing cycles. It also laid groundwork for absurdist fiction, an extension of modernism prompted by disillusionment that arose World War II. Absurdist works, including the Theater of the Absurd, center on issues of existentialism, examining the meaninglessness of human existence. Camus received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” (“Albert Camus Facts.” The Nobel Prize.)

Historical Context: World War Two

Camus mentions the possibility of an absurd peace treaty. He wrote Sisyphus during World War II, a conflict that was itself the outcome of an onerous and humiliating treaty imposed on Germany after World War I. The sense of futility that hovered over the first war, with its endless slaughter across an unmoving frontier, transferred itself onto a new war whose horrors exceeded the previous conflict. Immense efforts carried out by both sides resulted only in death and destruction; the absurdity of this situation was clear to all.

Sisyphus was first read by a French people who lived within the perpetual, anxious tension of military occupation by German invaders. Their lives for a time seemed peaceful, yet members of their community were continually being arrested and sent away, never to return. Such a life seems manifestly absurd; Camus’s commentary, and his prescription for how to live boldly in an absurd situation, found an appreciative readership. His later works, which discussed rebellion in the face of absurd oppression, would impact rebels during the 1950s uprisings in the French colonies of North Africa.

Camus never mentions the German occupation—he was under the same restrictions as the rest of France, and he didn’t want to draw attention to his own efforts in the underground French Resistance—but readers had no trouble applying his philosophy to their situation. His analogy about a man absurdly attacking a group of machine guns with a sword served as a warning about the futility of open war by a disarmed French population against a fully provisioned enemy.

Sociocultural Context: Public Intellectuals

A public intellectual is a person who thinks deeply about philosophy or the arts or sciences, and who writes or speaks about issues facing society. Among Westernized peoples, the French give special importance to their public intellectuals.

Camus’s status as a public intellectual began during World War II with the publication of his books The Stranger, about an alienated man on trial for murder, and The Myth of Sisyphus, which examines alienation and absurdity. With the end of the war and the rebirth of open speech, Camus’s popularity soared; he and fellow existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre shared fame at the top of the intellectual pyramid.

Camus expressed himself clearly on difficult subjects; he offered new and interesting ideas about how to face life’s challenges; and he was handsome and something of a womanizer—his extramarital affair with a Spanish actress caused a scandal. These qualities were irresistible to many French enthusiasts and helped make him both celebrated and infamous.

Camus’s 1957 Nobel Prize burnished his reputation; his untimely accidental death in an automobile accident less than three years later at age 46 increased his appeal, especially since he, the founder of absurdism, suffered an ironically absurd end.