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

Themes

The Absurdity of Life

Life is absurd, not because it’s futile but because we wish it weren’t hopeless. The vast gulf between the human yearning for certainty and the meaningless emptiness of reality is the measure of that absurdity.

There are two ways to make absurdity go away: find certainty or cease to care about it. For those who pine for understanding but realize there’s none forthcoming, suicide is a possibility, though Camus instead recommends facing absurdity squarely. Those who can’t stand the pain of not understanding can invent comforting beliefs to calm themselves, but Camus condemns this as a form of cowardice.

Even if God exists, the existential problem remains: “either we are not free and God the all-powerful is responsible for evil. Or we are free and responsible but God is not all-powerful” (56). Each outcome causes existence to collapse into meaninglessness. Thus, it’s not possible to be rescued from our existential dilemma by seeking God’s protection. We must look elsewhere for reassurance.

Before long, however, an intelligent person will realize that there is no reassurance, no place of safety, and no answer to the basic questions about life. With nowhere to turn, and in the face of unbearable emptiness, most people spend their lives pretending that everything is fine; they push away their fears about death and the empty futility that it represents. Even the existentialists, who deal specifically with life’s absurdities and should know better, usually can’t stare into the abyss of emptiness without turning away.

Camus declares that absurdity must be dealt with directly, with eyes wide open and with frank acceptance of the pain. Absurdity is a fact, and facing it squarely wins a person some measure of freedom from the crippling effects of self-deceit. With the truth of absurdity as a starting point, a person can venture off in any direction, to create a life that becomes something of an art project that, even if it must remain meaningless, at least contains willful energy and a spirit of adventure.

The Question of Suicide

The only truly important philosophical problem, argues Camus, is whether life is worth living and whether a person should live or take their own life. For Camus, the answer is that life is absurd and therefore basically worthless, but that suicide isn’t the best response.

Societies treat suicide as a syndrome and tend to misunderstand it. People are often surprised when someone commits suicide, as if there was a sudden cause, but the true reason may be years in the making: “The worm is in man’s heart. That is where it must be sought” (5). Camus admits that suicide may be appropriate at times. For some, it’s a confession that life has overwhelmed them. For others, it might be a statement; Dostoevsky’s character Kirilov kills himself thinking this will awaken people to the unfairness of life.

A better response than suicide, Camus believes, is to face the absurdity head-on, not so much to defeat it but to keep it fully in mind. In this way, even if one’s life is ultimately meaningless, it at least contains a verve, an animal energy that sharpens the spirit. The goal isn’t better awareness but more of it.

One way to kill oneself yet remain alive is what Camus calls “philosophical suicide.” This involves seeing the truth about life’s absurdity and turning away from it, covering it with distractions or comforting beliefs about a satisfying afterlife that renders death unimportant. Lying to oneself in this way reduces a person’s power to act and to create without restriction. Instead, life becomes bland, and one never leaves the safety of the small world of false certainties to venture out into the windswept, dry world of actual reality, with its harsh beauty and darkly inspiring truths.

If life is absurd, then all acts are futile and meaningless, and any act a person takes is no less valid than any other. Camus therefore accepts suicide, and he respects those who dare to take so drastic a step. However, he believes that in most cases, suicide isn’t the best option. He criticizes physical suicide less than intellectual suicide, by which a person relieves himself of the responsibility of facing the truth, an act of cowardice that makes life paltry and small. Though it might be better to be dead than a coward, it’s better still to accept the truth and move on.

The Predicament of Sisyphus

Sisyphus is an antihero who symbolizes the extremes of absurdity; he serves as a kind of mascot for the book. His afterlife in the ancient Greek underworld makes for a hellish existence, one that continues forever without reprieve or redemption. Futility writ large, Sisyphus’s punishment—to endlessly push a boulder up a hill—becomes an antidote to the faint hope that eternity finally will prove wonderful.

In life, Sisyphus was something of a rogue, an example of Camus’s character type the conqueror, who lives boldly without worrying himself about ethical niceties. For the conqueror, it’s more important to act than to be correct. Sisyphus founded the ancient city of Corinth and did whatever it took to make the city thrive. He bargained with a river god for a spring to provide water for his growing urb. The river god’s daughter had been carried off by Zeus, who wanted to ravish her, and the river god wanted to rescue his daughter. Sisyphus happened to see Zeus flying past with her, and he knew where they went. In exchange for this information, Corinth got the spring; in exchange for revealing Zeus’s secret, Sisyphus got eternal punishment.

Sisyphus’s fate echoes that of every human: No matter how hard we try to stabilize it, the rock of our lives will never stay put but instead will roll back down and force us to start over. Relationships end; careers fall apart; health problems erupt; just when we think we’ve got life by the horns, it gores us.

In the end, life is a futile enterprise, yet people persist—not because they have to, like Sisyphus, but because they hope to arrive at a permanently good place. Camus uses Sisyphus as a philosophical wake-up call: He warns us that we, too, have no hope of arrival. Like Sisyphus, we must always repeat our labors; never can we complete them. The only end to our struggles is death. Our lives are thus an absurd journey from birth to suffering to oblivion. All too soon, this drama, filled with a sense of importance and earnestness, will be completely forgotten.

Sisyphus’s advantage over us is that he knows his fate and meets it boldly. Disabused of all hope, he descends the slope and once again shoves the boulder of fate back up the hill, only to see it mock him by rolling back down. His triumph is in owning his fate, reveling in it, and thereby mocking the gods who hoped to make him suffer: “The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory” (121). Sisyphus suffers, but he doesn’t care, and that taunts the gods as endlessly as the rock taunts Sisyphus.