Meursault and Sisyphus

Meursault and Sisyphus

(A Movie Still for DETACHMENT)

Whoever once read the book L'ÉTRANGER of Camus in his/her adolescence, I assume nobody couldn’t be fanatical about the detachment of Meursault. I still can’t let go this character out of my affection, and still L'ÉTRANGER is one of my favorite book. Thinking of “Nothing else Matters” easily captivate us. This a much misunderstood idea, so called ‘nihilism’, can readily misled us if we are eager to justify this. Even the matter like ‘Social Contract’ by Rousseau seems so minor and unimportant within this awareness of reality. Meursault who represents this attractive way of thinking, ends up...... (I don’t want to spoil the plot for somebody who haven’t read «The Stranger» yet.) However, unlike Meursault, Camus lived his life in a fierce and intense endeavor trying to make some sense of meaningless which obviously seems quite paradoxical. He won the Novel Prize, distinctly had made great achievements throughout the history of literature, and he even engaged himself in the resistance movement during the Second World War. Of course, he never neglected his physical pleasure as well.

(Camus, Google Image)

How come the life of author, who had the main theme of absurd and meaningless, can fully productive and glowing like tightly pressed sandwich? It seems certain that Camus wrote «The Stranger» to disclose some certain absurdity of our life. To explain his novel there needs to look through his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. Against this absurd fate, Sisyphus keeps repetitive rebellion which seems even certain ‘sublimity’. The deed of Sisyphus which is the pronoun of meaningless life is painful, but not just meaningless. It is clearly harsh because the deed does not produce any value in the face of its inexhaustible agony, which has great resemblance to most of the life of human beings according to Meursault. As a famous mention by Nietzsche, what have been dominated the human race is the coincidence as empty nothingness. However, the life of Sisyphus not only doesn’t have the meaning of life, but also there is no purpose. Here, too, there is few or no inherent purpose in most of human activities which daily encountered. Of course, there is a possibility of having certain intervenient purpose which has no relation to my own will; however, is there any existing creature with only one’s own action and free will? Übermensch?

(Sisyphus, Google Image)

Camus made mention of this absurd repetition as: “This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.” Methods to be rid of this punishment, people might usually come up whit these three: 1) Suicide 2) Religious hope 3) Rebellion. Suicide is the elimination of the existing human part, religious hope is the elimination of the existing world part. However, as Camus, both cannot be an answer because of its biased renunciation. Only way to deal with these two insulated world is staring the very things and fight against those: “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” This fact seems incendiary at a glance, however, in some sense deeper, this drives thee irritate. The only way to overcome the unbearable absurd is barely the ‘withstanding’ in this ‘absurd freedom’.

The lucidity that was to constitute his torture
at the same time crowns his victory.
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
 -
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Camus insists that the life of no meaning is better that the like of the obsession of meaning. We hope our life has some meaning. And when the elimination of GOD had made, there are some few do tries to get a grip of some meaning of life with radical and resolute choices. The reason is that the weakness of human being wishes it would have certain tiny and tenuous wave when it comes to death, at least, because of the meaningless of existence. However, the fact is that human being is apparently a small and unimportant dust, for a little while imagining but to the infinite universe. Merely in one’s own sight, the very shine dust brightly. This absurd deserves (actually, more than) the metaphor of Sisyphus. With all the strength Sisyphus “rolling a rock up to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight.” We know that the rock will fall back, however, ‘ceaselessly’, we keeps repeating the act in our own life or entire history while existing on the time. Really? Why do we have to? Let’s return and look again Meursault.

(An interesting adaptation of Camus’ L'ÉTRANGER)

There seem to dwell two different Meursault in the literature. Meursault himself is a L'Étranger; however, at the same time, inside himself too, two different Meursault each other L'Étranger. There are no reason to expect any reason in the behavior of Meursault, and his numbness inflame the base sense of reader most painfully. The ‘heterogeneity’ which Meursault refuses, somehow build certain meaning within the crack of meaningless. The meaningless attain the most significance only because it refuses the constructed world? Is the rebuff of repetition such as Sisyphus’, the deeds of becoming the ownmost oneself or hollow L'Étranger as nothingness? What if there is no GOD when Sisyphus has to fulfill its own punishment? What if the existence of GOD(or DEATH of god) is the justification about one’s own guilt or ‘significant meaningless’? It doesn’t seem like things could get worse, when Sisyphus abandon his burden and shoot the crow. If there is no god, nothing will happen. If there is god, he will punish him again with maybe rolling two rocks up? Worst destiny is actually not the worst destiny, as a matter of fact, it is perhaps the fate of implying every possibility.

The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to.
-
 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

(Meursault, Illustrate)