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A Comparison of the Heroes Of The Stranger (The Outsider) and The Myth of Sisyphus

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The Absurd Heroes Of The Stranger (The Outsider) and The Myth of Sisyphus

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.

In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus establishes the epistemology on which he bases all his works. Ant it's a very simple epistemology. He says: "This heart within me I feel and I judge that I exist. This world I can touch and likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge and the rest is construction. Between the certainty I have of my …show more content…

Lord Capulet orders Juliet to marry Count Paris. She protests, to no end. She then turns to her mother who only says that you will do as your father says. Then, in desperation, she turns to her nurse, who, in her inimitable way, she says well, marry him, two husbands will be better than one, you will have more fun in bed. At this point in the play Shakespeare has, and the stage directions are implicit in the lines themselves, left Juliet alone, alone on-stage, and she kneels and she turns now from her earthly father to her Heavenly Father and says: "Is there no pity in the clouds that can see the depth of my grief?" And there is no answer, only silence. That is the absurd.

Perhaps the first absurd heroine was Rachel. You recall the slaughter of the innocents where Herod had all the young male babies of two years and younger put to death to ensure the liquidation of any possible king. And Rachel cried out, and Matthew tells it in these words: "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted because they are not." And there was no answer to the cry, only silence. That silence is the absurd.

Is there something of this sense of the absurd to be found in Camus?

Camus wrote The Stranger at the same time as The Myth of Sisyphus, and I

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