The Myth Of Sisyphus Analysis

With everything going on with the upcoming presidential election, the political community has been very prominent in society the past several months. While doing research on myths, I came across The Myth of Sisyphus and immediately made many connections between the two subjects. Both of these topics have a lot to do with manipulation and deception. With politics especially, people today have a lot of opinions on the dynamics of that community. They both deal with continuous repetition and constantly giving your all to make accomplish a task. What is interesting though is exactly to what extent can The Myth of Sisyphus be related to our modern day political community?

Camus explanations of the Myth of Sisyphus, presented the concept of the absurd by outlining the beliefs that an individuals life has worth but only his live in a world that denies such worth to survive. Therefore, the absurdity in the statement, explains the fact of a clash between the orders through which an individuals mind hard for, likewise the lack of order that we as humans find in the world.

When a person describes something as a Sisyphean task they are referring to a task that has no point or objective to it. This description derives from the legend of the Greek king of Ephyra, Sisyphus. The myth of Sisyphus is not well agreed upon by scholars but the main theme of the myth is that King Sisyphus angered the Gods of Olympus by showing hubris. As a punishment Zeus condemned Sisyphus to roll a giant boulder up a mountain in the Underworld; however Zeus enchanted the boulder so that every time that Sisyphus reached the top of the mountain, the boulder would roll back down and Sisyphus would have to start all over again. Zeus did this to show that he himself was more cunning than Sisyphus and that he came up with the eternal punishment

    Eddins’ argument of the relevance of Camus’s work to Hemmingway’s is delineated in the Santiago and Sisyphus’s similarities. Both are lone men who are ,”engaged in an isolated, repetitive struggle that must end in defeat.” (2). Only their stubborn spirit and determination drives them despite their unforgiving environment.

Sisyphus is a shining example of redemption and modesty. In vanity, the dead Sisyphus tricked the gods so he can continue living in the overworld. It was a life he could not get away with, and eventually Jupiter retrieved him and returned him to the underworld, where he was tasked with rolling a stone boulder up a hillside. However, as he reaches the top, the ball is fated to always return to the bottom, forcing Sisyphus to push until the end of time. Despite this soul-crushing eternity, Sisyphus continues to push. While any of us would be miserable with this monotony, Sisyphus is satisfied simply with the challenge. It is a pure modesty that you cannot find anywhere else. It also exudes traces of existential thought; after all, if it has no

The Myth of Sisyphus tells of a mortal who was punished by the gods to push a rock to the top of a mountain which would then roll back to the bottom where he was to start pushing again. Sisyphus was to continuously repeat this task or all of eternity. Many similarities in philosophies can be seen between this myth and The Stranger, both authored by Albert Camus. In The Stranger, Meursault often noted what interested and disinterested him, similarly, the narrator of the myth mentions that Sisyphus return trip down the mountain peaks his interest. Additionally, Meursault never developed any faith in a higher power which correlates to the narrator of the myth stating, “...there is no higher destiny” (Camus, paragraph 9). Next, Meursault clearly

Existential protest is the rejection of any destiny a person does not want for him or herself. It is denying the right of any negativity or dreary repetition in one’s life to take over one’s mindset. It is “that return, that pause” at the top of the hill in Sisyphus’ story, wherein there is hope, joy, and a sense of accomplishment. Though they are small and fleeting, these moments in life, these turns at the top of the hill, are what assign meaning to the human existence. They have to be enough, or else life has no point, no reward, and no hope: a truth that would be unbearable.

The Myth of Sisyphus caught my attention the moment I saw the word “gods”. I have always loved tales and myths of human who interact with gods. The human within this story was Sisyphus and his interaction with the gods was not so great. I loved how they showed the twisted side of a human’s wrath and greed. He wanted revenge on his wife but when he was shown the world again he didn’t want to leave. I found it interesting that he was punished for his deadly sins by the gods, to constantly roll a stone up a hill just so that it may fall back down and for the process to repeat for eternity.

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.

at the outset feels the same symptoms of the first option of hesitation, fatigue and considering his mind a thousand times off a thousand times. It seems as if it pushes the Rock to the top, even if they hit rock to the top of the cliff, hairdryer comfort of mixed with tired of everyday. Similar rights in this option with the myth of Sisyphus in Greek mythology where unimaginable gods Alps to pay the Rock to the top of the Mountain, to arrive until the rolling to the valley and then back again thus forever in the chastisement, and says the legend.

In 1942, Albert Camus chose this myth to illustrate his concept of the absurd man. In his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus affirms that the main character of this myth is an absurd hero because he is conscious

The passage The Myth of Sisyphus, while engaging to an extent, seemed a touch too confusing in its message for my tastes. I understood how Sisyphus’ eternal punishment in the underworld relates to the philosophy of absurdism, working and working to an ultimately pointless end, but the rest of the passage felt muddled in all the verbose language. In particular, I lost interest in the seventh paragraph, when Camus switches to another Greek myth comparison (that of Oedipus) with no real explanation. I found that quite jarring. His point about Sisyphus being happy during his punishment mystified me. His closing statement is that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” (Camus). Maybe it has to do with the translation to another language and another culture,

In a sense, Sisyphus’s acceptance of the repetitive acts as the ultimate defiance, allowing for the paradox of an open embrace of an assignment while defying the task simultaneously. Yet, the question at hand remains: how does Sisyphus’s mundane chore relate to Manfred’s existence as a man of constant sorrow? Though the two tales may seem as if no similarities exist, the two tasks the protagonists endure bear subtle comparisons. Manfred, sentenced to eternal guilt and days of never ending solace, pushes his own boulder each day up the massive hill only for it to spiral down to the beginning, just as Sisyphus had before him. Evidence of such a struggle exists throughout the text. Within his opening soliloquy, Manfred acknowledges his battle with guilt, stating, “My Slumbers – if I slumber – are no sleep, But a continuance of enduring thought... But Grief should be the Instructor of the wise; Sorrow is knowledge” (Byron. I. I. 3-4, 9-10). Using these small phrases of the soliloquy, Manfred’s acceptance aligns directly with that of Sisyphus and his respective acceptance of his own task at hand. Manfred attributes his sullen status to the fervent ability to gain knowledge by simply being sad, much like Sisyphus could possibly highlight his gain of muscle to the hard labor of boulder rolling. Each respective task has in some form strengthened the man being tested,

The people of the world will do their jobs, but at the end of the day do they accomplish anything? Teachers, for example, will get a new batch of students every year and are required to teach the same syllabus as they did in previous years. This is repeated year after year. Perhaps what they are forced to teach actually sticks in the minds of the kids and is of value to them in the future, or maybe they just forget it and what they have learned is never put to any use. Unfortunately, all the teacher’s hard work goes down the drain. In the essay, “ The Myth of Sisyphus”, by Albert Camus, he speaks about a man, a storyteller, such as Homer, who was cursed by the Gods to push a rock up a mountain, but when he finally reached the top of his journey, he would have to repeat this cycle, because the rock would roll right back down all the way to the bottom of the mountain. He was condemned to do this absurd job for an eternity. A quote from the essay says, “At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.” All his effort, all his pain, wasted. A cancer researcher will spend hours on hours to attempt to find a cure, but his “rock” will roll back down eventually as well. The working class can relate to this. They will work for countless hours, through tough times and even through the holidays, but what do they achieve? Kids can even relate to the struggle with

Transition Statement: The futility of ones life is an evident theme in Homer’s and Camus’s interpretation for The Myth of Sisyphus.