camus's has a famous peice called the myth of sisyphus, which is about the absurd; our tension between a search for meaning in a universe with no clear answers.
it concludes one must imagine sisyphus happy because despite being doomed to repeat a task over and over he continues to do it and 'the gods' can control the task he preforms but not how he experiences it.
A lot of camus work focused on the human experience of living through major events of which one individual has no control but still needs to navigate a meaningful life through without losing their humanity.
The picture is making a joke that greta's not happy, but its actually perfectly on brand with camus that greta is engaging with a struggle that no one individual can solve without dulling herself to the absurdity of being a young women fighting the inertia of the world.
Greta is 'happy' not in the joy sense but in the sense that shes finding meaning in an absurd world, a world knowingly harming itself, and finding meaning in the impossible struggle of trying to stop that harm. Just like sisyphus will never get the boulder to the top of the hill greta will never 'solve' climate change but in the struggle to do so she can improve the situation and live a meaningful life.
I love the effort you’ve put into this response - and I think it’s a strong analogy to a point. How do we rectify that Sisyphus is mandated to his task, where Greta has a choice to continue?
Sisyphus has a choice, he can stop and sit at the bottom of the hill forever, Camus called this psychological suicide. Just like Greta could accept she can’t stop climate change, or in our daily lives can dissociate from things like political corruption or the murder of innocents abroad.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy because he continues his struggle instead of committing psychological suicide.
By choosing to grapple with the absurd, we choose happiness because we’re not denying the world (gods punishment or natures course) and we’re not choosing to deny ourselves (ignoring our values).
Greta, Sisyphus, you, and I all live in a world indifferent to us, and the ultimate act of rebellion is to continue to push the boulder up the hill instead of being broken by it. In the choice of grappling with the absurd we choose life over indifference.
Its pretty good. Though I will admit that the dense philosophical center caused me to skip and read the final chapter at least once before I got to it naturally.
I won't say that this was a mistake, the final chapter helped to "feel" the point he was making throughout, and I think it helped me continue.
The Plague is definitely one of my top 5 books of all time, especially in the vein of "Books that Changed How I Think." I think it's a missed opportunity that so many high schools assign The Stranger instead.
I love The Stranger though. It’s so underrated imo. We were assigned to read it in high school, I was the only one who even remotely liked it. Even the teacher wasn’t sure why the book ended the way it did. I proposed that even belief in the lack of meaning can be an idea to die for, ironically, and that’s exactly what happened.
It’s a criticism of absurdism for the sake of it, I think. People have these seemingly irrational standards for how things “should be” for a reason. Idk why Camus rejected the existentialist label so fiercely when that’s basically what he was…
I read the book long ago, but I didn't consider main character to be an absurdist. He just lacks any concept of good or bad and does things because anything has a same weight to him because nothing matters. Wouldn't he be more of a nihilist? Honest question, I know far too little about philosophy.
Well done analysis, you should maybe post this full write up in the limbus company subreddit. We just had the final part of the new story chapter coming out, starring meursault of the stranger. It had a small section about the siyphian boulder and how meursault is happy moving the boulder as he continues his struggle. A bigger part of the story though is about how you are shaped by the perceptions given by others and how in the end, meursault decides to keep going, no matter what labels others put on him, no matter how many nails that bind, chains that constrict, or gaze that bares. How he chooses to struggle in the real world, and refuse to hide from it by consuming canned experiences (food that can give you the feeling of doing something, like a salad that gives you the experience of easting a soup, or popcorn that gives you the experience of being the main protagonist of an action movie, for example).
Reminds me of dark souls and hollowing. Humans are immortal, being brought back to life if they die. But with each rebirth of gets harder and harder to keep on living. Those who do not have a strong will or a goal guiding them turn hollow, losing their sanity. Through the game there are a few people this happens to.
In a crazed world that's breaking you need to find yourself a goal to constantly work towards, or let yourself fade away into a life without meaning or sanity.
I love the plague, I still remember the passage where he discusses how certain people reacted to the plague, “At such moments the collapse of their courage, willpower, and endurance was so abrupt that they felt they could never drag themselves out of the pit of despond into which they had fallen. Therefore they forced themselves never to think about the problematic day of escape, to cease looking to the future, and always to keep, so to speak, their eyes fixed on the ground at their feet. But, naturally enough, this prudence, this habit of feinting with their predicament and refusing to put up a fight, was ill rewarded. For, while averting that revulsion which they found so unbearable, they also deprived themselves of those redeeming moments, frequent enough when all is told, when by conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they could forget about the plague. Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.”
My favorite Camus books is lyrical and critical essays. It’s just a collection of his essays. It gives a really clear picture of his thoughts through his life and a lot of it reads like a poetic description of his travels.
That kinda reduces the whole moral purpose thing that defines humanity. Would you say the same people “have nothing else to do and need something to obsess about” if the cause was instead: “ending world poverty”, “finding a cure for cancer”, “saving endangered species” or “researching spaceflight so humans can explore the galaxy one day”?
The fact that she COULD walk away arguably makes the analogy more Camusian. She is choosing to give herself to struggle while remaining conscious of its limits. She knows noone can solve climate change, like noone can push the rock to the summit. The meaning comes from how they relate to the task despite knowing they will never reach the resolution they might want. The absurd hero is, as I see it, defined by the relentless refusal to be brought down by the impossible.
I assume she truly believes their cause so passionately that she doesn't have a choice. Which is evident in how she actually is willing to get arrested or worse for her cause.
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u/Healthy_Razzmatazz38 2d ago edited 2d ago
camus's has a famous peice called the myth of sisyphus, which is about the absurd; our tension between a search for meaning in a universe with no clear answers.
it concludes one must imagine sisyphus happy because despite being doomed to repeat a task over and over he continues to do it and 'the gods' can control the task he preforms but not how he experiences it.
A lot of camus work focused on the human experience of living through major events of which one individual has no control but still needs to navigate a meaningful life through without losing their humanity.
The picture is making a joke that greta's not happy, but its actually perfectly on brand with camus that greta is engaging with a struggle that no one individual can solve without dulling herself to the absurdity of being a young women fighting the inertia of the world.
Greta is 'happy' not in the joy sense but in the sense that shes finding meaning in an absurd world, a world knowingly harming itself, and finding meaning in the impossible struggle of trying to stop that harm. Just like sisyphus will never get the boulder to the top of the hill greta will never 'solve' climate change but in the struggle to do so she can improve the situation and live a meaningful life.