D. Edwards

Miss West

World Literature

April 20, 2002

    A Review of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

      In the powerful work, The Myth of Sisyphus, the author and narrator, Albert Camus, interprets the plight of Sisyphus in Existential philosophical terms.  He paints a painfully vivid description of Sisyphus’s endless torture in the underworld and puts forth a profound, philosophical interpretation of how his suffering relates to all humankind’s existence on earth. 

      Camus recounts the story of Sisyphus, who is tortured for all eternity in the underworld.  He is forced to endlessly roll a rock up a mountain that continuously falls back down of its own weight.  He is condemned to such punishment because he has offended the gods.  Sisyphus was the king of Corinth.  After learning from Aesopus that his daughter was carried off by Jupiter, Sisyphus threatens to reveal the abduction if Aesopus does not supply water to the citadel of Corinth.  The gods are offended when they learn that Sisyphus has betrayed this secret.  Sisyphus also manages to trick Death when it comes to him and put Death in chains.  Pluto, the god of the underworld, becomes enraged and sends the god of war to liberate Death.  At the end of his life, when Sisyphus does die, he manages to convince Pluto to allow him to leave the underworld and return to earth one last time in order to chastise his wife.  Sisyphus, however, refuses to obey the gods when it is time for him to leave earth.  The gods forcibly return him to the underworld where he is condemned to push a huge rock up a mountain for all eternity.

      Camus paints an extraordinarily vivid description of Sisyphus’s wrenching struggle to push the rock up the mountain--  “…one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands.”  After all this, Sisyphus can only stand and watch the stone rush down the mountain knowing full well that he must push it back up again.  The reader truly feels Sisyphus’s pain in this passage.

      Camus then provides a profound and powerful interpretation of the myth concentrating on the descent of Sisyphus as he follows the stone back down the mountain.  At first, Sisyphus is overcome by sorrow as he becomes conscious of his suffering and remembers life’s earthly pleasures, which he can never again experience.  Camus states, “…this is the rock’s victory, this is the rock itself.”  Camus likens Sisyphus’s fate to that of Oedipus, who after realizing he has murdered his father and married his mother, blinds himself.  Oedipus, however, eventually overcomes his suffering crying out, “Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well.”  Camus states that Sisyphus likewise overcomes his suffering as he realizes that he is the master of his fate, “the master of his days.”  The “universe henceforth without a master” seems to Sisyphus as “neither sterile nor futile.”  Sisyphus “too concludes that all is well” in spite of the eternal torture he must bear.  This is the best part of the work and contains a very positive message.  At the end, Camus states that one “must imagine Sisyphus happy.”   Camus here is expressing a key belief in Existential philosophy that man alone controls his fate and his destiny.

      Although this message is a hopeful one, there is much negativity in this work.  The least appealing part in The Myth of Sisyphus is when Camus likens Sisyphus to “the absurd hero,” who must pay the price for “his hatred of death” and for loving the “passions of earth” by having his whole being “exerted toward accomplishing nothing.”  He is described as the “proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious” who “knows the full extent of his wretched condition…”  This is a hopeless and tragic message that reflects the concept of the absurd, a central theme in the philosophy of Existentialism, which maintains that life has no real meaning.  Our culture does not embrace this idea.  We believe that there is hope and meaning to life.  This work could be improved by softening the extreme negativity of this message.

      In view of Camus’ difficult personal life, however, and that much of Existential philosophy grew out of the horrors of World War II, it is completely understandable that The Myth of Sisyphus would reflect this.  I would strongly recommend this work to anyone who has, at times in his or her own life, deeply thought about and struggled with the central questions concerning humankind’s existence here on earth.