Wednesday 1 February 2017

SUMMARY of Absurdity and Suicide by Albert Camus

Albert Camus
Absurdity and suicide
1.       Suicide is a philosophical problem. Some people die because they think life is not worth living and some people get killed for the idea that gave them a reason to live.
2.       Meaning of life is more urgent
3.       Concerned with relationship between individual thought and suicide. According to Camus the feeling of absurdity is a divorce between man and life, the actor and his setting. The feeling of exile, strangeness and homelessness is also absurd.
4.       Is suicide answer to absurd? How to escape the absurd? Through hope or suicide one can escape absurdity of life. Is there logic behind death? We can only find that after dying and this reasoning is called absurd reasoning.
                                                         
5.       The real effort is to stay here and live Sisyphus or other absurd hero. Win or have an absurd victory when they accept their fate and be happy with it. Happiness and absurd all different yet inseparable. Accepting the torment.
6.       According to Camus Sisyphus is an absurd hero. He proposes that one should keep living even if life has no meaning. If we face absurd then we should not die but live life to the fullest considering my readers have read about Sisyphus I would move forward. Sisyphus represents condition of human life, he struggles without a hope, and he accepts life as an absurd struggle and is able to find happiness in it.
7.       According to Camus feeling of absurdity is connected to exile and meaninglessness of life and the act of suicide is a result of it. Is suicide solution to absurd? Or is hope? Taking example of Estragon and Vladimir who are the protagonists of post- modernist play “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett. Estragon and Vladimir want to suicide but are unable to because of lack of resource. Does Beckett wants to defend the absurd or is he placing hope in the play, is he showing Vladimir and Estragon has meaning in their lives. Giving the example of Sisyphus Camus gives us the ideal absurd hero who lives by hope and finally has an absurd victory by accepting his fate. Vladimir and Estragon’s fate is waiting for Godot and they keep waiting for him, sometimes thinking about suicide but at other time hopefully waiting that he will come. Camus suggests that our instinct for life is stronger than reasons to commit suicide. The feeling of absurdity as Camus defines is that of exile, strangeness and meaninglessness of life.


Deepali Yadav
 Student at Kamala Nehru College (DU)
Contact me @ deepaliyadav2896@gmail.com
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