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By Root 955 0

the absurd” is even more apparent in Camus’s The Stranger.68 The novel’s protagonist, Meursault, is indifferent to the events that befall him. Robotic and emotionless, Meursault’s thoughts and actions are entirely irrational, a fact that makes him a “stranger” to society. It’s the confrontation between his irrationality and his society’s search for meaning that elucidates absurdity as Camus sees it. When Meursault kills a man without any reasoning behind it, his society is faced with an instance of the world’s meaninglessness. No human action, as Meursault’s deed shows, is rational. Unable to deal with this irrationality, Meursault’s society calls the murder premeditated and claims that he doesn’t have a soul—all attempts to make sense of what they cannot make sense of, all efforts to give the universe a meaning in the face of its irrationality.

As Meursault’s deed shows, human action (for Camus) doesn’t make sense. The world just is irrational. Our attempts to give the world meaning are futile, an idea that is further developed when Meursault himself becomes aware of absurdity. While in jail awaiting the guillotine, he realizes that death is the only certainty. Now conscious of this fact, Meursault becomes aware that “I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another . . . Nothing, nothing mattered” (p. 121). Because life only leads to a certain and unavoidable death, it makes no difference how it’s lived. His actions, like all human action, have always been insignificant and the world indifferent.

Pull Me Out, or Leave Me In, the Aircrash

Camus’s outlook has no special place (or blame) for technology. But, except for that, Camus’s sense of the absurd and the strange is familiar terrain in Radiohead’s music. They are both artists exploring exile and estrangement, the feeling that we don’t belong in this irrational universe. But there’s another crucial difference. For Camus, the only correct response to absurdity is to live with it. We must continue searching for meaning even though we know that this search is futile. But isn’t this response cowardly? Aren’t we just giving up if we don’t try and get rid of this meaninglessness? No, for Camus, it’s just the opposite. Living with an acceptance of our absurdity and the eternal meaninglessness of Sisyphus’s endless task is, in fact, a brazen and brave revolt against absurdity. We’re keeping the absurd alive and not attempting to escape from what we can’t escape. Not to accept absurdity, according to Camus, would be to deny one of absurdity’s terms (1. our search for meaning and 2. the irrationality of the world). We’d either have to give up our search for meaning, or find that the world does possess a meaning. Instead, we must live with the absurdity we’ve discovered.

But, why revolt? Why live with this meaninglessness? Because, for Camus, revolt brings happiness, or as he puts it—“happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth” (Sisyphus, p. 122). The responses Sisyphus and Meursault have to their absurdity point to this fact. When Sisyphus watches the rock roll back, he becomes aware of the absurdity that comes with his endless task. He recognizes that his act has no relevance, that this world is irrational. And what does he do? He walks with “heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end” (p. 121). He pushes the rock each time with all of his strength, trying to give his task a meaning even though he knows it has none. This embrace of absurdity makes Sisyphus content to roll the rock up the hill. Since he doesn’t hope for a better life, he can accept his destiny without reservations, without horror. And he now becomes “master of his days” because he is choosing to undergo his struggle for what it is (p. 123). He accepts its meaninglessness and, in doing so, can be happy with his alienated existence. For, he knows that his life is what he makes of it.

Similarly, Meursault accepts absurdity and, through this acceptance, finds happiness within his alienation. Once he realizes the inevitability of death,