Existentailism assingment

Response # 1 – The Myth of Sisyphus

This week’s reading was a very interesting read because I could see myself relate to the story in many ways. It was a fun read and I was looking forward to turning each page when I was reading this. The Myth of Sisyphus is about looking for the meaning in life. Sisyphus is condemned to roll a rock to the top of the mountain and to see it fall back down each time. This punishment was given to him by god, and he wanted him to see his hard labor go to waste every time.

This myth was trying to find meaning in life and the reason I had enjoyed reading this was because at this age I, myself was going through something similar where I was trying to find the meaning to life and sometimes would see hard labor go down the drain, only to do work and labor all over again day after day.

Camus here before explaining about the myth of Sisyphus, gives four examples of absurd life. I feel reading this, the point of this writing was that the aim of life is not the end goal but the struggle and the experience one gains from life.

Camus believes that life is freely living and passionately living to make our experience in life rich. One should also rebel and not accept our struggles. So therefore to not give up in life but to experience it and live life to its fullest.

Camus calls the myth of Sisyphus absurd because there is a struggle of what one wants and what is given to him/her. I personally agree with this and feel that in life many times what one works for is not what one gets necessarily and we are in a constant struggle with life.

Life sometimes does feel meaningless to me, and as I said I could relate to this reading because as Sisyphus, the goal end never comes, it feels sometimes, speaking from personal experience, that life does not had me perfect results and continuing to struggles many times takes the meaning away from me and sometimes the lack of belief also does that.

In the beginning there was a discussion on suicide and how suicide is telling life that you have given up. I truly enjoyed reading that because it starts with the end of everything and as the reading goes deeper, the author starts to explain how life is given meaning as one struggles for it.