Sisyphus
In the myth of sisyphus, we learn of his eternal struggle and and punishment bestowed upon him by the gods of ancient greece. He is shown as having to push a rock continuously up a hill for all of eternity as his punishment for loving life to much. This is what the guys considered one of the most gruesome punishments known to man. it is said that it is only gruesome when we are conscious of what we are doing as sisyphus was while pushing the rock and accepting his eternal fate. In our life we go through struggles and punishment that we can relate personally to sisyphus’ hardships in the after life. The question of absurdity comes into play when we are conscious of our lives in constant question of the significance of us personally to the world as Sisyphus is consciousness of his punishment.
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it tells of someone growing up and forgetting all the fun in their life and trading their old friends for no ones that have to significance to them. this eternal struggle of growing up and getting old is a reality for everyone alive. most people fear death and their eventual fate of dying which includes growing old and losing those important to them and eventually becoming numb and unresponsive to the world they live in. on relation to the myth of sisyphus, “Sober Up” has a “rock” of growing up and getting old. We know that eventually we will get old and die, but still being conscious of this fate, we choose to live our lives as sisyphus choose to continue pushing his rock even though he knew that his fate was pushing the rock for all of
Because Sisyphus betrayed “divine secrets to mortals”, he was sentenced to continuously rolling a stone up a hill and when it came down, he would have to roll it up again for an eternity. “We have the picture of meaningless, pointless toil, of a meaningless existence that is absolutely never redeemed” (Taylor p 20). Sisyphus struggle cannot even be redeemed through death or exhaustion. His sentenced is irreversible and there is no way out of this depressing and dark life. There is absolutely no hope for him, just more of the same. His reality is his nightmare that he can not be awoken
Escher’s Moebius Ring With Ants and the Greek Myth of Sisyphus both share the same theme: the meaning of life or the “futility and greatness of human existence“. In Camus’ tale, Sisyphus was sentenced to an eternity of rolling a rock uphill just for the weight of the rock to pull it back down. This redundant task was symbolic to Sisyphus’ many attempts to return back to earth. No matter how many times Sisyphus was forced back to the underworld, he relentlessly came up with a plan to escape again. Sisyphus’ “images of earth [clung] too tightly to memory” and caused him to be oblivious to his surroundings. Not in the sense that Sisyphus was unaware of where he was but in the sense that his “objective perspective” became more important and apparent
When one drinks alcohol it seems as if their problems just disappear but really they are just deceiving themself by believing that they are gone. The speaker in the poems says this is "because they grow cloudy behind the glass."
Most can agree that random evil and suffering, such as accidents, war, illness, crime, and many more, have the power to disrupt human happiness. Most would also agree that it is not the evil and suffering that affects one, as much as it is how one responds to the evil and suffering that occurs in one’s life. It is undeniable that suffering occurs to everyone in some shape or form, and while others may not believe that it is suffering, it all depends on one’s life. There are many examples a reader can draw from in recent and ancient literature that provides examples of other’s suffering and how they responded to those stimuli. This essay explores how the problem of evil is addressed by Greek tragedy and by Western monotheistic tradition.
In the twentieth century, particularly since the 1950’s or so, we have witnessed as a society; the arrival of AIDS, an increasing amount of single parent families, an increase in drug and alcohol use among young people, controversy over homosexuality, and an increasing number of instances where we, as a country, have seen that money and power can get anyone off for any crime or wrong-doing. In “Donahue’s Sister”, Gunn writes from a point of view that more than half of our population can probably relate to because almost all of us know someone with a drinking problem or have one of our own. “Donahue’s Sister” shows the frustration of a brother as he explains the degree of severity that his sister’s drinking problem has reached. The poem puts us in Donahue’s body from the start so as if we are looking at her standing at the head of the stairs, drunk beyond recovery. Although there is surely room for different interpretations, I believe “Donahue’s Sister” is written by Gunn primarily to show the destruction that addiction can do to a person or a relationship.
The term “flesh that mirrors Him” (ll. 4) is a symbol for the entire human race. Inspired from the biblical suggestion that people were formed in the image of God Himself, it demonstrates that people have a part of God in them. Yet they still die. Humans are not immortal like their maker, instead they must ponder what becomes of them in death. Even in the sweet release of death one could be the “tortured Tantalus” (ll.5)--punished to never eat or drink for all eternity. Tantalus forever “baited by the fickle fruit” (ll. 6) as though he is a fish that can be manipulated into its own torture. The allusion to Tantalus creates the feeling of desperation and suffering even after death. The speaker then uses end rhyme to connect the myth of Tantalus with the allusion to the “doom[ed] Sisyphus” (ll. 7). He must “struggle up a never-ending stair” (ll. 8); illuminating not only an allusion to Sisyphus’ punishment but also a staircase to heaven. For in original mythology Sisyphus struggles up a hill not a staircase. Making this change creates an allusion to a seemingly hopeless battle up the stair, which inspires the
The story delivers the message that life is short and don’t waste your time. Spend this worthy time to achieve something good or reach your goals. Rather than him who had spent all his life in luxury and at the end he found there no one behind him everything he had gone. He wasted his life on things which were not worthy, such as drinking all the time. Which brought him close to death.
Sisyphus knows his fate. He to Because he has the opportunity and does rationalize his fate, he has consciousness. As the rock rolls back down, he is able to look back upon his life and analyze it. Nothing could be more existentialist. Sartre’s Garcin wants to meet his fate face to face. So, Sisyphus, embodies this desire of Garcin, and is thus a hero to him. Similarly, Charles Dickens’ scrooge has the unique opportunity to become an observer to his fate in the past, present and future. While Camus’ Meursault does not care about his past, he expresses the same feelings as scrooge and Garcin in their desire to confront their fate. Indeed, this is why they are every man and Sisyphus is our hero - he has and will always confront his fate. He has the conscious power to contemplate and control his fate. Therefore, if we know that everyone faces death as their fate, consciousness equals the ability to deal with ones fate.
What does it mean to be in a state of drunkenness? A person who is inebriated views his surroundings in a surreal fashion; reality exists on the periphery. The drunk is by default interacting with the world on an inferior level as opposed to those who are sober. Alcoholism is also a chronic debilitating disease. It resonates outward from the individual to all those that he has contact within his life. Joyce utilizes the character of the drunk in many of the stories in Dubliners, hardly a story skips a mention of drink. Among despair, isolation and dependence, alcoholism is a theme that runs through all the stories. Alcoholism is the focus in "Grace" where Joyce takes the symbolic alcoholic and shows us what Joyce believes is a part of the problem plaguing Dublin.
In “the Myth of sisyphus” Albert Camus addresses the connected notions of happiness in the face of the absurd. Through the use of parallel structure, utilizing personification in order to clarify their connected nature, Camus asserts that happiness and the absurd are formed in conjunction with one another through lived existence. Absurdity is the concept of passionately struggling against the toil of existence despite the inevitability of death and the futility of actions. Although happiness and the absurd exist in the objective realm of reality, the personal experience of these simultaneous ideas are inherently subjective.
Taylor is careful to identify exactly which features of Sisyphus predicament account for the lack of meaning. He argues that the facts that Sisyphus task is both difficult and endless are irrelevant to its meaninglessness. What explains the meaninglessness of Sisyphus’s life is that all of his work amounts to nothing. One way that Sisyphus’s life could have meaning, Taylor proposes, is if something was produced of his struggles. For example, if the stone that he rolls were used to create something that would last forever then Sisyphus would have a meaningful life. Another separate way in which meaning might be made present is if Sisyphus had a strong compulsion for rolling the stone up the hill. Taylor points out, though, that even given this last option, Sisyphus’s life has not acquired an objectives meaning of life; there is still nothing gained besides the fact he just ...
Several philosophers have made differing viewpoints regarding the outlook of life. Richard Taylor and Albert Camus are notably known for presenting their thoughts on whether life is meaningless or not through the use of the Greek myth of Sisyphus. The two philosopher’s underlying statement on the meaning of life is understood through the myth. The myth discusses the eternal punishment of Sisyphus who was condemned by the Gods to take a large boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down, forcing him to repeat this task endlessly. Each conceive the myth in their own way and ultimately end with a conclusion that differs from each other. Taylor’s ideals and his take on the meaning of life contrast with what Camus presents in his argument. While Taylor suggests that there is a subjective meaning to life, Camus states that life is ultimately meaningless.
Furthermore, when people believe life to be worthless, they start to question their existence leading to insanity. Albert Camus was someone who believed absurdity to be a sensation which had the ability to seize anyone. His belief trusted consciousness to be the key to absurdity. Camus wrote a short story called The Myth of Sisyphus, which told the story of a young man, Sisyphus, who received a severe punishment due to his committed crimes of murder, rape, and theft. “His scorn of the God, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing” (Camus). His penalty consisted of rolling the stone up the hill each time it rolled down, and doing that continuously
Meursault is condemned to die by guillotine and Sisyphus is given the burden of having to do an eternity of hard labor, yet in both of these tragic situations they both live without illusions. Thus both men come to light with the realities and truths of their lives and can now be truly happy. In the essay “the Myth of Sisyphus “and the philosophical fiction novel The Stranger by Albert Camus the existentialist idea is that human life is meant to have futile suffering in it and people should not end their lives because of this abyss of pain; but embrace the life that is given, that once the absurdity is identified it is then that one can be elated and content with their lives. Camus reveals this idea in “The Myth of Sisyphus” when Sisyphus rolls that rock up the hill, at the top of the hill
The Odyssey, an epic narrative by Homer, Illustrates the countless hardships and lessons one must undergo and learn throughout the journey of life. This journey was shown by following the story of a Greek man named Odysseus. The goal of life, according to Homer, was to reach self-actualization and become infallible in each of the seven virtues (hospitality, obedience, loyalty, courage, respect, empathy, and humility). Odysseus, once the king of Ithaca, was a great and brilliant man who was in fact superior over many people in regards to life’s virtues. He did, however, succumb to being arrogant. Because of his arrogance, Odysseus even though a great man was not exempt from the harsh winds and troubles of life that come from the failure of reaching