Name:- Hitaxi H Bhatt.
Roll No:- 03.
Enrolment No:- PG15101004
Year:- 2015-1017.
Paper No:- 09 (The Modernist Literature.)
Topic:- Myth of Sisyphus in ‘Waiting For
Godot’.
Submitted to:- Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University.
It is not clear that which myth is right about this myth of
Sisyphus. According to one myth Sisyphus revealed the secret kidnapping of
Aegina by Zeus. So in the anger Zeus punished him to go into underworld where
Sisyphus has given one task and i.e he had to roll up the rock from bottom to
the top of the hill. And there is also one another myth that we find is
Sisyphus told his wife that whenever he will be die. What she has to do is
throw his dead body in a public place but he denied to burying it. After his death, he was awake in
the hell, and he got angry with his wife and decided to go back to the earth to
punish his wife. Then after a many requests, Pluto gave chance to go to the
earth but he warned him that he must come to hell as soon as possible. But it
goes reverse when he reaches on the earth he was mesmerized by the shinning
beauty of the earth so he forgets to go back in the hell. Pluto sent many
messengers before sending Mercury. Who seized him on his throat and brought him
back to hell. And when he reaches there Pluto gave Sisyphus the meaningless
punishment of rolling up the rock from the bottom to the top of the hill.
Camus has brought the concept of absurdity, which is the
essence of human existence. The philosophy of absurdity was developed as a
branch of existentialist philosophy. Existentialism is philosophy that is
itself dark or depressed. Because we
have to want some pillar to stand stable that’s why people chooses god as the
pillar or finding a truth that is truth for us
or embracing the absurd we feel relief by choosing any pillar. But what
existentialism says here is that you
have to be creator or developer or destroyer of your life. You have to live
stable without any supporting pillars of outside. The only supporting pillar
you can use it is you and your within. Because everything that we seeks outside
is comes from our within. We can take it as whatever way we like it but it
mainly connected with two sides that is with mind (thinking) or another is way
of life (living).
Here I would like to connect above thought with the play
‘Waiting For Godot’ in the play Significance of props like ‘Hat’ and ‘Boot’
described in the play. That throughout the play Vladimir looks into hat so many
times instead of looking into boot. Hat symbolizing rational thought process.
Estragon who focuses on boots more than
hats is more earthly and grounded than Vladimir. The boot is represents the
struggling of life. and taking off boot
shows the try to come out from that
struggles. So it’s all about struggles between mind and body. That we can’t
understand which one is right. Because hat fights with meaning of life and boot
fights with struggles of life.
Both help us to appeal our mind to understand the life more
deeply and it also appeal our heart and souls to experience life more deeply.
Albert Camus in his book says that Nietzsche says that
Nihilism comes after existentialism. But in which matter they differ is Nihilism shows us that everything is
meaningless in the world and we are
tempted by an objective scheme of
things. And on the other hand existentialist
thinker believes that there is no single meaning but we create our personal
meaning for life. So in that point Nietzsche disagree with Nihilism because it
ties our thinking ability and existentialism gives us more to look insight and
judge it critically.
Existentialism suggests that what is the solution of
problematic life? And it also gives an answer that is suicide. But what Camus
says is, it is not the solution of problematic life. Ending of life is just because
of some absurd reason. Or it happens that we think on it a lot that’s why
problem occurs in our life. Albert Camus called it philosophical suicide. If we
take as a challenge then there is no problem of doing suicide. The idea of
suicide in existentialism is the only truly serious philosophical problem that
man finds the reason behind his own personal existence. We can’t find the
meaning of life and that angst leads us towards suicide. For existentialist,
suicide is not absurd thing because they believe that they are the only one who
responsible for his actions. In the play ‘waiting for Godot’, Perhaps that’s
why Vladimir and Estragon talks about hanging themselves but they can’t do so.
A Sisyphean task
became synonymous with senseless work that man has to do nowadays. In the
play we find theme of nothingness and there is one dialogue in the play that I
would like to connect with Myth of Sisyphus is “Nothing
to be done”. How the theme of nothingness recurs in the play and has
connection with myth. We find that though there is nothing in the play and in the myth but what we find is
nothingness of life in every action of the character. In the play ‘waiting for
Godot’ we can see that Vladmir and Estragon and its endless waiting for Godot.
But both are not sure that whether he will come or not? Or in the myth of Sisyphus,
Sisyphus endlessly rolls up a rock on a mountain and every times it rolls back
to the feet. But he goes on doing the task. And if we look at them in a
pessimistic way that both has some hope though they knows that what they are
doing is absurd. In a life also we knows that our future is unpredictable and
there are so many uncertainty is lying in the path of our life. but we go on
living the life and what makes us alive is hope that someday this will happen,
my wishes will be came true. But at the end of the life do we satisfy? What we
have done throughout the life.? NO the restless question is that, what does it
all mean after all? And our life gives us an answer is ‘Nothing’.
In this
essay, the writer Albert Camus presented Sisyphus as the symbol of humankind
and also compared his task as a symbol of human existence. Here we can say that
the myth of Sisyphus presented as an allegory to justify that life is
meaningless, absurd but it depends on us how we take it.? As an challenge or as
an allegory. Albert Camus in his book says that, “one
must imagine Sisyphus is happy” because Sisyphus accepts his fate and
his struggle gives us inspiration when everything goes wrong in our life. What
we have to choose is to accept the absurd, and if we believe that life has its
inherent meaning then there would be a lesser problem in our life except we
have to identify that inherent meaning.
The
lesson of Sisyphus is that when we feel that the universe is uncaring and
indifferent. The best response may be to happily accept this injustice and move
on. In the play ‘Waiting For Godot’ Estragon seems happy because he is less
conscious about his fate and accept the absurd situation or in other side Vladimir
finds meaning in everything that’s why he can’t enjoy the present. Camus says
that problem occurs in our life because we seek meaning in existence. Here I
would like to connect Sisyphus with Oedipus (who killed his father and married
with his mother) that both are happy because they conclude their life with “All
is well.” Sisyphus ans Oedipus have abandoned hope and so their fate does not
seem horrible to them. On the contrary they have finally found the only genuine
happiness.
Camus
concludes his essay by arguing that happiness and absurd awareness are
ultimately connected. We can only be truly happy. He suggests, when we accept
our life and our fate as entirely our own is the only thing we have and the
only thing we will ever be. If happiness is real, we must be able to find
happiness without relying on hope, faith, or anything else that goes beyond
direct experience.
Works Cited
Albert Camus . "Myth Of Sisyphus." Camus,
Albert. Myth of Sisyphus. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1942. 224 .
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