The myth of Sisyphus
Meursault and Sisyphus: Living Without Appeal in an Absurd World
Albert Camus’s The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus are not merely companion texts; they are two expressions of the same philosophical act. One dramatizes the absurd through narrative, the other theorizes it through philosophy. Together, they offer Camus’s most uncompromising answer to the problem of meaning in a world stripped of transcendence, God, and final justification. If The Myth of Sisyphus asks whether life is worth living once meaning collapses, The Stranger shows us what such a life looks like when lived to its bitter end.
At the heart of both works lies Camus’s concept of the absurd: the confrontation between humanity’s desperate need for meaning and the silent indifference of the universe. The absurd is not a feeling, nor a property of the world alone, but a relationship—a tension that cannot be resolved without either intellectual dishonesty or self-destruction. Camus insists that this tension must be lived, not escaped.
Meursault, the protagonist of The Stranger, is not a philosopher. He never articulates the absurd. He embodies it.
The Absurd Man: From Theory to Flesh
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus introduces the figure of the absurd man—one who lives fully aware that life has no ultimate meaning, yet refuses both suicide and false consolation. Suicide, for Camus, is a confession that life is not worth the trouble. Religion and metaphysical hope are equally evasive, offering answers where none exist. What remains is revolt: a constant, lucid defiance against meaninglessness.
Meursault is often misunderstood as apathetic, robotic, or emotionally deficient. But this reading misses Camus’s deeper intention. Meursault is not incapable of feeling; he simply refuses to lie. He does not pretend grief at his mother’s funeral. He does not feign belief in God when faced with death. He does not manufacture meaning where none presents itself. In this sense, Meursault lives the absurd condition more honestly than anyone around him.
His crime is not murder—society forgives murder easily enough—but refusal of illusion. He will not say that his mother’s death devastated him. He will not say that killing the Arab had a metaphysical cause. He will not say that he regrets life itself. In the courtroom, Meursault is judged less for what he did than for what he did not pretend to feel.
This is precisely the danger Camus identifies in The Myth of Sisyphus: society cannot tolerate those who expose its comforting fictions.
The Trial of Meaning
Meursault’s trial is not a legal proceeding; it is a metaphysical inquisition. The prosecutor reconstructs a narrative in which Meursault’s failure to cry at his mother’s funeral becomes proof of his moral monstrosity. The sun, the heat, the physical discomfort that Meursault cites as the immediate cause of the shooting are dismissed as absurd excuses—yet these are the only honest explanations available.
Camus is ruthless here. The court does not want truth; it wants coherence. It wants motive, remorse, redemption. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus argues that humans cannot bear a world that does not explain itself. Faced with the absurd, we rush to impose meaning—even if it must be fabricated.
Meursault’s refusal to cooperate with this fabrication seals his fate. He will not perform grief. He will not rehearse repentance. He will not appeal to God.
And so he must die.
Suicide, Execution, and the Refusal of Escape
The opening line of The Myth of Sisyphus is famously stark: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Camus’s answer is unambiguous: suicide is an escape, not a solution. It annihilates the very consciousness that experiences the absurd tension.
Meursault, facing execution, arrives at the same conclusion without philosophy. He does not cling to hope of reprieve. He does not seek absolution. When the chaplain urges him to turn to God, Meursault explodes—not in fear, but in clarity. He recognizes that hope itself is the final lie.
This moment is crucial. Meursault does not despair. He awakens.
He accepts that the universe is indifferent—and in that acceptance, he feels free. For the first time, he understands that nothing has ever promised meaning, and therefore nothing has been taken from him.
Like Sisyphus, he reaches the summit.
Sisyphus and the Happiness of Defiance
In Greek myth, Sisyphus is condemned to roll a stone up a mountain for eternity, only to watch it fall back down. For Camus, this is the perfect image of the human condition. The labor is meaningless, repetitive, and eternal. And yet Camus concludes his essay with a startling assertion: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Why happy? Because Sisyphus knows his fate. He does not hope for escape. He does not pray for mercy. The moment he walks back down the mountain, conscious of his condition, the rock becomes his task. The gods’ punishment fails because Sisyphus refuses despair.
Meursault reaches the same state in his prison cell. Awaiting execution, he opens himself to the “gentle indifference of the world.” He wishes for a crowd of spectators who will greet his death with cries of hatred—not because he seeks suffering, but because hatred would confirm his final connection to life, to reality as it is, unsoftened by illusion.
This is not nihilism. It is revolt.
Living Without Appeal
Both The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus insist on a radical ethical position: live without appeal. Do not appeal to God, to destiny, to history, or to future redemption. Live with full awareness of death, contingency, and meaninglessness—and yet live intensely.
Meursault loves swimming, sex, sunlight, cigarettes, and the physical immediacy of the present moment. He does not live less than others; he lives more honestly. His tragedy is not that he dies, but that society cannot tolerate someone who exposes the groundlessness beneath its moral theatre.
Camus does not offer comfort. He offers clarity.
In a world without transcendence, dignity is found not in hope, but in lucidity. Not in resignation, but in revolt. Not in meaning, but in presence.
Meursault is Sisyphus without the mountain. Sisyphus is Meursault without the guillotine. Both teach us the same lesson: that even in an indifferent universe, the human refusal to lie—to oneself above all—remains a form of freedom.
And that freedom, fragile and fleeting as it is, is enough.
