Living Without Absurdity In Albert Camus The Plague

Albert Camus addresses the steps one should take when dealing with the notion of absurdity in order to make the choice to live without appeal. In the Myth of Sisyphus, Camus defines the clash between the irrational world and humans seeking for rational answers as absurdity. He then outlines the best solution for acknowledging the lack of meaning in life while not turning to suicide. There are many parallels to his reasoning in The Plague, where he uses the threat of sickness in a quarantined environment to showcase the different reactions humans have to an overwhelming loss of hope. In his novel, the town of Oran is forced to wake up from their habits and confront their reality. The urgency of so many people dying drives several of the characters to turn to revolt, freedom, and passion. Camus uses the situation of a plague and the imminent threat of deadly disease to illustrate his argument that living without appeal is the best solution to avoiding suicide and confronting the absurdity in the individual, the world, and the conflict between the two.
The Myth of Sisyphus describes the sense of absurdity as a person going …show more content…
They are able to act in the present (Myth 52-53). The Plague emphasizes this on the extreme level of quarantining the city from the rest of the world and forcing them to take it day by day, but it is specified that they were never really free to begin with anyway. Grand represents this freedom because he narrowly escapes death by the plague, so he receives a fresh start and actually benefits and learns from the experience of the plague, as opposed to returning to his old habits (Plague 264). This is demonstrated in his making progress on his manuscript by allowing himself to stop worrying about it being perfect. Some of the other citizens of Oran do not make this progress and return to their previous