The Nature of the Absurd How Brecht and Pirandello Express the Notion of Absurdity :: Essays Papers

The Nature of the Absurd How Brecht and Pirandello Express the Notion of Absurdity The word absurd can only be described by the Myth of Sisyphus, written by Albert Camus. It is a myth written about a man whose passion for life led him to his own torture. He was a man condemned by the gods to a life of dreadful punishment. His punishment was continuously rolling a rock to the top of a mountain. Each day the rock would roll its entire weight to the bottom, and Sisyphus would push it back to the top. Sisyphus is the absurd hero, as much through his passion for life as his torture. His whole life is pushing towards a goal that is accomplishing nothing. He lives a purposeless and powerless life. The tragic part of this story is that Sisyphus is conscious to this fact. He knows that every step he takes is one that lacks success. He knows as he is in the duration of his descent, as he thinks about the passions of his life, that he will once again face the sorrows of his hopeless labor when he faces the rock at the bottom of the hill. This is what makes the myth absurd. He can still be filled with happiness, especially on his descent, even though he is condemned to his fate. He never gives in to the circumstances and rises above. He can hold his head up and keep going, just as we do. Today we live our lives no less absurdly then Sisyphus did. We get up and work at the same tasks day after day. I have been going to school almost every day for the last 15 years. I have been following the structure that I am expected to follow, and accomplish little within each day. Sisyphus teaches us that we always have the ability to rise above our lot by laughing at our condition. Two pieces of literature that portray the notion of absurdity are Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht and Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello, because they both teach us lessons about our ability as humans to overcome our circumstances. Brecht wrote Mother Courage on the eve of World War II, and has a very pessimistic view of the world.