The Myth of Sisyphus and Absurdity
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The King of Corinth, Sisyphus, was the Greek character most famous for his punishment in the afterlife. Sisyphus spent his mortal life attempting to deceive both humans and the gods, and escaped the consequences for his actions many times through his sly actions.
Sisyphus’ first acts of deceit were his lack of adherence to Xenia, giving hospitality to those who pass through one’s land and home. Instead, Sisyphus killed these people to prove his power. From these actions, the leader of the gods, Zeus, began to pay special attention to the King of Corinth. Sisyphus further enraged Zeus by revealing that the god kidnapped a woman, Aegina.
Angered by Sisyphus’ acts, Zeus sought to punish the king through the personification of death in Greek mythology, Thanatos. Thanatos was instructed to chain up Sisyphus, yet in his trickery, the king ended up chaining Death, escaping it for himself and preventing all mortals from dying for a time. This only ended when the god Ares stepped in by releasing Thanatos and trapping Sisyphus.
In working to further escape death, Sisyphus instructed his wife to throw his body into the middle of the city upon his death, which was extremely against Greek beliefs of proper burial. His body eventually found its way to the River Styx in the Underworld, where Sisyphus was able to interact with Persephone, the wife of Hades. Through his story and his cunning language, the king was able to convince Persephone to release him back to the overworld for a time so he could punish his wife. But Sisyphus refused to go back to the underworld and continued to escape death until another god, Hermes, brought him back.
Finally, Sisyphus met the consequences for his cunning lifestyle against the wishes of the divine. His punishment was to push a rock up a hill which, when it reached the top, would roll back down only for the action to be repeated again.
The story of Sisyphus has been reclaimed by Philosophers across the world, especially in the case of Albert Camus in 1942 in his writing “The Myth of Sisyphus.” In this paper, Camus explored the philosophy of absurdism, which is the belief that the world is irrational and has no inherent meaning. Camus asserted that individuals must not try to force order onto this existence and instead should revolt against this purposeless life and live in revolt of it, living for oneself even with no meaning.
The writing by Camus connects to Sisyphus because he asserts that Sisyphus understands that his punishment will never end. Upon his walk back down the long hill towards the rock, Sisyphus is completely conscious. He knows not to have hope because he understands that his task is unending. To Camus, the way to live is to revolt against the idea of struggle in life by finding peace and enjoyment in pushing up the rock. By reclaiming this struggle, Camus argues that people can find themselves and create self in a world that gives humans no inherent essence, and Sisyphus, to Camus and philosophers alike, represents this essential revolt against the absurd.