Absurdity in Literature

English > Analysis
Literature > Comparative Literature
Literature > English
Literature > French
Philosophy

An in-depth look at the similarities between "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf and Albert Camus' essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus".

5,255 words () | 0 sources | 2004 United States

Paper Summary:

Albert Camus, in his essay "The Myth of Sisyphus", defines the absurd as the collision between man and the world, resulting in the discrepancy between what one wants and what one gets. The resulting anxiety leads to the individual's confrontation with nothingness and with the impossibility of finding justification for the choices he or she must make. The paper provides an in-depth look at how Virginia Woolf's novel, "Mrs. Dalloway" depicts the absurd through narrative terms strikingly similar to those explored by Camus in "The Myth of Sisyphus".

From the Paper:

"For Clarissa, the manifestation of the absurd is a subtle but profound flickering of light within the depths of the inner life, but for Septimus the hollow caverns of his war-torched soul, reflect an inferno of absurd terror and beauty. Septimus embodies the ideal of the absurd man, the protruding edge slicing through the fine film of reality. His experiences of crystallized beauty, sublime surrealism, and visionary spells isolate him in a silenced world. Part of the world but distinctly separate from it, Septimus combats convention and proportion, symbols of excessive rationality prescribed to the world as cures for the malady of the absurd."