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Existentialism & Culture

Reimagining Sisyphus

Philip Villamor rethinks Albert Camus’ famous rock’n’roll parable.

The gods condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain. It is an unending sequence of events: he arduously pushes the rock up the mountain, the rock rolls back down, Sisyphus follows it back down and then begins the task again. Yet if one believes Albert Camus, Sisyphus must be imagined as happy nonetheless.

Camus tells his readers that there are different opinions as to how Sisyphus became the futile laborer of the underworld, so we may imagine Camus also being open to other interpretations of his absurd hero’s state of mind after death. But Camus’ own portrayal of this mythic mortal will not allow me to imagine Sisyphus as happy about rolling a rock up a hill for eternity.

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