The Third Policeman: A Lesson in Absurdity

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The Third Policeman: A Lesson in Absurdity

The protagonist in Flann O’Brien’s novel The Third Policeman has spent the past several days following the bizarre characters Policeman MacCruiskeen and Sergeant Pluck in an even more bizarre world of his own creation. The narrator, who is bent on receiving his treasure, which is tucked securely inside a black box, follows these characters patiently waiting to receive his fate neatly packed away in a box. The narrator finds himself in the midst of a world in which it takes every stretch of the imagination of the reader and the narrator to understand. O’Brien asks the reader to suspend disbelief and follow along for the ride. O’Brien pushes the boundaries of postmodernism novel and the limits of the conscious mind while dabbling with impossibilities and possibilities of the existentialist mind. Flann O’Brien weaves together elements of existentialism, Freud’s psychological theory of consciousness, and postmodernism in literature in a satirical way to demonstrate how little humans actually know; especially during a time when new theories were forming and being experimented with on the path to enlightenment. O’Brien’s narrative brings the experience of all these elements to the reader; through the narrator, all theories collide in O'Brien's The Third Policeman. In the critical essay “Calmly making ribbons of eternity: the futility of the modern project in Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman " author Lanta Davis says “The Third Policeman is one of the first postmodern texts, examines O'Brien's doubts concerning the modern quest for knowledge. O'Brien demonstrates an extreme skepticism of human epistemological investigation, and even depicts the Cartesian cogito as the self-referential, ...

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... the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. O’Brien asks the question, If life is absurd and meaningless, why couldn’t death be absurd and meaningless? To tie this back to consciousness, O’Brien shows that just because it cannot be seen, how do we know it doesn’t exist? All of Freud’s findings are essentially as meaningless as the world O’Brien has created; an existentialist world of chaos and that the notion of the absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning to be found in the world beyond what meaning we give to it. It is O’Brien’s introduction to the world of bicycles having characteristics of humans and boxes, so tiny they camnnot be seen, and elevators into eternity, we are asked to suspend disbelief and understand O’Brien’s satire.

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