Comparing Escher's Moebius Ring With Ants And The Greek Myth

Escher’s Moebius Ring With Ants and the Greek Myth of Sisyphus both share the same theme: the meaning of life or the “futility and greatness of human existence“. In Camus’ tale, Sisyphus was sentenced to an eternity of rolling a rock uphill just for the weight of the rock to pull it back down. This redundant task was symbolic to Sisyphus’ many attempts to return back to earth. No matter how many times Sisyphus was forced back to the underworld, he relentlessly came up with a plan to escape again. Sisyphus’ “images of earth [clung] too tightly to memory” and caused him to be oblivious to his surroundings. Not in the sense that Sisyphus was unaware of where he was but in the sense that his “objective perspective” became more important and apparent

to him than his “subjective reality”. Sisyphus’ “boundless grief” combined with his sentence of eternal hardship was too much for him to handle so he simply put it out of him mind. This displays the very ideas behind the existentialist theory. Escher’s Moebius Ring with Ants displays similar thinking in the mind of the ants. The insects are seen crawling on a track that leads nowhere; also known as the “hamster wheel effect”. The ants would crawl for an eternity and never get off the same path they started on. The ants could simply get off the track and end the meaningless cycle but it is their mindset that holds them there. The artwork uses symbolism to reveal a much deeper meaning that insects crawling on a track. The ants represents the entire human race while the track represents the life we all live. As humans, we can become that hamster on the wheel of life. We can become so consumed within our own thoughts and feelings that that the world around us can turn in an “expression of our inner vision”.