The Importance Of Absurdity In The Myth Of Sisyphus

At the centre of the existential angst, dominating the great movements of life, there lays an essential absurdity. England in the aftermath of the two wars inherited this absurdity that upheld the human predicament in a world where “nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm.” Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus diagnoses humanity’s plight as purposeless in an existence out of harmony with its surroundings. This irrationality and pointlessness of experience is transferred to the stage where by all semblance of logical construction and all intellectually viable argument is abundant. In the same strain, developed the Angry Plays of the Theatre of the Absurd. Beckett, Adamor and Pinter with the difference of attempting

As a post war individual, born in the void between the two world wars, his sensitivity of the world around him has paradoxically taken from him the softness of human touch. He is so desperately in love with life that he cannot believe that life can be this ordinary. He is the emerging angry man who understands and is therefore weary, whose contemplation makes him bitter. Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus had written, “It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising tram, four hours of office or factory, meal, tram, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, according to the same rhythm. This path is easily followed most of the time, but one day the why arises”. Jimmy Porter embodies the “why” and at times almost becomes the “why” by his very presence on the

Like so many of Steinberg’s characters, Jimmy desires for more than he ever hoped to get from his women. Alison, in her conversation with Helena, enlightens on this, “A kind of a cross between a mother and a Greek courtesan, a henchwoman, a mixture of Cleopatra and Boswell.” The ambivalence of his demands arise from a basic insecurity of a man who fears the loss of all emotions in life that he so desperately desires to live. Jimmy’s troubled childhood had thoroughly sensitised him to the inadequacy of his mother’s position. Thus, Jimmy’s relation with women is perhaps the most appropriate indication of his personality: it’s a strange mingling of sensitivity and cruelty, insight and fullness, idealism and cynicism. His relation with women is often dependent on this understanding of his emotional vulnerability as it is dependent on his sense of sincerity towards them. As Jimmy moves from one woman to another, his helplessness is only reiterated as he searches in the other sex, his seed of