The movement … from unconsciousness to consciousness and despair and back to unconsciousness, has been analysed by Albert Camus in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. (pp. 278-79)

Camus' essay deals exclusively with … the question of one's response to the awareness that life has no transcendent meaning. The essay "attempts to resolve the problem of suicide … without the aid of eternal values which, temporarily perhaps, are absent or distorted in contemporary Europe."… [It] was written during a major world disaster and … was acclaimed as an important contribution to the resolution of the problems raised by that disaster….

Camus views Sisyphus' … hopeless struggle as monumental, heroic….

[The] emphasis is placed on the torment of consciousness, because it is consciousness that brings the recognition of ultimate futility and defeat. (p. 279)

Camus, at the end [of his essay], returns his hero to his futile labor, stands back and, on behalf of this...