Pushing a Boulder, scooping Sand, piling rocks into the river of Hades - all fun

The village in The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe has at its mouth a number of holes, each containing a house. These houses represent the only defense for the village against the sand, which like a liquid will pour through the village unless it is shovelled out of these holes indefinitely - of course, it is an endless task.

It's an interesting take on the idea of finding duty in a sentence of endless servitude. Camus' Myth of Sysiphus is another example, however in the book it refers to the River of Hades. My suspicion is that this "river of Hades" is not derived from the Greek mythology, but rather is given as a crude translation from a Japanese myth - I've got no idea though. In the River of Hades example told throughout the book, shovelling the sand is like piling up rocks in the river of Hades, and there too they are never allowed to complete the task.

This story differs, however, especially if we think of the protagonist and how he deals with his sentence. After arriving in the town, he stays one night with "a woman" who seems a little vague about how he will leave the next day. I like imprisonment stories where the capture is never really acknowledged - however this type of dialogue between the two changes as the story develops. So as a starting point, we never really get the idea that the sentence is carried out with duty - those in the holes are condemned and essentially slaves to the village. It is not until many attempts to escape that the protagonist defers his plans indefinitely.

I couldn't help but think that given the situation and the woman's loneliness, it would have seemed natural just to accept the imprisonment from the beginning - since there is nothing to go home to, however this must be a peculiarity of my own ideas or the influence of Camus.

There are 3 sex-scenes in the book, all quite confronting and not so romantic - in fact, the way the woman in the dunes is treated is really quite appalling... despite her lay-down attitude, I think she still deserved better. Oh well.

The Outsider

The Outsider is often understood to encapsulate Camus's philosophical starting point. Sartre's essay, An explication of The Stranger, interprets the book's purpose as to portray the "feeling" of the Absurd – Camus's "point of departure". The novel, however, takes its place amongst a sea of ideas, reiterated and developed throughout a number of works from the same time period. Caligula, The Misunderstanding, A Happy Death and The Myth of Sisyphus were all written between 1936 and 1945. Camus's conception of Absurdity is manifested in each, however at the heart of all these works lies the unilateral pursuit of Ivan Fyodorovich's logic in The Brothers Karamazov: if God is dead, everything is permitted. Sagi perceives the works from a simpler point of view, believing them both to attempt an explication of the "experience of estrangement". This seems to reduce the explorations to a mediocre type of work, found in a vast category of books. It is my view that The Outsider goes much deeper in analysing and reflecting upon the time it is situated in.

What is essential for Camus, and hence what really constitutes the foundation of his philosophy, is the negation of immortality and God. The question is then asked: What is man left with? These works can all be interpreted with reference to this question, and it is perhaps in The Outsider that we find Camus's most lucid response.

Sartre's lecture, Existentialism is a Humanism also identifies the birth of existentialism in this logic. Without God, "man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to." It is this intangibility when confronting existence that Sartre explores in Nausea. While Sartre describes Camus's use of the absurd as "both a state of fact and the lucid awareness which certain people acquire of this state of fact", we can similarly understand his use of nausea. Nausea is both the fact of man's forlornness, and the heightened awareness resulting from the consciousness that ensues. It is important, however to note that both gain meaning from an individual subjectively confronting the world; not from an objectively absurd world confronting the individual . The similarities between The Outsider and Nausea can be traced to an undercurrent of Dostoevskian influence, however when considering their separate approaches to this anguish, it is the connexions to Nietzsche that are perhaps more significant.

The Outsider presents an antagonism towards Christianity that is more prominent than in Camus's preceding works. This is perhaps where we find the most obvious similarity linking Camus and Nietzsche. The asymmetrical dialogues put faith and the Absurd face to face, as Mersault's indifference contends with the Magistrate's compassion, his anger with the priest's promises of salvation. There is thus a strong focus on the disparity between Mersault's apathy and the pre-conceived societal values that others attempt to impose. Mersault is the absurd man, wishing to "live solely with what he knows, to accommodate himself to what is and to bring in nothing that is not certain." It is by negating all that is founded upon a belief in God, that all else follows. Like Nietzsche, Mersault's incense is directed against the priest's passive acceptance of values derived from a God that has been killed by man, "none of his certainties was worth one strand of a woman's hair. Living as he did, like a corpse, he couldn't even be sure of being alive." For Mersault, death is the only certainty.

The logic is followed through more ruthlessly in Caligula. Camus's own commentary upon the work summarises the hero's attempt to practice liberty "through murder and the systematic perversion of values." Caligula, in his denial of a higher principle, puts all values on an equal footing, refusing the logic of his subject Cherea who believes that some actions are more "praiseworthy" than others. This is alluded to in The Outsider when Mersault reflects on his friendship with Raymond - "What did it matter if Raymond was as much my pal as Celeste, who was a far worthier man?"

The Outsider can be seen as another Nietzschean experiment, which also practices the subversion of values and embraces perspectivism. Indeed, although Mersault's apparent passive indifference distinguishes him from Caligula, he is consumed by physical sensations. Even his name, a conjunction of the sea and the sun, brings together the rejuvenation he feels in the water, and his ambivalence towards the heat and beauty of the sun (recall Aristotle's conception of the sun as an enlightening force and contrast with Mersault's frustration at the glare as he fires bullet after bullet into someone he is indifferent to). Although not actively seeking to pervert social values, he is a realisation of Nietzsche's imperative to live passionately and this is what leaves him happy at the end of the novel. To affirm himself, Mersault's final words call for a consummation of the hatred against him.

Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus which is commonly correlated to The Outsider reveals a key difference to Nietzsche in his articulation of the Absurd. The two fundamental elements at the heart of the absurd are: humankind's innate desire for order, and "the unreasonable silence of the world" – which can be related to the conflicting Apollonian and Dionysian ways of perceiving existence. Consciousness occurs when we refuse to reconcile these diametrically opposed forces. The simultaneous recognition and rejection of our situation, that life is limited only by our individual subjectivity and death, holds these poles in equilibrium. Camus then describes an "existential leap" which escapes the absurd; however what he seeks to do is "remain on that dizzying crest".