Word Nerd Wednesday: Sisyphean

Sisyphus, king of Corinth, was known to be the craftiest of mortal men. For his scheming and his dishonesty, the Gods condemned him to the most elegantly sadistic form of punishment in all the great underworld. Sisyphus was condemned to roll a massive boulder to the top of a steep hill, only to have it roll back to the bottom ever time he neared the summit, over and over again for all eternity.

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The myth of Sisyphus gives us the fantastic adjective “Sisyphean”, a word that conveys the futility and difficulty of a seemingly endless task. The conclusion, made by Albert Camus in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” that “we must imagine Sisyphus happy”, has roughly synonymized with the Sisyphean with the absurd and associated the labor of Sisyphus with the absurdity of human life. The protagonists of Franz Kafka, struggling endlessly with vast and incomprehensible bureaucracy, can be said to live Sisyphean lives. The Trix rabbit, it his endless quest to try a little bite of Trix cereal even though, “Trix are for kids,” is a tragic figure of Sisyphean proportions.

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“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a rabbit’s heart. One must imagine Trix happy” – Albert Camus, “The Myth of Trix” (slightly altered).

Prompt: 

We’ve all undergone experiences that have felt, in some way, Sisyphean. If you’re a writer, the process of writing and editing, revising and rewriting, can feel endless and futile and impossible. Write about such an experience, either your real or imagined. How does associating such a labor with a Greek myth effect how you write your piece? Does Camus’ association with the absurdity of life inform your writing? 

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