More Than Being Alive: On Albert Camus' Works of Absurdity from the Perspective of the Consciousness of Absurdity

From the beginning of his writing career, Albert Camus had taken "the consciousness of absurd" as his fundamental guideline. Through a series of works, he explored how human-being with that consciousness lived in the absurd world and how they tried to redefine their meaning of life with their own forces. In L'Etranger and Caligula, Camus portrayed a picture of nihilism and despotism resulted from the consciousness of absurdity, while in La Mort heureuse and Le mythe de Sisyphe the same consciousness had led to the pursuit for happiness in the human world. This essay charts the trajectory of Camus' creative guideline and exposed the enlightening power and his sympathy towards mankind in his early works.