The Setting
The setting of this play is ambiguous to say the least. It seems to exist in some strange symbolic neverland, but just because it is presented as an abstraction does not mean that it isn’t described in some detail through imagery:
Jan: Spring over there grips you by the throat and flowers burst into bloom by thousands, above the white walls. If you roamed the hills that overlook my town for only an hour or so, you’d bring back in your clothes a sweet honeyed smell of yellow roses.
Martha: How wonder that must be! What we call spring here is one rose and a couple of buds struggling to keep alive in the monastery garden.
Life, It’s a Shame
This work of Camus has been almost universally described as offering a bleak vision of existence. This is all the stranger as a result of coming so soon after the exceedingly optimistic essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus.” The imagery throughout reflects this unexpectedly pessimistic view of life from one of the titans of existentialist philosophy:
“It’s often like that in life; one makes a bad start, and nobody can do anything about it. In a way it’s quite true that what has happened vexes me as well. But I tell myself that, after all, I’ve not reason to attach importance to it.”
Bleaker and Bleaker
Albert Camus is the author who made the punishment of Sisyphus that required eternal failure in the simple task of rolling a ball up a hill into a symbol of existential choice that gave meaning to one’s life and brought happiness to one’s experiences. Where is that guy in this play? With each speech, existence is presented in a darker and darker terms:
“All that life can give a man was given him. He left this country. He came to know far horizons, the sea, free beings. But I stayed here, eating my heart out in the shadows, small and insignificant, buried alive in a gloomy valley 'in the heart of Europe. Buried alive! No one has ever kissed my mouth and no one, not even you, has seen me naked.”
The Existential Absurd
The key component of existential philosophy is the understanding and acceptance that the world is absurd. Trying to make sense of existence and approach life as a rational act is where people go wrong and wind up falling for religion as an answer. The absurd is directly addressed several times throughout the play in a way that illustrates the characters are aware of it if not necessarily accepting:
“Both of us are sick of this inn and everything to do with it. You, who are old, want no more than to shut your eyes and to forget. But I can still feel in my heart some of the absurd desires I had when I was twenty, and I want to act in such a way as to have done with them forever—even if, for that, we must go a little further with the life we want to leave. And really it’s your duty to help me; it was you who brought me into the world in a land of clouds and mist, instead of a land of sunshine.”
