The Plague

[dan5342]

In relation to The Plague, how does the question, "In an absurd world, how does one make meaning of life" relate with examples

[Bitterfly]

I read The Plague a long time ago, so can't really answer you without fear of saying something irrelevant. But it isn't a difficult question:go and look up the definition of absurdity as it relates to Camus (in a literary or philosophical dictionary) and you'll see that the meaning of life always pops up in such definitions. Afterwards, you can apply it to the book itself in order to give concrete examples.

To help you on the way: the absurd seems to preclude any meaningfulness of life, because it is the feeling that existence and the world have no meaning (because of the death of God and the ensuing absence of finality/determination). As Camus says it somewhere (probably in Sisyphe), there is a discrepancy between the true chaos of the world and our desperate need to make sense of it.

But there can be meaning, and it is us who have to find it, to give it, to our own lives. We, and no longer God or theological explanations, are responsible for its meaningfulness.