P4+Are+all+absurdists+doomed+to+toil+through+life+senselessly,+or+can+they+live+a+pleasant+life?

7. Absurdists "float" through life more than toil. They go through life with no meaning, and are aimed in different directions by the people they meet. To be a true existentialist a person has to be absurd. To be absurd a person has to do what the public, what main stream culture, and the church finds weird, or wrong. It is said that the church and state should be separate. For Meursault church and state should not exist. He believes that the institutions of man are there to make people believe what they want and force people into doing things. Meursault "floats" through his life creating chaos by not caring and having no regard. An absurdist will go through life in cruise control, but not toil. They apparent misery suffered by Meursault is what he wants. It is not forced on him, he picked suffering. Absurdists do everything for some reason, even tho they appear to have no meaning or aim in life. -David Myer

2. Absurdists are in no way “doomed” to a life that is senseless or toiled through. A prime example of an absurdist living a pleasant life is Meursault in the Stranger. Meursault is found guilty for killing an Arab and is sentenced to an execution. This is the beginning of his more pleasant feelings, Camus writes, “As I was leaving the courthouse on my way back to the van, I recognized for a brief moment the smell and color of the summer evening. In the darkness of my mobile prison I could make out one by one, as if from the depths of my exhaustion, all the familiar sounds of a town I loved and of a certain time of the day when I used to feel happy… Yes it was the hour when, a long time ago, I was perfectly content” (Camus 97). From this quote, Meursault is happy with his life. He has lived a pleasant and fulfilling life, and now that it is coming to an end, he realizes it. So to answer the question, yes absurdists can live a pleasant life. Meursault does this, even though he lived an “absurd” life. -Tommy Pilgrim