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“Albert Camus”). This study develops a book-length discussion that firmly places Camus in the foreground of debate within the communication discipline. Working with a theoretical agenda informed by the philosophical hermeneutics of Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer—emphasizing the importance and role of metaphor—allows an examination of the connection between the absurd as used by Camus and the current postmodern moment. Although many differences exist between the historical moment of Camus and the contemporary postmodern moment, both represent times in which no paradigmatic certainty exists. The metaphor of the absurd is evident throughout Camus’s entire life. The following section is not an effort to make false connections between Camus’s experiences and his use of the metaphor of the absurd; it is an effort to illustrate that Camus faced many absurd situations throughout his life.
Camus’s Personal Meeting of the Absurd
Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913, in Mondovi, Algeria, and died on January 4, 1960, in Villeblevin, France. At the time of his birth, Algeria was a French colony, and therefore male adults were subject to service in the French military. On October 11, 1914, less than a year after Albert’s birth, his father was fatally wounded in the first battle of Marne (France) during World War I. Following the death of her husband, Catherine Camus, Albert’s mother, moved him and his brother into the home of his grandmother. “Grandmother Catherine Sintes was a harsh woman …
the return of Catherine Camus with two infants, exceeded her understanding.… The children’s mother was a passive witness to the brawling and beating, restrained by fatigue, by fear of the old woman, and the inability to express herself sharply and effectively” (Lottman 21). Losing his father and being raised by an illiterate mother and grandmother shaped Camus’s early years (Lottman 18). If any opportunities were to come for Camus, he would have to overcome family circumstances and create them for himself. Joseph McBride wrote, “For Camus, then, it is not the world but the human condition that is absurd. The world itself is