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a human communicator in making sense of the inherent risks of taking action in the contemporary age.
Chapter 2 explores Camus’s ongoing response to a changing historical moment and his recognition that life is often lived amidst a unity of contraries. As he attempted to work out the ethical implications of the absurd within his changing moment, Camus began to work with a secondary metaphor, rebellion. A notebook entry dated June 17, 1947, stated, “Second series. Revolt: The Plague (and annexes)—The Rebel—Kaliayev [a character from Camus’s play The Just Assassins]” (Notebook V 158). Camus’s exploration of rebellion does not represent an abandonment of the absurd but suggests an effort to further texture his understanding; by engaging rebellion, Camus was engaging an ever-changing moment. In the preface to the first English edition of “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus made the connection between the absurd and rebellion when he wrote, “For me ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ marks the beginning of an idea which I was to pursue in The Rebel” (v). The metaphor of rebellion supports the idea that Camus was committed to working out the ethical implications of his ideas in the midst of a changing historical moment. In this chapter, embedded rebellion emerges as a metaphor that assists one in responding to the problems that occur when one experiences the fall.
Chapter 3 more fully explores the emergence of the metaphor of the absurd within the work and thought of Albert Camus and examines how he came to recognize that metaphor as an accurate description of his historical moment. Camus functioned as both an ethical practitioner of communication and a philosopher of communication. Through his work as a journalist, playwright, theater director, and literary critic, Camus served in a variety of communicative roles in the public sphere. Camus’s first cycle of work—including “The Myth of Sisyphus,” The Stranger, “Caligula,” and “The Misunderstanding”—provides his most thorough treatment of the metaphor of the absurd. These works also present a vivid account of the need for active dialogue, the central metaphor of chapter 3, between human beings. When one works from a position informed by embedded rebellion, one can more fully make sense of human existence in the midst of absurdityby constructively responding to the fall.