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simply unintelligible” (5). A further example of the potential absurdity of human existence occurred for Camus when, at age seventeen, he experienced his first symptoms of tuberculosis (Lottman 43). Until that point in his life, Camus had been an avid soccer player, but from then on, life “in the sense he knew it seemed to come to an end, when it should just be beginning” (Lottman 45). Although he was not yet writing about absurdity, Camus was gaining experiential knowledge about the concept that would come to define his work. The unexpected interruption caused by tuberculosis forced Camus to experience the absurd firsthand; many life circumstances defy explanation and, quite often, any ultimate meaning remains hidden from human sight.
Throughout these early years, Camus’s main engagement with absurdity came through his personal experiences, which would be expanded during his years of academic training and encounters with the ideas of many thinkers, including St. Augustine and Fyodor Dostoevsky. From 1918 through 1923 Camus attended primary school. Upon completion of this phase of his education, he held various jobs, including selling spare parts for cars and working in a marine broker’s office (Cruickshank 13). He completed his formal education in 1936 with a dissertation that addressed the beliefs of Plotinus as they related to those of St. Augustine. Although Camus never embraced the Christian faith, he remained sympathetic to Christian beliefs throughout his life. While completing his education, Camus was also building a reputation for his skills and interest in the theater. In 1935 he founded the Théâtre du Travail (later reorganized into the Théâtre de l’Equipe). Within this context, Camus first adapted and performed works by Dostoevsky. Although it was not published until 1944 or performed until 1945, Camus wrote the play Caligula during this period of theatrical productivity.
Camus moved to mainland France in 1940 when he accepted a job working as a reporter at the newspaper Paris-Soir—only months before the German offensive in northeast France and the beginning of Camus’s journey into the French Resistance movement in the early stages of World War II. After the German occupation of Paris, Camus remained in the French capital. In 1943 he met Jean Paul Sartre, who would be