Absurd Heroes in A Man for all Seasons and The Mission

Someone who is absurd is wildly illogical or inappropriate; ridiculous (Oxford English Dictionary). When we think of someone who is absurd we think of someone who would do things that we would think would be ‘illogical’. An absurd hero is someone who exemplifies the characteristics of a hero, but punishes them self by achieving acts that we would deem useless. Albert Camus states that his view of an absurd hero, through the example of the …

…as absurd. The most absurd part about their lives is that they exert all their efforts to changing nothing in their time and they end up dying. Albert Camus uses The Myth of Sisyphus, to illustrate how the absurd hero works, “[A] passion for life win [the] unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted into accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth.” (Camus pg. 351)