His enormous effort to push his rock to the summit—the over-extension of sinew and bone—the mental stamina he exerts to carry out his sentence, everything a man has going into his existence, his purpose finally achieved as the rock reaches the zenith, then only to see his rock thunder back down to earth … it's in these moments when Sisyphus contemplates his return down the mountain to his rock that he's fully and completely aware of his work, and in that blazing of consciousness he's empowered by his fate and purpose, for he sees exactly who he is and what he owns.
Peter Kramer, in Against Depression notes that "if Sisyphus is a hero, it is because he faces endless futility without succumbing to despair".
The gods said there was nothing worse as punishment than futile hopeless manual labour, to the accomplishment of nothing. If only those caught in the throes of major depressive disorder could see also, as Sisyphus, clearly who and what they are without letting it defeat them.
In La Peste, or The Plague, Dr. Cynic, as autobiographical value, it's a great work, and it also develops some of Camus' earlier discussion of absurdity, a topic near and dear to his heart apparently. The fixation and examination of death and it's affects are a curiosity for Rieux, as he detachedly goes about his duties in administering to the dying and also dealing with the ones left behind, those in 'exile' as it were, looking in from the ramparts of the walled city, hoping to keep the plague at bay.
Cottard and Tarrous' visit to the opera house to see Orpheus contains absurd and ironic views of how people were thinking their status and cultural association would keep the plague at bay. The behaviours and escapism, reckless extravagance, ongoing drinking in cafes, nursing the sick, idling away time, hoping, watching, and waiting to read of the end of the plague in the paper, all this activity, it becomes man's fate. They have no control over this disease, it's taken their choices from them. Everyone is on the same base level, the plague shows no socio-economic selection.
Camus said "the habit of despair is worse than despair itself". Surely Sisyphus does not despair his fate, as man too must accept death, for as Rieux states "Death means nothing to men like me, it's the event that proves them right".
