Camus

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             "At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote that a lost paradise The world evades us because it becomes itself again" (Sisyphus 14).
             Science fails to provide a rational explanation of the world as well. The scientist speak of atoms and electrons of a physical world which obeys laws and fits a pattern, all of which is convincing until one is asked to accept that an infinity of matter is revolving around an invisible nucleus. Scientist explain the world with an image we cannot see, "so that science was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work or art" (Sisyphus 20). The aware individual can no longer find solace in nature, in scientific reasoning, or in the accompaniment of others. The aware man is a lonely man; he must be content in his individual revolt against the absurd.
             The Plague itself does not directly represent the Absurd, but the extreme circumstances it entails provokes the inhabitants of Oran to experience the Absurd by confronting them unexpectedly with death. The plague forces its victims and potential victims to come to terms with the condition of life, not in any superficial intellectual way, but fundamentally. Individuals must realize that their life is absurd and will ultimately have the same ending despite the choices that are made during the plague. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus illustrates the meaningless of human existence, and He expands upon this theory in his later novel, The Plague, in which he personifies these reactions to the human condition within the novels" characters. These reactions can be divided into three subgroups as reactions pertaining to the possibility of living in the absurd: suicide, denial, and hope.