begins by explicitly
posing a question which permeates Camus's work, including : Is life worth
living? This, according to Camus, is the only truly essential question posed by philosophy and a
peculiarly urgent one for us to answer if we are to live (or die) by the philosophical
principles we espouse. It is followed by a subsidiary, still compelling, question: Can we make
any sense of life or is it inevitably absurd?
The absurdity of Truman's life
in The Truman Show is explained by the fact that he is being manipulated
for the entertainment of an audience by a television producer who is playing God. The broader
absurdity of life (that of the audience and the many people who connive in the deception of
Truman) remains unquestioned.
We, like Truman, are thrown into a world which
is not of our own making and which often seems alienating. However, unlike The Truman
Show, life, as seen by Camus, has no executive producer making decisions on any
basis, artistic, philosophical or otherwise. This makes our predicament far more absurd than
Truman's, since there is no one in control, no reason, no structure and no escape from the
absurdity except death.
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