Albert Camus (1913-1960) was born into impoverished conditions in Mondovi, Algeria. His father was killed in World War I, and his mother worked as a charwoman to support the family. Camus won a scholarship to attend the Algiers lyceum in 1923 and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers, where he obtained a diplome d'etudes superieures in 1936 for a thesis on the works of Plotinus and St. Augustine. During this period, Camus began to write and produce plays for the Theatre du Travail (Workers' Theatre), which sought to expose working-class audiences to the theater, and he also briefly belonged to the Algerian Communist Party (1934-35).

Camus then began a career as a journalist, producing book reviews and a series of articles detailing the injustices of life in Algeria under the colonial rule of the French. In 1940, he moved to Paris and became active in the resistance movement during the German occupation of France. For two years after the war, Camus served as editor of the Parisian daily Combat, a position that allowed him to deepen his engagement with political activism but which ultimately left him disillusioned at the absence of moral integrity in politics.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Camus wrote the major publications that established his reputation, including The Stranger (1942), The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Plague (1947), The Rebel (1951), Exile and the Kingdom (1952), and The Fall (1956). In 1957, he received the Nobel Prize for literature. Camus was killed in a car accident near Sens, France, on January 4, 1960.

Camus is generally, though sometimes controversially, associated with the movement of French existentialism. Although he was closely associated for a time with Jean-Paul Sartre, their relationship ended in a bitter dispute, and Camus often expressed reservations about existentialist philosophy. Nevertheless, Camus's reflections on the human condition and his focus on the moral dimensions of human life have important affinities with the existentialist tradition. Two notions in particular can be seen as forming the nucleus of Camus's thought: the notion of absurdity and the notion of revolt.

In his early writings, Camus struggled with the apparent contradiction of human existence, namely, that human beings desire to find a meaningful world and instead find a world without meaning. This contradiction underlies the notion of the absurdity of life because there are no guarantees for the validity of values used to guide human existence. In a striking analogy, Camus compares life to the myth of Sisyphus, suggesting that human actions are akin to the labors of Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to roll a stone up a mountain, watch it roll back down, and repeat the process endlessly. Given the absurdity of existence, Camus examined the question of whether our lives are worth living in a meaningless world. His response was that the indifference of the world to the fate of humanity provides the very motivation for human action, in terms of rebellion against that indifference.

Camus's later writings thus focused on the notion of revolt. According to Camus, the individual's only defensible response to the absurdity of existence is revolt, in particular against both the passive nihilism of meaninglessness and the prevalence of social and political injustice. He viewed revolt as a means to the creation of human solidarity by prompting moral action that helps to cultivate a sense of humanity while resisting any form of religious or political absolutism. In Camus's words, "I revolt, therefore we are." In the end, Camus articulated an ethics of revolt that sought to expose the extent of our responsibility for the conditions of human existence. Hope and courage rather than despair and fear are the positive qualities of revolt, whose aim should be to overcome human isolation and to promote mutual respect for the basic rights of all persons.

Free term papers are not written to satisfy your specific instructions. You can use our professional writing services to buy a custom written research paper, term paper, or essay on World Literature at affordable price. CustomTermPapers is the best solution for those who seek help in writing term papers, essays, and research papers related to World Literature and other relevant topics.