Date of Award

6-2016

Document Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Modern Languages and Literatures

First Advisor

Charles R. Batson

Language

French

Keywords

life, world, analyses, focus

Abstract

Absurdist literatures are known for their focus on the meaninglessness of existence and the indifference of the world. Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, emphasize the importance of action in this absurdist world whereby our choices and actions create the people that we become and in which we are a product of our decisions. This process can be daunting, because it renders individuals responsible for their own destiny. My analyses focus on a lesser-studied aspect of these writings: their exploration of the beauty of life, in spite of its fragility, and their expression of the appreciation and joy that one should find there. While these writers have been critiqued for their pessimistic views on life, in my analyses, they have also succeeded in pointing to an incontrovertible happiness. “Les Trois Mûres” is a play that I’ve created in the spirit of these absurdist writings. It centers on a receptionist at a hotel called Trois Mûres and goes through a single day in the hotel lobby. The other characters in the play are the bellhop, the two maids, the elevator operator, and the proprietor, along with an assortment of guests. The play explores Camus’ notion of the ultimate choice between “suicide and life” since one of the maids discovers a dead man in one of the rooms. The receptionist must then deal with the justification behind this suicide by means of the absurdist nature of the world.

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