We have discussed, many times, how stories borrow a great deal from myths, folklore, and other cultures.
It seems like nothing really new has been written, for quite some time.
When dealing with magical-realism, you are dealing with a complex tapestry of cultures and their myths. More than this, you are finding that when people migrate around the globe they are taking their myths with them, and those myths get dissolved into other cultures. In this way, myths tend to morph and turn into something that only loosely resembles their original form.
The Myth of Sisyphus is one such myth. Camus' piece is a meditation about a man whom the gods had condemned to ceaselessly rolling a rock up to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than this futile and hopeless labor.
(Ooops...wrong Homer)
(That's more like it...)
It is also based on Homer's story of a man who was supposedly the wisest and most prudent of all mortals. So much for that...
This myth is echoed in Kafka's "The Metamorphosis". In this story, Kafka takes a man and turns him into a bug in a commentary about the monotony and drudgery of a life that seems to rob a man of his humanity.
A more modern telling of this story blends Camus and Kafka into a comic story that is steeped in philosophy. "Groundhog Day" is only a comedy on the surface. The real truth is that it is a complex study about a man whose neverending task is to find meaning in a life that he finds to be dull - literally robbing him of the chance to escape the same day for a seeming eternity.
There is something to be said here for the oppression each character feels that is either self-imposed, or resulting from a reaction to his environment.
Either way, each story has to do with a character who is made to suffer (metaphorically, or otherwise) because he is not satisfied with his station in life.
In your journals, I would like you do to some investigating today.
Can you summarize the story of Sisyphus and tell me how it relates to magical-realism?
Is the story itself a good example of magical-realism?
If not, what essential elements of magical-realism does "The Myth of Sisyphus" lend to other examples of the genre?
