“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” as a picture of the Modern human condition, portrays humanity as doomed to forever wander around, never really “living,” wandering around in an incessant search of meaning, where none actually exists, having society dehumanize and reduce people to mindless cogs in an oppressive machine. As Meursault portrays, life is, essentially, absurd — a paradox in which humanity endlessly searches for meaning when the universe is inherently meaningless. However, as Meursault also portrays, life does not have to stay meaningless. Life does not have to always be lived passively, always in reaction to life, without making meaning for the individual people actually living out that life. Meursault is able to find meaning in a …show more content…
Both movements of Modernism and absurdism paint a bleak portrait of the human condition, in which humanity will desperately desire for meaning where there is none, stranded and alone in the absurdity of the human condition. Although we may be doomed to be separated, like Prufrock, stranded on the land and separated from the mermaids, we do not have to always live that way; one can take it upon themselves to swim, to achieve connection. Life may seem to be, at times, useless, as futile as the fate that Sisyphus is doomed to, to push a rock up a hill every day, only for it to roll back down the next day. However, as Camus concludes, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” (“The Myth of Sisyphus”) Likewise, in the meaningless chaos and completely randomness of the universe, meaning can be found. Humanity does not need to be confined to the inferno of their own minds, do not need to be forever wandering in a futile search of meaning, do not need to be stranded on the beach, unable to attain the mermaids of meaning and connection. Life can have meaning, in spite of the indifferent universe around us. And life can be a rebellion against the vast meaninglessness of the gaping void, of a universe that deems humanity