Absurdity in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and The Sirens of Titan, and Albert Camus' The Stranger and The Plague

Human depression and the atrocities of wars were major reasons behind the rise of absurdism as a philosophical and literary movement which became one of the most discussed and studied themes among authors and critics after the Second World War, and more precisely in the fifties and sixties of the previous century in Europe and later in America. The object of the present thesis is to describe and explain absurdity in the selected novels of American humanist writer, Kurt Vonnegut and French-Algerian writer who is also considered the founder of absurdism, Albert Camus. Thus, two novels of each writer are studied in terms of absurdity. In order to cast light more on the subject, the study provides the relation between absurdism and the other philosophical movements. In his novels, Vonnegut describes human condition and the cosmologically. He raises philosophical questions like how the cosmos works, why man is here, where he goes, etc. He is eager to find purpose, order, and reason in the cosmos because he cannot accept a senseless world, but instead he finds that pointless, unpredictable, and cruel things just senselessly happen. Camus, on the other hand, raises absurd themes in his works, and claims that human being is punished with a life which has no inherited meaning. According to Camus, the first step to confront the absurd for an individual is being conscious of the real condition and then revolting against it; he should no longer think about himself only, but also of others. Both writers find no intrinsic meaning or purpose in life although Vonnegut does not describe it as explicitly as Camus does. Furthermore, they have IV different approaches as for responding to the absurd, but since they are both atheists, they exclude clinging to religion as a correct response. Key Words: Absurdity, despair, death, purpose, hope, humanism, and life.