Life is absurd, not because it’s futile but because we wish it weren’t hopeless. The vast gulf between the human yearning for certainty and the meaningless emptiness of reality is the measure of that absurdity.

There are two ways to make absurdity go away: find certainty or cease to care about it. For those who pine for understanding but realize there’s none forthcoming, suicide is a possibility, though Camus instead recommends facing absurdity squarely. Those who can’t stand the pain of not understanding can invent comforting beliefs to calm themselves, but Camus condemns this as a form of cowardice.

Even if God exists, the existential problem remains: “either we are not free and God the all-powerful is responsible for evil. Or we are free and responsible but God is not all-powerful” (56). Each outcome causes existence to collapse into meaninglessness. Thus, it’s not possible to be rescued from our existential dilemma by seeking God’s protection. We must look elsewhere for reassurance.

Before long, however, an intelligent person will realize that there is no reassurance, no place of safety, and no answer to the basic questions about life. With nowhere to turn, and in the face of unbearable emptiness, most people spend their lives pretending that everything is fine; they push away their fears about death and the empty futility that it represents.