Absurdity The term absurdity generally refers to the meaninglessness and purposelessness of life. This assumption about the basic condition of human beings has been adequately represented in literature. Though this assumption has its roots in some of the writings of nineteenth century, it emerged as a movement in twentieth century, especially in the works of Samuel Beckett, Ionesco and Genet. This group of writers, who are usually called post-world war writers, attempted to falsify the general notion that human beings are rational creatures who are part of an ordered social structure and who live in an intelligible universe. This kind of notion emerged as a result of the horrors of World Wars. Earlier, in the Victorian age there was a conflict between religion and science. People were in oscillation between these two systems. In the twentieth century, they lost hope in both systems as God didn’t come to help them and science, in fact, caused a mass destruction. At this juncture, gradually the reality started gripping the consciousness of the people. Though the foundational stones of western culture – Religion and Science dwindled, modern man is not in a position to accept this reality. He always attempts to search for a unified, logical and eternal reality. In other words, he tries to bring back the order of the society and make himself a part of it. According to the post-world war absurd writers, this kind of attempt of man is futile and more importantly, there is no such thing as unified, logical and eternal reality. In fact, this futile attempt of the modern man makes their existence anguished and absurd. In this connection, it is worthy to quote Albert Camus’ explanation of the absurd condition of man in The Myth of Sisyphus:
A world that can be explained by reasoning, however, faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe that is suddenly deprived of