Cool Hand Sisyphus

Sisyphus--a figure from Greek mythology, variously a king or prince, but in every version of the myth a devious, self-aggrandizing individual who eventually pushed the envelope too far and was condemned by Zeus to an eternity of meaningless work; a prototype for a character who is doomed to repetitive behavior; according to Albert Camus in his essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus," a happy man.

As with so many bigger-than-life characters, Sisyphus is defined more by his fate than the events leading to it. Now forged in our collective memory as a man who must push a large rock to a steep hill to its crest, whereupon it will roll down the other side, Sisyphus makes us think of the tedium of tasks we abhor, ways of avoiding the tedium, including the karma yoga approach of work,however meaningless, as worship. 

Suppose, however, that Sisyphus were an atheist. Would the karma yoga concept cause him to engage in the inevitable transformative change that is imposed on protagonists in longform fiction--change?

However his plight is seen--karmic justice done, for instance--he is an embodiment of story, as an action and as an active concept. Whatever myth you follow that led to his ultimate fate, the constant application of force to move the rock to the top of a hill, only to see it tumble, suggests story orbit, a path that may be interrupted at any point as a beginning. 

Let the rock equal the goal (which is always to keep the rock moving). Now the story may begin at any point in the circuit of Sisyphus addressing the rock or watching the rock fall or rushing to the other side of the hill to be in place when the rock comes to a halt, in order to begin pushing it to the top once more. 

Given Sisyphys' devious nature, he may be working on a plan, either to get out of this meaningless work altogether or to turn it into something with meaning. Thus the story could begin at the point where Sisyphus would ordinarily begin to push the rock up the hill, but this time he does not; he storms into Zeus office, where he quits, refuses to push the rock any longer. 

As a potential for reversal or antagonistic force, Zeus nods, then directs his underlings to assign Sisyphus to the Prometheus Treatment.

"Wait," Prometheus protests. "What's that?" Whereupon he hears the fate of Prometheus, who stole the secret of fire from Zeus and pass it along to humans. As payment for this misadventure, Prometheus is bound to a mountain side every day, in time for his liver to be an afternoon snack for a vulture. By nightfall, a new liver is regenerated, and the following day--back to the mountainside and the hungry vulture.

Hearing this tale of eternal high choler and higher cholesterol, Sisyphus quickly decides, "Excuse me. Got to get back to my rock."

Epic characters such as Sisyphus, Captain Ahab, Captain Spaulding, and Joan of Arc are resonant because of their own focus on task and because of the ways in which their behavior reminds us of other characters, those more accessible to our lives. Notable within this panoply is Luke Jackson, from Donn Pearce's novel, Cool Hand Luke, in which Jackson, after a drunken prank, is sent to a prison where his days are spent performing increasingly meaningless tasks.

Story, or Sisyphus Rocks

A good deal of attention is properly paid to the movement of a story from its engaging, often rambunctious beginning, through its point of achieving a seemingly unstoppable inertia, often thought of as the middle or act two, concluding with the place where it comes to a rest, however temporary. This coming to rest is the end because the story has landed on someone or something, run out of steam, or dramatically changed its mind. It will not start up again until someone or something gets it moving again. This movement is frequently referred to as arc or throughline. In either case, the intent is for the story to have begun at point A, then moved through a number of points to the designated spot where it stops moving for some time.

Readers, accordingly, get the sense of a story being over when it stops moving for a considerable time, author's intentions to the contrary notwithstanding.

For the sake of illustration, I propose to call the path of a story an orbit; a circular or elliptical path as opposed to arc, which is, when you stop to think of it, a segment of a circle; or indeed a throughline, which suggests movement enough but movement on a straight line, which implies that the story is of singular dimension as opposed to the more textured implications of orbit. An arc or throughline is like a doughnut in comparison to the layer cake of orbit.

A well-constructed story may be begun at any point in it orbit. Stories do not have to be chronological, although they may be if it suits the author's purpose. By way of example, The Iliad, which begins in the famed medias res or middle of things, properly begins with that great twit, Paris, being asked to judge a beauty contest in which the contestants are goddesses. Lovely story. The main contestants try their godly hands at suborning Paris with incentives for choosing her instead of her sisters. Paris is most tempted by the offered bribe of the most beautiful woman in the world, an offer from the goddess of love. He proceeds to chose the goddess of love as the most beautiful among the competing goddesses, then claims his prize. "And so you shall be rewarded," she tells him. "The only problem is, she's married."

In The Iliad, this is backstory, explaining how Paris connected with Helen in the first place, making Helen WMS, weapons of mass seduction, and causing the seven-year Trojan War. It also explains how Paris was the forerunner of G. W. Bush. All the available contemporary renditions of The Iliad begin with Achilles, storming off to his tent in a rage that had nothing to do with the Trojan War. Achilles' rage is so intense that he opts out of fighting, which could mean a complete change in the complexion of the battle. There are other places in the orbit where this epic could have begun, each adding a different kind of texture and tone to the entire story.

Another splendid example of story orbit involves another set of characters from more or less the time of The Iliad. Let's look at the myth of Sisyphus, in which Sisyphus, a mortal, has been sentenced by Zeus, king of the gods, to an eternity of pushing a huge boulder up a steep incline, where it topples over the crest, rumbles down an equally steep slope, rolling of its own inertia until it comes to rest. Having observed this behavior, Sisyphus must push the boulder into position, then repeat the process. No weekends off, no holidays, no time and a half overtime pay. Sisyphus' crime was hitting on one of Zeus lady friends. That story could be set in motion with Sisyphus hard at work, pushing the boulder up the hill. It could be initiated when he reaches the top of the hill. It could even begin with his wife trotting alongside him as he pushes, wanting to know what's with him, why he never calls, could he maybe spare a few shekels to buy some food. The story could begin with Sisyphus blowing his cool, storming into Zeus' office and refusing to push the damned boulder up that damned hill one more damned time, at which point Zeus snaps his fingers and summons over two henchmen, informing them "Okay, Sisyphus is off the rock detail. Soon as I finish the paper work, take him over to the mountain and give him the Prometheus treatment?"

"Prometheus treatment?" Sisyphys asks.

"Yeah. Some dude tried to steal the secret of fire from me so now he gets tied to a mountain side every day around lunch time. Vultures come by, rip out his liver. Prometheus gets to go home, grow a new liver, then back to the mountain side."

"Excuse me," Sisyphys says, "I gotta get back to my boulder."

Depending on where in that orbit you start, it can produce humor, pathos, existential woe, philosophical questioning, psychological humor--you name it.

Ah, I hear your first question: Suppose my story doesn't have an orbit?

Ah, indeed. Now you begin to understand why so many memorable stories do have an orbit.