He YucongGregory RobbinsAP English and LiteratureSeptember 12, 2013Main article: Absurdism in LiteratureThis article focuses on the use of absurdism in post-World War II literature and its influence on contemporary society. Specifically, this article first presents the origin of absurdism, connecting nihilism and existentialism and briefly comparing the difference between these similar concepts. After clarifying the concept of absurdism, the second part of this article examines some representative works of the post-World War II period, famous for their use of absurdity, such as Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, The American Dream by Edward Albee, The Outsider by Albert Camus, etc. In this process, this article presents the representative genres of absurdism with respect to certain individual literatures, categorizes these genres, and explores a possible general understanding. In the third section, this article expands the general genres in detail, examines the exact words and sentences in which the author applies absurdity, and analyzes the intention and effect of absurdism in the corresponding literature. The fourth part discusses the influence of this literature on contemporary society, with particular attention to absurdity and the effect it creates on readers, as absurdism serves as both a literary device and a instruction of thought. This part focuses on absurdism as a social idea rather than a philosophical concept: how absurdism in literature reflects and influences collective thinking in society. In the final part, this article explores the instructive value of absurdism with its possible applications in today's society and in ourselves, and attempts to resolve our problems with absurdist philosophy and ideas such as... .... middle of article..... .er and a moralizing laugh, a laugh that announces a kind of illness. Even as we move out of the Elizabethan period and toward the 18th century, the absurd takes a place in literature. According to Noel Malcolm's The Origins of English Nonsense, long before the recognized masterpieces of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, before the English reached their absurd peak under the reign of Victoria, a few privileged Elizabethans were already developing a surreal and proto-Carrollean sense. of humor. (16) The result of this period is English absurdist poetry. In certain cases, the humor of absurd verses is based on the incompatibility of sentences which have a grammatical but semantic meaning at least in certain interpretations, as in the tradition: "I see" said the blind man to his deaf-mute daughter in choosing he raised his hammer and saw.