. . Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all of his actions become senseless, absurd, useless" (Esslin xix). Camus offers a similar explanation in The Myth of Sisyphus:
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity (Camus 5)
The theme of absurdity is reinforced by Baker's style. Told from the first-person point of view, "Happy Hour" is narrated in present tense. This lends immediacy and contingency to the narrative--experience unfolding by the minute, with the reader essentially sharing the reactions and observations of the narrator even as the narrator encounters and undergoes them.
In "Happy Hour", the Home is the locus of divorce and a
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