What Adaptations Retell The Myth Of Sisyphus As Fiction?

I get a little giddy whenever the Sisyphus myth pops up in modern fiction — there’s something delicious about watching artists take that rock-and-hill punishment and bend it into time loops, bureaucracies, or plain old human endurance. I’ve started noticing it everywhere: some works retell the myth explicitly, others translate its spirit into a character trapped in repetition or futility. If you want a tour that mixes direct adaptations and close cousins, here are the ones I come back to again and again.

First off, you can’t talk about Sisyphus without nodding to 'The Myth of Sisyphus' by Albert Camus. It’s technically an essay, but its final image — that of Sisyphus smiling — has been a touchstone for later fiction. It invited writers to treat the endless task as not just punishment but as a way to talk about meaning and revolt. That philosophical seed inflated into many fictional forms: for outright myth-reworking, check out the 1974 animated short 'Sisyphus' by Marcell Jankovics, a terse, almost hypnotic visual retelling that leans into the brutal circularity of the original story. For contemporary TV, the South Korean series 'Sisyphus: The Myth' (2021) uses the name and the theme as a metaphor for repetition and fate while building a sci-fi plot full of time-bending stakes.

Then there are the loop stories that feel Sisyphusian because they trap the protagonist in an endlessly repeating action. Films like 'Groundhog Day' turn repetition into character growth — the rock becomes a calendar day — while blockbusters such as 'Edge of Tomorrow' and indie TV like 'Russian Doll' twist the loop into both comedy and existential horror. In games, titles like 'Returnal' and 'Deathloop' literally make repetition the mechanic: you learn and repeat to inch forward, much like Sisyphus learning how to nudge his boulder. Finally, Supergiant Games’ 'Hades' actually includes Sisyphus as a character: he’s a ghostly presence with his own little arc and personality, which delighted me because it’s a direct nod to the myth in a medium where the punishment becomes an interactive, sometimes oddly tender relationship.

I love how these adaptations stretch the myth into different emotional colors — bleak, ironic, hopeful, punishing, playful. Each version asks a slightly different question about the rock and the hill: is the point protest, endurance, boredom, or something you can transform into meaning? If you’re in the mood to explore, mix a philosophical read like 'The Myth of Sisyphus' with a handful of loop stories and a play or two — the variety shows how endlessly generative that one little Greek punishment can be.

There’s a quieter pleasure in tracking how older literature and theater rework Sisyphus into scenes of waiting and endless toil. When I dive into this side of the tradition, I like to linger in slow, patient works that don’t shout their mythological debt but carry the same ache. Those are the pieces that feel like they’ve learned to whisper Sisyphus’ secret into the reader’s ear.

Dino Buzzati’s 'The Tartar Steppe' is one of those novels that reads like Sisyphus in exile: a soldier waits his whole life for an event that never really arrives, and the book becomes a study of wasted expectation and stubborn fidelity to a meaningless post. Samuel Beckett’s play 'Waiting for Godot' offers a theatrical sibling to Sisyphus, with characters stuck in circular routines, hoping for meaning that keeps being deferred. Franz Kafka’s bureaucratic nightmares — especially 'The Trial' and 'The Castle' — have the same grinding quality; the protagonist pushes against systems as absurd and immovable as a stone. These works don’t name Sisyphus, but they enact his punishment through modern situations: jobs, institutions, watchful forts at the frontier of boredom.

Those slower, literary retellings taught me to look for the myth in tone and structure rather than plot alone. A story where the protagonist’s daily life is an unbroken loop, or where the central conflict is the endurance of repetitive absurdity, earns the Sisyphus comparison. Plays and novels often make the point in a way films can’t: you sit with the character in time, and that enforced attention becomes the hill you’re both on. Personally, when I’m reading one of these books late at night with a mug gone cold beside me, the Sisyphus myth feels less like a punishment and more like a mirror for how we cope with long, slow projects or institutions that wear us down. That’s why these retellings stick with me — they turn myth into a tool for empathy and slow-burning protest, not just despair.

If you and I were geeking out over video games and modern pop culture, I’d push the interactive takes on Sisyphus first, because the medium nails the feeling of pushing the same load again and again. Gaming and certain films make the repetition palpable in a way that’s viscerally familiar: you die, you reload, you try again. That loop mechanic is basically a digital Sisyphus.

Start with 'Hades' — Supergiant’s slaying-of-boredom roguelike handles Greek myth with charm, and Sisyphus shows up as a character you can talk to and help. He’s not just background mythology; he becomes part of the relationship economy of the game, and the repetitive runs let you inhabit the mythic rhythm. If you prefer a darker, more mechanical loop, 'Returnal' forces you into an oppressive repeating cycle where each run peels back layers of mystery and trauma. 'Deathloop' plays with repetition more playfully, putting you in an assassin-versus-assassin time trap where mastery and discovery are your only salvation — very Sisyphus in the sense of trial-by-repetition.

Movies and shows translate that same itch differently. 'Groundhog Day' is the classic pop-culture Sisyphus: the hero repeats the same day until he learns something about himself. 'Edge of Tomorrow' puts the repetition in action-hero terms, and 'Russian Doll' goes spry and existential with female-led melancholy. On the arthouse side, Marcell Jankovics’ animated short 'Sisyphus' is a crisp, almost brutal visual poem that returns you to the myth’s raw core. And if you’re into TV that borrows the name directly, 'Sisyphus: The Myth' (2021) leans on the metaphor for fate and futility inside a high-concept sci-fi story.

What I love about these adaptations is how the medium changes the moral. In games, repetition becomes skill and mastery; in films it’s comedy or horror or redemption; in short animation it’s sheer mythic terror. Every new retelling throws a different light on whether the rock is punishment, challenge, or something you can make into purpose. If you want to chase this down, try pairing a looping game run with a viewing of 'Groundhog Day' and a spin through 'Hades' — the contrasts make the whole thing feel more alive, like a myth that refuses to stop rolling downhill.