The Third Policeman: A Lesson in AbsurdityThe protagonist of Flann O'Brien's novel The Third Policeman has spent the last few days following the bizarre characters of Policeman MacCruiskeen and the Sergeant Pluck in an even more bizarre world of his own creation. The narrator, eager to receive his treasure, safely kept in a black box, follows these characters patiently waiting to receive his destiny safely placed in a box. The narrator finds himself in the midst of a world that requires every stretch of the reader's and narrator's imagination to understand. O'Brien asks the reader to suspend disbelief and follow the journey. O'Brien pushes the boundaries of the postmodern novel and the limits of the conscious mind as he revels in the impossibilities and possibilities of the existentialist mind. Flann O'Brien weaves elements of existentialism, Freud's psychological theory of consciousness, and postmodernism into literature in a satirical way to demonstrate how little humans actually know; especially in a time when new theories were forming and being tested on the path to enlightenment. O'Brien's narrative brings the reader to experience all of these elements; through the narrator, all theories collide in O'Brien's The Third Policeman. In the critical essay “Calmly making tapes of eternity: the futility of the modern project in Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman” author Lanta Davis states “The Third Policeman is one of the first postmodern texts, examining O'Brien's doubts regarding the modern quest for knowledge. O'Brien demonstrates extreme skepticism towards human epistemological inquiry and even describes the Cartesian cogito as the self-referential, ... at the center of the paper ... the individual experience in a hostile environment or indifferent universe, or a sense of disorientation and confusion when faced with a seemingly meaningless or absurd world. O'Brien asks the question: If life is absurd and meaningless, why couldn't death be absurd and meaningless? consciousness, O'Brien shows that just because it can't be seen, how do we know it doesn't exist? All of Freud's discoveries are essentially as meaningless as the world that O'Brien created, an existentialist world of chaos and that notion of the absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning to be found in the world beyond meaning that we give him. It is O'Brien's introduction to the world of bicycles that have characteristics of humans and boxes, so small they are not seen, and elevators into eternity, we are asked to suspend disbelief and understand O'Brien's satire..