 The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity, writes Simone de Beauvoir in her book The Ethics of Ambiguity. Life is not absurd, but it is ambiguous. It is ever incomplete and always in process. The meaning of our existence is not fixed, but is fluid. De Beauvoir writes further, saying, to declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given meaning. To say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must constantly be one.