Stranger by camus

Existentialism is often defined as a philosophical movement or tendency, emphasizing

individual existence, freedom and choice. As a result of the diversity of positions associated
with this term it is impossible to define precisely. As is evident through the root of the word,
exist, there is a stress on definite individual existence and freedom of choice. Certain aspects
of existentialism are witnessed in The Stranger. Existentialists attempt to direct our attention
to ourselves as individuals. They force us to think about our relation to such topics as the
existence and nature of God, what it is to be Christian, the nature of values, and the fact of
one’s own death. Man is the only known being, according to the philosophers, that defines
itself merely through the act of living. In other words, first you exist, and then the individual
emerges as life decisions are made.
Many existentialists believe the greatest victory of the individual is to realize the
absurdity of life and to accept it. Existentialism is liberating for those of us who do not rely on
fate, God, or chance to guide us through the path of life. One aspect that is questionable is
our ability to continuously reinvent ourselves through our actions. While this is possible, the
majorities of people stick to old ways of doing things, or follow others blindly. Despite
encompassing a staggering range of philosophical, religious, and political ideologies, the
underlying concepts of existentialism are simple. Mankind has free will. Life is a series of
choices. Few decisions are without any negative consequences. Some things are irrational or
absurd, without explanation. If one makes a decision, he or she must follow through. The
decisions you make are whom you are, so decide accordingly. In “The Stranger” Meursault
embodies all of the six existential themes. The first existential theme is freedom. Freedom
means that whatever happened prior to now do not influence what your next choice in life
will be, we are free to make any choice we want.
Meursault displays Freedom by just doing as he wishes to do. In part one of the novel
Maman dies so he attends the funeral, nothing out of the ordinary. While attending his
mother’s funeral, Meursault decides to smoke cigarettes, drink a cup of coffee, and he fails
to show emotion. This just shows how Meursault is displaying his free will; he does not let the
influence of his mother dying effect what he wants to do. The second and the third theme’s
Meursault displays together. These themes are existence which is the awareness of our
choices, and passion which are psychological feelings that we understand before thinking
kicks in. Meursault displays both of these themes at the end of the novel. Meursault wants
his life to be here and now, he is not concerned with the hereafter. Meursault wants the
remembrance of his life. Through this thinking Meursault displays Existence and Passion. The
fourth theme is contingency. It basically says that life is unpredictable, prone to chance
happenings, also to the unexpected. Meursault displays this theme at the very end of part
one of the novel. Meursault is so content with walking back down to the spring unaware that
he is going to end up destroying his happiness by shooting the Arab. This is a very
unpredictable event because Meursault is just so happy and content with the sun shining on
him, then all of a sudden something unexpected happens and his happiness is gone. “I knew
that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I’d
been happy.” The fifth theme is individuality. An individual is a single unique member of a
collectively. Meursault lives out his individuality. The strongest display of individuality is at
the very end of the novel when Meursault wants a large crowd of people to witness his death,
and he also wants them to greet him with cries, but those of hate. “I had only wished that
there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with
cries of hate.”
By being hated Meursault retains his individuality. If Meursault goes out there begging
for forgiveness he would just become a member of a collectively. The final theme is reflection.
It refers to the capacity to bring that which we are unaware of into awareness. Meursault
leads a pre-reflective life. He goes through his daily events and is so absorbed in each moment
that he never reflects on them. Meursault does this until he looks at a reflection of himself
for the first time in prison. Meursault looking at himself shows his transition from pre-
reflective to reflective. He begins to become aware of what he was unaware of. The main
theme in The Stranger is that life is absurd. Reason is incapable of explaining human nature.
Meursault’s absurd beliefs are that life is meaningless and without purpose. The
meaninglessness implies absence of any obvious meaning to our life. This cannot be
explained, because no one can explain someone else’s sense of meaning or meaninglessness
towards life. Camus’ The Stranger presents the character of Meursault who, after killing an
Arab, is sentenced to death. This conflict portrays the stark contrast between the morals of
society and Meursault’s evident lack of them; he is condemned to death, less for the Arab’s
murder, than for refusing to conform to society’s standards. The discussion of Meursault’s
responsibility takes place at the end of the novel. Meursault’s execution symbolically brings
forth emotion, as Meursault confronts his nothingness and the impossibility of justifying the
immoral choices he has made, he realizes the pure contingency of his life, and that he has
voided, in essence, his own existence by failing to accept the risk and responsibility that the
personal freedom of an existentialist reality entails. Meursault never really takes
responsibility for his actions; all Meursault does is wish that his life could go back to the way
it used to be. Meursault is an anomaly in society; he cannot relate directly to others because
he does not live as they do. He cannot abide by the same moral confines as the rest of the
world because he does not grasp them; he is largely indifferent to events occurring around
him. Meursault’s entire being is unemotional. He derives a certain level of pleasure from
eating and drinking, smoking cigarettes, sitting on his balcony. Yet all these things are tactile;
Meursault derives physical satisfaction from them, but there is no emotion attached. This is
in direct contrast to society, whose strict guidelines focusing on right and wrong depend on
an individual’s sense of these concepts.
Meursault is perfectly capable of analysing the situation, but not of responding to it
as society wishes him to. Life or death, and anything in between, makes no difference to him.
Meursault sees the outcome as inevitable. He cannot perceive any right or wrong in killing
the Arab. The action in itself was not out of deep hatred for the man but, as he reveals at the
trial, “because of the sun.” The sun at the beach, similar to the sun at his mother’s funeral,
was beating down on him. The sun represents Meursault emotions, which he cannot deal
with. Likewise, he cannot deal with the intense heat, the light reflected off the Arab’s knife
which seems to stab at him. Meursault’s senses are being overwhelmed, and the only way to
handle the situation is to end it – so he fires the gun. The death of the Arab in itself is not
crucial to Meursault’s fate. Meursault’s true undoing comes from his lack of emotion. At the
beginning of the novel, Meursault sits at his mother’s funeral, quietly analysing details of the
scene. The onlookers present do not understand him; in fact, they are afraid of him. The
prosecutor says, “I look into a man’s face and all I see is a monster.” What Meursault has
realized, by the end of the book, is that any meaning he finds in life he must create. Meursault
is the absurdist, explaining the philosophy of existentialism: Man’s isolation among an
indifferent universe. There is no inherent meaning in life – its entire value lies in living itself.
Meursault feels he has been happy, and longs to live. When he must die, he wants a crowd to
greet him “with cries of hate”; they are screaming because they want life and the world to
have meaning; they need this because that is what their entire existence is built upon. As the
magistrate asked of Meursault, “Do you want my life to be meaningless?” Meursault
understands how estranged the individual truly is from society. Until the conclusion, he was
a stranger to himself as well as to the rest of the world. In the end, he opens himself “to the
gentle indifference of the world,” and “finding it so much like myself,” he feels he has been
happy, and is again. Society finds this unacceptable, and by refusing to conform to its face-
value standards, Meursault must die.
Albert Camus believed that to be a true existentialist you had to remove yourself from
society as much as possible since a belief in the foundation of government was to conform.
Conforming to society norms is considered bad, it doesn’t allow the individual to progress and
reach his own decisions Camus realized, however, that restricting himself from all social
conformity was impossible. Camus depicts a man with very little emotion. Once in a while he
shows a bit of heart, but for the most part, he gives a robotic appearance. The character
expresses no feeling about anything except that light is a sign of evil or annoyance, while the
dark becomes a place of calm and seriousness. In society, the common idea is that light is
good and evil grows in the darkest of places, but in Albert Camus’ novel, evil is good and the
light is bad. In the Stranger, Albert Camus uses Mersault and his experiences to convey the
philosophy that man is full of anxiety and despair with no meaning in his life except for simple
existence. The concept of existentialism is reflected through Mersault’s experiences with his
mother’s death, his relationship with Marie, the killing of the Arab, and his own trial and
execution. Camus uses the death of Mersault’s mother to convey his existentialistic
philosophy. He seems more concerned about the time of death, and not the fact that he just
lost a loved one. It also conveys the existentialist idea that reason is powerless to the idea
with the depths of human life. Furthermore, Mersault shows no compassion at his mother’s
funeral either. He does not cry or behave the way that society expects him to. This leaves the
impression that Mersault is insensitive, or that he did not love his mother. As an existentialist,
he accepts life as it is without seeking deeper meaning. Mersault’s murder of the Arab is
another example of existentialism. The absurdity of the murder is what makes it a good
portrayal of the concept of existentialism. This part of the novel shows how Mersault is not
only a stranger to his experiences in life, but also to nature. For the first time, the sun and his
sensual pleasures begin to act against him, and cause him to lose control. Most of Mersault’s
actions have no true conscious motives. Mersault shoots the Arab because of his physical
discomfort with his surroundings, but in any case, he consciously makes the decision to shoot
the Arab. When he is taken into police custody and is asked if he would need an attorney, he
is genuinely confused. It is simple to him: he murdered a man and is now ready to face the
consequences.
The second half of the book begins after Meursault is put in jail and is awaiting his
trial. Rather than being on trial for the crime, he is on trial for his values, like the lack of
grievance of his mother’s death. Meursault is found guilty and he is convicted and sentenced
because of his lack of moral feeling. While awaiting his execution, he thinks about how his life
has no meaning besides just living and how death does not scare him. He realizes that life is
meaningless and the world is irrational. This suddenly makes him happy and he accepts his
death. There are numerous meanings to the title, The Stranger, one is that if you live a life
different than what society accepts, then you are a stranger; an outcast, and will be punished
by the rest of society. In other words, the title means that Meursault is a stranger to society.
Nothing discussed in the trial had anything to do with the murder. It was all about the way he
acted and how different he was. This was used to prove that people who are different are
judged by their character over their actions. Also, most of the society was Christian in the
book and held Christian values. They believed in an afterlife and a heaven while Meursault
did not, since he was an atheist. Since society does not understand him, they cannot know
him and therefore he’s a stranger. Another meaning of the title is that he is also a stranger to
himself. He did not make any personal connections to the things he has done, only indifferent
observations. He seemed unaffected by his mother’s death, the killing of the Arab, and his
trial. Being a stranger to himself leads to the final meaning, which is a stranger to life. At the
end of the novel Meursault is able to understand the meaning of life. He was able to do so
because he was approaching death, which is an existentialist principle; death is the one
certainty of life. Before, when his mother died or when he killed the Arab, he did not have
any feelings. When he thought about his own life and that he was about to die, he accepted
it. He realizes that one can truly enjoy their lives when they approach and accept death. The
understanding of this allowed Meursault to be at peace with himself. Albert Camus’s
philosophy in the novel can be related to the philosophy of existentialism, which stresses that
the individual is solely responsible for the choices they make, there is no predetermination
and there is no supreme being who decides morality. This philosophy is extended with the
philosophy of the absurd, which states that human beings live an essential isolation in a
meaningless and irrational world and people being able to accept that everything cannot be
controlled in your environment, which is how Meursault live his life. In existentialism, you
believe that there are some things that cannot be rationally explained and just happen out of
your control. The Stranger was an unusually good book, which made me think. A majority of
the book made me feel like the rest of society, which was not accepting Meursault’s
behaviour. However, the ending changed all of that and further analysing gave me the real
reasons for his actions. When I started reading the book for the first time I jumped in right
away and didn’t want to close it because I never read anything like it. I had to go back a few
times to re-read it to understand it better and every time I re-read it, I got a different message.
Meursault was an interesting character to read about. His ideas and beliefs seem
wrong but are very right. I was able to understand what Albert Camus was trying to say with
his philosophy. In fact, I have never heard of existentialism or absurd philosophy until I
researched the author to see what he wanted to tell us. Meursault is able to accept the fact
that everyone dies and realizing this allows you to live a better life. He lives a life that he
controls and accepts all his actions that he does. I can’t say that I understand everything about
him, like how he uses Marie for sexual reasons even if she tells him her love and commitment
to him. Nonetheless, this character had the most interesting conflicts that kept me reading. I
do feel, however, that the second part dragged on and got a bit dull. The first half of the book
was filled with action and there were no direct reasons given for certain actions. In the second
half, it is mainly of his self-realization about society and life, which I feel, could have been
approached another way by the author, like being shortened. I would recommend this book
to anyone who enjoys thinking after reading a book or even coming to his or her own
realization like Meursault.

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 Major themes of The Stranger include alienation, absurdity, and French colonialism.
Meursault is the titular stranger, a young shipping clerk living in Algiers in the 1940s, when it
was still a French colony. Meursault's life is dull and empty, and Meursault takes little pleasure
in living. He believes that the world is an absurd place ungoverned by reason and that his
actions—including killing the Arab man—mean nothing. Meursault's beliefs reflect Camus'
existential philosophy.
There are five main themes in The Stranger:
Alienation. Camus establishes Meursault as an outsider early on in the narrative. The first few
pages of the book show Meursault at his mother’s funeral. Meursault watches people and
events with no particular connection -- he is distant, feels out of place, feels nervous as he
thinks people are staring at him. He does not exhibit any particular sadness at his mother’s
death. As the story develops we notice how he comprehends facts but not feelings. He spends
more time fixated on trivial physical characteristics than he does on emotional content. He is
polite, and passive, but lacks empathy. He is like this throughout the narrative; his character
doesn’t really evolve. One of the themes of The Stranger’s human alienation from oneself,
each other, and from society as a whole. Meursault, the protagonist, is a symbol of this
alienation because he is a Frenchman living in Algeria, a Muslim country in which he does not
really fit in. He is also so alienated from himself that he does not mourn his mother's death at
the beginning of the novel. The novel begins, "Maman died today.
Time and circumstance. Camus uses some subtle literary tricks to get the reader to imagine
that random events strung together are fateful. Meursault’s mother dies, he sees a movie
with his girlfriend, he’s walking up a flight of stairs and a neighbour invites him to dinner, a
man’s dog goes missing. In between unrelated events like these Camus weaves a simple story
about a man who makes the fatal mistake of getting involved with a small-time gangster and
ends up murdering someone almost by accident. Camus’ narrative brings the random events
full circle as Meursault is convicted for being cold-hearted. In other words, the story reads
like a car crash on a highway. All the drivers had some reason to be there, they could have
made other decisions, they didn’t, and now they are smashed together in heaps of metal.
There are a million details to all their lives, and then they suffer an unpredictable fate. Thus,
when Meursault is asked why he went back to the precise spot where the bloody fight with
the Arab men had been, this time armed with a gun, his response is “It just happened that
way.”
Existence and Meaning. Meursault insists throughout the story that various events or feelings
“don’t matter.” He is fond of saying “It doesn’t mean anything.” Meursault’s epiphany at the
end of the book is revealing: “Then, in the dark hour before dawn, sirens blasted. They were
announcing departures for a world that now and forever meant nothing to me. I opened
myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
Elemental forces. Throughout the narrative there is an emphasis on heat, oppressive
weather, light, water, and sunlight. On more than one occasion Meursault seems delirious
because of the combination of heat, humidity, and alcohol. The symptoms Meursault
describes during the killing of the Arab man appear to indicate sunstroke.
Sensuality. Much of Meursault's focus is on smoking, drinking, eating, being tired or his lust
for his girlfriend. His senses are constantly engaged in those activities or in his sense of the
weather (he finds the heat oppressive.) He complains about his senses being inhibited, dank
air, “blood pounding in my ears,” sleepiness, and boredom.

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The Stranger, enigmatic first novel by Albert Camus, published in French
as L’Étranger in 1942. It was published as The Outsider in England and as The Stranger in the
United States.
Plot Summary
The title character of The Stranger is Meursault, a Frenchman who lives
in Algiers (a pied-noir). The novel is famous for its first lines: “Mother died today. Or maybe it
was yesterday, I don’t know.” They capture Meursault’s anomie briefly and brilliantly. After
this introduction, the reader follows Meursault through the novel’s first-person narration to
Marengo, where he sits vigil at the place of his mother’s death. Despite the expressions of
grief around him during his mother’s funeral, Meursault does not show any outward signs of
distress. This removed nature continues throughout all of Meursault’s relationships,
both platonic and romantic.
Raymond, an unsavoury friend, is eventually arrested for assaulting his mistress and
asks Meursault to vouch for him to the police. Meursault agrees without emotion. Raymond
soon encounters a group of men, including the brother of his mistress. The brother, referred
to as “the Arab,” slashes Raymond with a knife after Raymond strikes the man repeatedly.
Meursault happens upon the altercation and shoots the brother dead, not out of revenge but,
he says, because of the disorienting heat and vexing brightness of the sun, which blinds him
as it reflects off the brother’s knife. This murder is what separates the two parts of the story.
The novel’s second part begins with Meursault’s pretrial questioning, which primarily
focuses on the accused’s callousness toward his mother’s funeral and his murder of “the
Arab.” His lack of remorse, combined with his lack of sadness expressed toward his mother,
works against him and earns him the nickname “Monsieur Antichrist” from the examining
magistrate. During the trial itself, Meursault’s character witnesses do more harm than good,
because they highlight Meursault’s apparent apathy and disengagement. Eventually,
Meursault is found guilty of murder with malice aforethought and is sentenced to death
by guillotine. As he waits for his impending death, he obsesses over the possibility of his
appeal being accepted. A chaplain visits Meursault against his wishes, only to be greeted by
Meursault’s intense atheistic and nihilistic views. In a cathartic explosion of rage, Meursault
brings the chaplain to tears. This, however, brings Meursault peace and helps him to accept
his death with open arms.
Context and Analysis
Camus utilized The Stranger as a platform to explore absurdity, a concept central to
his writings and at the core of his treatment of questions about the meaning of life. However,
Camus did not identify himself as a philosopher. In fact, he abjured “armchair” philosophy
and argued that sitting around and thinking was not enough. One needed to live life as well.
He also did not identify himself as an existentialist. He agreed with some proponents of
existentialist thought that life has no inherent meaning, but he criticized others for their
pursuit of personal meaning. Camus’s concept of the absurd instead implored people to
accept life’s lack of meaning and rebel by rejoicing in what life does offer. Elements of this
philosophy can be seen in Meursault, as he refuses to behave as if there is meaning where
there is none—or, as Camus himself put it in a preface to The Stranger, Meursault “does not
play the game.” Society thus feels threatened and cuts off Meursault’s head. Similar themes
can be seen in Camus’s essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), also published in
1942.
Camus wrote The Stranger from a place of tragedy and suffering. His father had died
in World War I, and the unfolding carnage of World War II forced a questioning of life and its
meaning. Camus had also witnessed mistreatment of native Algerians during the French
occupation of Algeria, which had begun in the first half of the 19th century and, after World
War I, was opposed by a growing nationalist movement. This conflict can be seen specifically
in Meursault’s killing of “the Arab,” the only name he uses to refer to Raymond’s mistress’s
brother. The murder has been read by some as a metaphor for the treatment of Algerian
Muslims by the colonizing French. Camus published The Stranger at a time when Algerians
were demanding political autonomy with increased forcefulness; although France did extend
some rights during the 1940s, ongoing conflicts and failed French promises of more
independence culminated in the outbreak of the Algerian War in 1954.