It was a fine Sunday evening, there I was scrolling through the depths of reddit searching for a small novel which I could finish within a week. Why small? I read on my 6.69 inch electronic device, reading long hours on a such a small screen certainly doesn’t spark any joy. Soon I discovered “The Stranger” by Albert Camus. quickly got hold of the epub version and started reading. I planned to read it bit by bit initially, little did I know how engrossed I would become over the hours.
The story is set in France and starts with Mr Meursault informing us Maman (his mom) died.Then we progress through seemingly ordinary events in his life. One of the key events was when he helped Raymond devise a plan to get revenge from his cheating girlfriend. He stuck up for Raymond when he was caught by the police for abusing his girlfriend. The subsequent events led him to go on a vacation with Raymond and Marie. Here he kills the brother of Raymond’s girlfriend. Meursault stays in jail for a while before being becoming convicted murder. The story finally closes with him sentenced to death by guillotine.
Meursault
The story portrays Meursault as someone who acts indifferent all worldly matters. This is evident from the way he expressed his feeling throughout his mom’s funeral. He was only annoyed and tired. Annoyed due to the fact that now he had to interact with people who was sorry for him and tired due to the amount of travelling he had to do.
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That evening Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn’t make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to.
This was one of the first instances where we understand how numb Meursault is. Relationships certainly didn’t matter much to him. We see him agree to the marriage proposal later on because it did not matter to him whether he is married or not to the woman he likes to be with.
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“So why marry me, then?” she said. I explained to her that it didn’t really matter and that if she wanted to, we could get married.”
I wonder how the story would have been if it were to set during the present time, Mr Meursault I wish you good luck finding woman who would stay around with your attitude.
His relationship with Raymond is certainly interesting. We seeing him helping Raymond, despite being characterised as apathetic. Why would Meursault go such lengths for friendship? What could possibly prompt him to kill the Arab for Raymond? I assume it something much darker than what we see on the surface. These kind of questions make me feel that the judgement made by prosecution is right.
Meursault’s morality is another topic to be questioned about. During the murder, he went on to shoot four more rounds although after taking a bit. He was questioned multiple times on why did he continue to shoot a dead body to which he replied he did not know. There is also another scenario where he decided defended Raymond when he abused his girlfriend. All this led to a single analysis, that he is short on morals. Simple.
The Philosophy
Albert Camus related his book closer to the lines of absurdism. Absurdism is a theory that life itself is absurd, in other terms life is meaningless. The Absurdist idea is scattered throughout the book, more prominently at the end.
Meursault’s final encounter with chaplain results what I interpret as a breakdown. There we see him adamant that he is the person who has it figured out not the chaplain. He insults chaplain for believing that turning to god will set things right.
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“I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another.”
He accepts death as anything else, accepts that death is inevitable. Further down the lines, we the following striking lines:
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“Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind levelled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living.”
Meursault tells us about the future that is bound to happen has been indirectly shaping his present and everything before it. All the experiences and emotions he went through were to be rendered meaningless at his death. Even time is considered simply as an illusion in our grand existence.
A shallow analysis of the book lead me to the perspective that absurdists by nature wouldn’t care about morales. Meursault had no second thoughts about his actions nor his friend’s and proceeds to show no regrets. Actions were justified as it was bound to happen and that they were meaningless. Even God is denied a place as he too is considered meaningless.