The Stranger is one of the most famous novels by Albert Camus. The novel tells the story of Meursault, a man who is seemingly indifferent to the death of his mother and the trial that follows her death. The book has been praised for its exploration of freedom and death, two central themes in Camus’s philosophy. In The Stranger, Camus challenges our notions of what it means to be free and whether or not we can truly control our own destiny. The book is a powerful reminder that life is unpredictable and often meaningless, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t live it to the fullest.
The idea that individuals are free when they die is taken from The Stranger by Camus, as it is in all of his works. One dependent on the other, freedom and death are major themes in Camus’s view. For Camus, freedom springs from a sense of ones life; it is an intense magnificent existence that does not need to be redeemed or regretted. Death is unjustified and ridiculous; it simply represents a return to the cosmos for a liberated individual.
The key to this awareness is lucidity, seeing things as they are without illusions. The stranger is the character in The Stranger who most fully embodies and experiences these ideas. The novel also dramatizes the confrontation of the individual with an unjust, absurd world. The central problem of the novel is whether or not the stranger can maintain his freedom and integrity in the face of a hostile and indifferent universe. The answer to this question is ambiguous, and its ambiguity is one of the chief sources of the novels power.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus explores the idea that life may have no inherent meaning but that it can be lived fully in accordance with ones own values. The title refers to the ancient Greek legend of Sisyphus, a man condemned by the gods to roll a heavy rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down again each time he nears the top.
The point of the story is that Sisyphus chooses to continue his task even though it is pointless; in so doing, he affirms life and gives it meaning. The character of Meursault in The Stranger may be seen as a modern-day Sisyphus. Like Sisyphus, Meursault is an individual who feels no connection to the world around him and who experiences life as meaningless. Yet he persists in living, despite the futility of existence. In this way, he too affirms life.
In a nutshell, The Stranger is a Camusian parable about the necessity of what is necessary for freedom. Meursault, the protagonist of The Stranger, is not a person one would encounter in real life in this regard; until the novel’s conclusion, Meursault was unable to attain enlightenment and freedom from Camus philosophy.
The Stranger begins with Meursault receiving a telegram informing him of his mother death. The first act that Meursault does is to go and inform his employer, for which he is reprimanded. From the very beginning, then, we see that Meursault is indifferent to the social conventions that most people live by. This indifference toward social conventions continues when Meursault attends his mother funeral. He shows no emotion whatsoever during the funeral, which shocks and upsets everyone else in attendance.
The only thing that Meursault seems to be concerned about is whether or not the funeral will interfere with his plans for the weekend.
After the funeral, Meursault goes on vacation with a friend named Raymond. While on vacation, they meet some Arabs, and Raymond gets into a fight with one of them. The next day, Meursault goes for a walk on the beach with Raymond and the Arabs. The Arabs spot them and start following them.
Meursault and Raymond eventually lose them, but when they go back to where they are staying, they see the Arabs again. The Arabs start throwing rocks at them, and one of the rocks hits Raymond in the face. The two men then go back to town to get a gun, and they go back to the beach and kill the Arabs.
Back in court, Meursault is found guilty of murder. The prosecutor tries to get him to show some regret or emotion for what he has done, but Meursault remains indifferent. The only thing that matters to him is whether or not he will be executed. In the end, Meursault is sentenced to death, and he accepts it without any regrets.
Camus’s philosophy is based on the idea that there is no inherent meaning in life, but that we can create our own meaning by living in accordance with our own values. This is what Camus calls “the absurd” – the recognition that life is ultimately meaningless, but that we can choose to live in a way that makes our life meaningful. The goal of Camus’s philosophy is to achieve a “state of freedom” in which we are able to live authentically, according to our own values, despite the absurdity of life.
Meursault is not able to achieve this state of freedom until the end of the book, but he is still living in accordance with Camus’s philosophy even though he is not aware of it. The fact that Meursault is indifferent to social conventions and does not care about anything except his own interests shows that he is living authentically, in accordance with his own values. The fact that he is willing to accept death without any regrets shows that he has achieved a state of freedom in which he is not afraid of death or of the absurd.
An irreligious person from a nation that has never heard of Christianity is an example of his counterpart in the Christian worldview. Having it explained to him by a missionary, he understands he has never sinned, which represents the morality and characteristics needed for liberty in this case. What was Meursault’s underlying moral value? His foremost character trait is his dedication to absolute knowledge. While Meursault’s truth of being and feeling takes this form, it remains true for the conquest of the self or the world.
The absolute, according to Camus, liberates. The second trait is Meursault’s courage in the face of death. The hero is he who faces death without flinching and thereby affirms life. To be sure, Meursault does not so much confront death as accept it as a natural phenomenon; but this is tantamount to the same thing. For Camus, life and death are two aspects of the same reality. The third quality is Meursault’s detachment or indifference to opinion. He does not care what people think of him; he lives for himself alone”
