An Analysis of Camus' 'The Stranger'

In the story a young boy decides to go hunting in the night and goes through a revelation as he witnesses an everyday act of the battle between light and darkness as the sun rises. Although set in a different place and time, both authors express a common universal theme: life is a constant battle between light and darkness in our everyday lives. This theme can be seen through a compare and contrast of powerful symbols, transforming settings and misguided characters.

From page fifty-eight to fifty-seven of Albert Camus’s The Stranger he uses the relentless Algerian sun as a motif for the awareness of reality that pursues the main character, Meursault, throughout the passage. When each motif appears in the novel such as this passage, Meursault’s actions change. This exemplifies that the light, heat, and sun trigger him to become debilitated or furious. Albert Camus sets up this motif in the passage to indicate to the reader that this motif shows the major themes of this novel. This motif shows Meursault’s emotion, how the imagery of weaponry affects Meursault’s actions, how the sun is a representation of society, and how the sun weakens Meursault.

In a photographer’s booth, we see the symbol of light where parents are able to look on themselves from the side and they have a possibility to understand that they are intolerable to each other. “The place is shadowed in the mauve light which is apparently necessary”. Unfortunately, they know it from the beginning but they don not want to accept it because it will disturb already chosen path. “…and finally, shocked by their indifference”. The only son, who is going to start an adult life, able to summarize the parents mistakes and to build his future in the light of love, hope and faith. “…into the cold light, I woke up”. No matter what and when we are always know where is the light but sometimes it is easier to wander in a gloom then to find strength to look at the sun.

In the beginning, there is very little light. It is almost dusk, and the speaker describes the smell as “dark” (7). Towards the middle and end there are various lights: lanterns, lamplight, fireflies, lamp (9, 11, 13, 20). This change over time depicts the storyteller’s significance to the speaker, because she brought enlightenment to his life. In this poem, light is a metaphor for knowledge, while darkness is a metaphor for ignorance. At the end, the old wise storyteller, who is the embodiment of wisdom, “was the lamplight” (20). In contrast, the two boys, who are young and ignorant, are “in one shadow” (21). The juxtaposition of light with darkness shows that the speaker and storyteller are opposites in their insight. Additionally, it is strange that she is a light before them, yet they are still shadowed. What is blocking the light from them? This metaphor illustrates that it takes time for people to become sage like their elders. As the speaker says, adulthood is “childhood’s aftermath,” which means that the knowledge people gain in childhood will lead them to be wise adults such as the storyteller

Lightness and darkness is a common theme throughout literature, most writers use it through symbols in their writing. In Poe’s story “Masque of the Red Death” and Hawthorne’s story “Minister’s Black Veil” both portray themes of lightness and darkness using symbolism throughout.

The first ten lines of the poem describe a setting sun and establish the framework in which we are expected to view the monarchy’s fall. Detailing the “glorious” (1) sun’s “double brightness” (4) while he dips below the horizon, Philips portrays the sunset as something both beautiful and terrifying. As the sun “[p]uts on his highest looks in ‘s lowest state” (6), he compels observers to hate him while “ador[ing] his Fall” (8). This section not only characterizes the sun’s shining sunset as a response to his fated end, but evokes the idea of war with words such as “magazine” (as in a magazine of bullets) to refer to the sun’s light (1).

Throughout the play there is a continual reference to light. It is used in the form of bright sunlight,

The solitude of man with the innate endeavoring nature to incessantly find passion, be fruitful, and embrace the tangibles causes us to lose focus of the scornful end. The condemnation we find ourselves in subsequent to the impotent attempts to satiate our inexplicable questions, is the puncture to our ideal notion . The disenchantment the truth of our obscure being offered is masqueraded with the absurdity through which we seamlessly wander through this life. The irrefutable desire to numb the conscious is the bittersweet burden which we carry to suppress the abyss of disparity which we are floating amidst. Monsieur Meursault in Albert Camus’ The Stranger is the blaring anomaly. Fortifying himself through his indifferent nature and blunt honesty, Meursault is ostracized. Deemed with a psychosis he finds comfort in the unruly inescapable solace of life, death, which morphs into his gradual declination. The sun tracing his unusual circumstances, catalyzing his imminent reactions provides itself as the only paradigm to symbolize Meursault. The intricacies which unfold are reiterated by the Sun which juxtapose the indigenous contingency to find meaning. Meursault’s paradoxical compel and abhorrence to the sun highlights the idea that the what we choose to learn may not be abiding in beauty. Our choice in this duality sets forth the invitation to introspection offering its only absolute form through our own willingness. Meursault understanding himself is bonded to the sun

Meursault keeps staring at the sun and it hurts him now instead of bringing him serenity. The sun no longer provides any benefit for Meursault ever since he refered to it when he was about to murder the Arab

Flat characters play a significant role in all novels. For instance, the brother of Raymond’s mistress is a key flat character. The Arab never grows throughout the novel; rather, he remains a stalker, stalking his prey, tempting a fight. Without the role of the Arab, Meursault, would never have gone to prison, and never be tried for murder.

Meursault condemns the sun when describing his surroundings displaying the negativity the sun exerts. He describes the weather, centering it on the sun. He describes the conditions outside once out there and how the sun is “bearing down, making the whole landscape shimmer with heat” (15). He describes the heat and “inhumane and oppressive” (15). Camus’

Melville, Poe, and Hawthorne all tend to focus on the darker side of humanity in their writings. In order to allow their readers to better understand their opinions, they often resort to using symbolism. Many times, those symbols take the form of darkness and light appearing throughout the story at appropriate times. A reader might wonder how light functions in the stories, and what it urges the reader to consider. If we look carefully at these appearances of light, or more likely the absence of it, we can gain some insight into what these "subversive romantics" consider to be the truth of humanity. Hawthorne uses this technique to its fullest; however, it is also very

Meursault is shown to move closer to the window and probably experience the sun again but doesn’t comment about it. The significance of this shift here is that he has been sentenced to execution already so there is no worse situation so the sun theoretically did its job of getting him in the most trouble possible. Overall, he can just be portrayed as a creature who has physical needs, pains and desires that mainly revolve around the pain of heat and sun and what happens if they did not

In the novel, The Stranger, author Albert Camus confronts some important issues of the time, and uses the singular viewpoint of the narrator Meursault to develop his philosophy and effectively weave together themes of absurdity, colonialism, and free will. Through the progressive disruption of Meursault’s life and his characterization, Camus presents the absurdity of the human condition along with the understanding that a person can actually be happy in the face of the absurd. Camus also intentionally sets the story in the colonized country of Algeria, and hints at the racial tensions that exist between French-Algerians and Arabs.

In The Stranger by Albert Camus, the main character, Meursault, is an absurdist who lives in the moment and refuses to be distracted by societal norms. He views the world as random and is indifferent to it. But to many French people living in Algeria, religion, social order and character are intertwined and are imperative to human life. Camus uses the crucifix and the courtroom to convey the idea that religion is man’s desperate attempt to create meaning in life where there is none.