Comparing Dostoyevsky And Camus

The Stranger by Albert Camus focuses largely on the concept of absurdism. Camus uses family and personal relationships, or the lack of it thereof, to show the isolation that the main character, Meursault, undergoes in the novel and it’s effect on him overall. Camus utilizes the protagonists’ character development as a tool to further his plot of the novel. The absence of family and personal relationships tied in with the particular recurring topics of the novel are crucial in both the development of the protagonists’ characters as well as the plot as it affects the portrayal of the main character.

A story, of any type, is greatly affected by the characters’ outlook on life. A bright, hopeful main character will give the narrative a more lighthearted feel, and cause the reader to feel encouraged and satisfied. If the character has a negative perspective, however, it can elicit sadness, pity, or even irritation from the reader. In Voltaire’s Candide and Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich, two characters with very different worldviews are displayed. The lighthearted Candide maintained an attitude of cheerfulness and perseverance even through the hardships of his life, which stems from his deep love and care for others, while the coldhearted despair of Ivan Ilyich is only intensified into anger by the feigned optimism of those around him.

Albert Camus’ The Stranger explores the philosophic ideology of existentialism in the character Meursault. Meursault is a man in the 1920s in French Algeria going through life seeing and acting through the lens of an existentialist. Without explicitly stating that he lives existentially, his life hits on many key characteristics of an existentialist. Perhaps the most defining of these key characteristics is that he does what he wants, because he can. He also does this because in existentialism there is emphasis on individual choice and freedom based on the assertion that there is no universal right and wrong. Meursault doesn’t always take into consideration what would be polite, or kind, but rather only

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

The core idea of Albert Camus’ philosophy of absurdity centralizes upon the idea that humans exist in a meaningless universe, and follows that humans must simply accept this fact to live life to the fullest. In addition to this absurdist notion, Albert Camus also uses The Stranger to show how humans still strive to create superficial meaning to fulfill their own personal needs. Through the experiences and interactions in Meursault’s life, Camus illustrates that in spite of how events in life follow no rational order, society attempts to futilely create meaning to explain human existence.

In his novel, The Stranger by Albert Camus, translated by Matthew Ward, irony within the protagonist’s ( Meursault ) contrasting perception of the human condition is used to illustrate and invoke the reader to question the contradictory nature of societal expectations. His indifferent and unprecedented reactions to experiences - relative to the characters that Camus laid before him - aid in displaying the absurdity of a world constrained by the chains of conventional wisdom. The contrasting nature of Meursault's demeanor in defying conventional wisdom in experiences such as love and death not only reveals the underlying hypocrisy of the human condition but further illustrates the arbitrary essence of defining a human life.

The emotionless anti-hero, Monsieur Meursault, embarks on a distinct philosophical journey through The Stranger. Confident in his ideas about the world, Meursault is an unemotional protagonist who survives without expectations or even aspirations. Because of his constant indifference and lack of opinions about the world, it can be denoted that he undergoes a psychological detachment from the world and society. It is through these characteristics that exist in Meursault that Camus expresses the absurd. Starting from the very first sentence of the book, “Maman died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” (Camus 1) The indifferent tone from these short sentences convey a rather apathetic attitude from Meursault’s part. Not only does he not

In Albert Camus’s fiction novel, The Stranger, the main character, Meursault is an absurdist who is does not develop emotional bonds to those around him, and because of this, is looked at by society as an outsider. Camus uses the relationship between Meursault and Marie, Meursault’s belief in the meaninglessness of the individual person, and the symbol of the courtroom to show that the world is absurd, and that society can not accept the lack of order in the world.

In this paper, I plan to explain Dostoevsky’s criticism of Western Individualism. Dostoevsky’s first criticism resides in the idea to “love life more than the meaning of it, “which is presented by the character Alyosha (Dostoevsky 3). Allowing this character to discuss this topic, along with the commentary of Ivan, demonstrates their mindset to solely focus on their own lives, opposed to caring for others. This leads to them living for the now, and not focusing on how their decisions will affect their future or others. Dostoevsky disapproves of this notion because living by this mentality encourages the guidance of logic, which is dangerous because it could tell you to kill yourself. From Dostoevsky’s Eastern Orthodox background, he believes that the only way from living from this situation is to deny it. By denying this way of living, the focus toward life will not be directed toward yourself, but toward the way you can impact the environment around you. Ivan clearly does not believe in these values, due to his intentions to commit suicide at the age of thirty. As said before, living by the idea to “love life more than the meaning of it” leads to death, and Ivan indulges in this to the fullest (Dostoevsky 3).

Life is often interpreted by many as having meaning or purpose. For people who are like Meursault, the anti-hero protagonist of Albert Camus' The Stranger, written in 1942, the world is completely without either. Camus' story explores the world through the eyes of Meursault, who is quite literally a stranger to society in his indifference to meaning, values, and morals. In this novel, this protagonist lives on through life with this indifference, and is prosecuted and sentenced to die for it. Through Meursault and his ventures in The Stranger, Camus expresses to the reader the idea that the world is fundamentally absurd, but that people will react to absurdity by attaching meaning to it in vain, despite the fact that the world, like

Modernist fiction is incredibly dense and abstract. Writers from the twentieth century also seem to carry with them the weight of the world, and thus their fiction has been filled with realistic misery and pain. Still, these writers often add to this element with existentialist thematic structures, which construct a very unique and experimental viewpoint on a modern existence. This is what is occurring in both Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot as well as Albert Camus' The Stranger. The two a very different in format, yet both play upon the modernist idea of abandonment by God and the idea that there is an underlying sense of nothingness that guides modern life. Each focuses on the notion of free will and how it determines our lives in a world devoid of God. Together, these great works of contemporary fiction are a telling testament to the changing nature of sentiments regarding both religion and the meaning of life in a tumultuous twentieth century paradigm.

Death is the only certainty everyone will die regardless of everything. The Stranger by Albert Camus relies on death to show the degradation of Meursault's , the main character , absurdist beliefs throughout the novel with a sudden revitalization at the end. Through Meursault’s encounters with death at different points in the novel the author Camus conveys to his readers how death or coming to accept death allows a person to accept their beliefs while living yet not accepting death causes people to contradict their beliefs. In the novel, Meursault experiences the funeral of his mother, trail for the murder of an arab, and himself being condemned to death thus these events in the novel allows to Camus expresses his message about death.

In The Stranger, Albert Camus allows the main character to tell the story in order to give the reader an experience of his own. Obviously, with a novel also comes language, which Camus incorporates cleverly as a way to indirectly illustrate Meursault’s thoughts about certain situations. Although the novel represents a postmodern setting, the author shifts the overall meaning. In The Stranger, Camus applies a unique literary style as a power that deflects blame from Meursault, the antiheroic character. In order to disclaim the fault of Meursault, Camus incorporates several instances in which he leaves a greater sense of authority to nonliving objects, while further drawing attention away from the main character. Based on the implication of

Widely recognized for philosophical writings as a French essayist and playwright, Albert Camus is a major contributor to exploring the absurd in modern Western literature. Characterized by highlighting the human condition, Camus’ writing style focuses on the everyday lives and inner psyche of individuals in both ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. Such a character-driven writing style is most notably displayed in his 1946 work, The Stranger, a tale of an emotionally-detached man known as Meursault, who lives in French-colonized Algiers during the intermission of the two World Wars. Consisting of two parts—The Stranger first explores his daily life as a free man, and in the second, delves more into the character’s own philosophy as Meursault contemplates during his remaining time in jail. At its core, the story explores the relationships and interactions of the odd Meursault through the character’s inner monologue and dialogue with those around him. The story itself is very ambiguous in its’ nature, and the idea of contemplating the meaning of life and purpose is prevalent throughout The Stranger. Evidently, Camus writes Meursault as a man who believes that life has no meaning, and therefore people are free to do as they please. To supplement the protagonist’s view, the author also presents Meursault alongside various personalities of key supporting characters, each with their own unique personality, and differing outlooks on life. Doing so thus enables Camus to get readers to contemplate about meaning through multiple perspectives. Stylistically, through many devices that emphasize diction, imagery, and story themes. Ultimately, The Stranger is a way for Camus to convey that there are multiple ways to perceive the meaning of life, using Meursault to directly project a different view than what readers are used to. Surely, with the intent of crafting a protagonist so strange, that Meursault becomes comparable to other characters; less so as a reflection of what the author personally believes the meaning of life is, but more of what such exploration of the idea could be.

Albert Camus, born in colonized Algeria, a father to absurdism, and author of The Stranger confronts the philosophical themes of purpose, integrity, and passivity. The Stranger’s main character, Meursault, is a laconic man whose passive actions and brutal honesty lend to connections in his court trial. Those of which condemn him to execution. Meursault falls victim to his complete honesty, complete passivity, and disregard for the purpose of action. He is straightforward, and his actions usually follow his thoughts. Actions and decisions that most average people regard as serious, Meursault regards as arbitrary. Meursault’s exemplification of absurdism proves to not only lend to his characterization, but as a comfort in his death as well.