Essay on Camus’ The Stranger (The Outsider): Meursault as Christ

The existentialism of Albert Camus is based on his view of life as the Absurd. This sense of the Absurd derives from the realization that man is destined to die, as if being punished for a crime he never committed. There is no reprieve, and this makes life absurd (Peyre). There is no God in Camus’s conception, and those who hope for an afterlife are thus to be disappointed. Camus understood that the fact that there is no God also means that there is no meaning or purpose to life outside of living life to the fullest, and that there is a destined end. The one saving grace in the world seems to be the fact that while there is no God on which man can depend, man can live as if he can depend on his fellow man, even though he and they will all die (Sprintzen). This is another absurdity, but it is based on the fact that the

When it comes to the crucifixion of Jesus, there are many different arguments that appeal to specific peoples’ beliefs or arguments as to what makes the most sense. What really is the determining factor though when we are deciding how we portray Jesus’ death? Is it our faith? Is it what logically makes the most sense to us? Is it what we are taught growing up by our parents or Sunday school? Could it possibly a mixture of all of those factors? Either way, we all have different beliefs and ideas when it comes to His death. One of the most popular arguments for Jesus’ crucifixion is that the reason he died was purely in place of us due to our sins; he was the ultimate sacrifice. In this paper, I will argue from a logical standpoint that not only does this theory not make sense, but Jesus’ life and choices were related to his crucifixion as well. The most logical circumstance is that, instead, Jesus died as a ransom.

sacrifices his ways of life and what he wanted to do to be a priest, and to spread christianity all

Camus demonstrates the disregarded reason behind the origins of relationships between people to characterize people as selfish. The relationship between Salamano and his dog displays how Salamano as self-centered. When Meursault mentions, “He hadn’t been happy with his wife, but he’d pretty

Camus demonstrates the disregarded reason behind the origins of relationships between people to characterize people as selfish. The relationship between Salamano and his dog displays how Salamano as self-centered. When Meursault mentions, “He hadn’t been happy with his wife, but he’d pretty much gotten used to her. When she

In Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Meursault is seen as a very unique character, but not in a good way. Throughout the novel, he continually fails to show normal human emotions to things like his mother’s death, Marie’s love, and the man he killed. Most people in his town, along with the reader at first, are not able to reason out his actions but as the final events of the novel unfold, the reader begins to see Meursault in a different light.

Not only embodying absurdism but speaking it by the end of the novel, Meursault parrots the same conclusion Camus reached in The Myth of Sisyphus, in which Sisyphus is charged with the meaningless task of pushing a rock up a mountain for eternity, each time watching it role back down to the bottom. He understands why his mother took a fiancé as she was approaching death, as if she were starting her life over: she would have

In The Stranger, Albert Camus writes about a detached yet normal man, Meursault, who encounters unusual situations that evidently leads to his demise. From cover to cover, it was established by the author that Meursault had an unusual way of thinking and that he was continuously revealing his peculiar perspective on life and death. Throughout the novel, Meursault is reminded of death and continues to be judged by everyone in the society that he lives in, for instance, when he was put on trial for shooting an Arab man. Camus writes about the main character by describing his absurdist mindset. It is through the focus of funeral scene, however, that Camus is able to formulate the values of the character and the society in which they live in. This scene was able to reveal Meursault’s perspective on life as well as death.

John Walden’s critical review states that in the Bible Jesus Christ died on the cross to save us. He was killed because of his loyalty to God, not

In Albert Camus’s novel, The Stranger, the main character Meursault can be described as an ant-hero. He is a simple man who lives by himself in a small apartment located in Algiers. Meursault is an indifferent man who is completely detached from society. He is ambitionless, emotionless, and he is also deprived of the consequences and rules of society. Meursault lacks the fundamental qualities typically found in a hero. Throughout the novel Meursault demonstrates the characteristics found in an anti-hero.

Camus follows the idea of the paradox of free will in both stories in order to exemplify how no matter the choice a person makes in their life it will not let them escape death. Meursault begins the story as an emotionless human being who dares not weep at his mother 's funeral. Additionally, Meursault only focuses on the physical struggles of life like when the caretaker speaks of how “If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you risk a sweat and then catch a chill in the church” while walking (17). This reveals despite

   The Stranger by Albert Camus was published in 1942. The setting of the novel is Algiers where Camus spent his youth in poverty. In many ways the main character, Meursault, is a typical Algerian youth. Like them, and like Camus himself, Meursault was in love with the sun and the sea. His life is devoted to appreciating physical sensations. He seems so devoid of emotion. Something in Meursault's character has appealed primarily to readers since the book's publication. Is he an absurd anti-hero? Is he a moral monster? Is he a rebel against a conventional morality? Critics and readers alike have disputed a variety of approaches to Meursault. I believe he is the embryo

In “The Stranger” by Camus, Meursault’s actions throughout the story can be summed up in one word, absurd.

Why would Camus think to put Meursault and Christ in the same sentence when he says “Meursault is the only Christ we deserve,”? Well, besides being called directly an Anti-Christ, Meursault and Christ have another major difference that makes these two characters’ complete opposites in contrast to one another. In the novel Meursault willingly chooses to murder a seemingly innocent man and justifies the death of another innocent man in the Czech story. Christ himself was an innocent man who was unjustly killed. According to Thomas L. Hanna “to Camus mind, Jesus of Nazareth was an innocent man unjustly killed, from no point of view can he rule out the fact of the injustice in this event.” (Hanna) As proposed in the introduction: Camus believes

To go even further, Camus’s ideas through monsieur Clamence concludes that goodness is impossible to preserve, and in the absence of an objective truth or law, self-satisfaction is the primary driver behind our illusory happiness. In the novel, Clamence repeatedly claims that he likes to be above and in control of the people and the situations he finds himself in. So he moved to a place in the lowlands of Holland, humanity’s animalistic and primitive instincts are let loose. This is the place where Clamence finds his truth, by revealing the