Existentialism In 'The Stranger' By Director Luchino Visconti

“The Stranger” by Albert Camus follows the story of an apathetic and withdrawn man, Meursault, as he easily cruises through life with the belief that he is indifferent to the universe. The novel begins with Meursault receiving news that his mother had passed away. Immediately after traveling to the funeral, and not showing an ounce of emotion, Meursault engages in an unemotional relationship with a woman named Marie. His moral bankruptcy and emotionally detached demeanor stays constant throughout the majority of the novel, even after committing murder and being sentenced to death. In fact, as a consequence of his sentencing Meursault has an epiphany and realizes that the universe is irrational and therefore indifferent to human life. This theme

Finding the meaning of life has been an endeavor undertaken by countless philosophers with almost no uniformity from their answers. Ranging from promises of eternal life, to the belief that life has no meaning at all, Albert Camus, a French philosopher, offers his own unique view on the matter. In Camus’ novel The Stranger, he uses the beach scene where Meursault, the main character, kills an Arab in order to signify that life definitely has a meaning at times, albeit with absurd implications.

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.

As stated by the Webster Dictionary, an existentialist is: “individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad.” In the novel The Stranger, Albert Camus creates a character who fits this ideology, Meursault. Throughout the whole story, his actions and the things he says makes him fit into the category of an existentialist, a person who follows existentialism. Within the story by Camus, the protagonist, Meursault, exemplifies the ideas and philosophy of existentialism through indirect and direct characterization.

Meursault mirrors Sartre’s description of existentialism in his absurd view of the world and life in general, by demonstrating that nothing really matters, since everyone must live and die, what we do in between is irrelevant. The paramount description relating to Sartre’s existentialism and Camus portrayal of such justification, is when Marie asked if she could marry Meursault and his reply was, “I said it didn’t make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to”. Therefore, he dons the choice onto Marie, however the true insignificance to Marie’s proposal is what is being upheld in his decision. Sartre states “You are free, therefore choose that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world”. In other words, Meursault’s negligible response of insignificance and purposelessness is his choice and his expression of not caring regardless, but if she wanted to get married it was tolerable with him, may sound as a justification, and however becomes Meursault’s right choice. In abstract; David Drake states, in his article, “Sartre: Intellectual of the Twentieth Century” that, “I feel no solidarity with anything, not even myself: I do not need anybody or anything” (32). Meursault was content with his life, whether the rest of the world approved was a non-factor for him. After all, the choice was his.

In this novel, Camus sets the story in Oran, Algeria, coincidently , where he grew up. He describes the town as dull, boring, and soulless almost. “ The town itself, let us admit, is ugly”. (Camus, p. 1) The author is showing us that there is nothing really special about Oran, or in existentialist terms, the people don’t make Oran special. Their only concern, or their only focus, was conducting what they called “business”; nothing more. However, the main protagonist, Dr. Rieux, was one of the few in his society to actually question, what is the true definition of life? He seemed like he was the only one that realized that Oran was missing just this; life. He was curious what was a person’s or an individual’s purpose in this dry town. When masses of dead rats were lining the street, the public showed little curiosity with, of course, the exception of the doctor. As the plague soon hit, the attitudes of the public had miniscule change.

In addition, Meursault’s sensory experience of life, his physical pleasures and in-the-now perspective, is a demonstration of living life to the fullest. The absurdist must live life passionately, putting all of one’s weight into existence by not wasting time or energy on the ethereal or ephemeral. The fact that Meursault does not want to think about religion, even as he awaits execution, shows how the ideal absurdist would live life: loyal to one’s own being until the end – not to a father in the sky, or to an abstract hope. Meaning of one’s life must come from one’s own creative efforts. Meursault’s indifference to spiritual matters – and even sensory matters that are in the distant past and are therefore unimportant to him – is used to emphasize the passion for the present that Camus decided the absurd hero should have. So it is not so much that Meursault is totally indifferent, he is just indifferent to things outside of the now.

  Existentialism is a philosophy dealing with man's aloneness in the universe. Either there is no God or else God stands apart from man, leaving him free will to make his own choices. From this basic idea of man being alone in an uncertain and purposeless world, many related ideas have developed. One great worry of existentialist writers is that life is becoming too complicated and too impersonal. People become more and more involved with their work, which is taking them away from their friends, family, and culture. However, these provide the only "meaning" that life could possibly have. One author prominently known for his work with existential ideas was Franz

The existentialist is one who is concerned only with that intense moment of awareness with only his senses at his disposal, never looking to the future – the most living awareness. McCandles, the protagonist, in Into the Wild has come to the realization that existence is already being dead and accepting the fact that life is absurd and marvelous. He embraced the sublime absurdity of existence by renouncing the language games society plays. What is so enticing about the existentialist is that he is not concerned with the pressure of appearances and small talk which society employs to lie about what they think and feel. Existentialism is accepting the inevitability of death and living life for the moment without entertaining hope or falsities that distract one from living and accepting truth. The existentialist sees the simplicity in life and the absurdity of complicating it with pretences and lies, the existentialist is a naked man, he is one who becomes one with the rest of creation in accepting his fate on this earth and not hoping for anything more – he simply exists.

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

Albert Camus’ The Stranger tells the story of Meursault, a young man who lives in French Algiers during the 1940s. The story opens up with Meursault learning that his mother has died. He attends the funeral where he is very detached and shows no emotion. After the funeral he carries on with life as if nothing has happened. Meursault befriends a pimp, gets a girlfriend, and goes

Through this character Camus challenges the reader to look through this lenses to see aspects of our culture that exemplify Clamence’s observations. These observations project back to the reader alienation from culture, conflictions, needs and wants. This could also lead back to Camus’s absurdist ideas because it represents a balancing of our pleasure and guilt. We can feel on top of the world with our privileged lives but how could we be happy when we know that others in the world are less fortunate?

The philosophical movement of existentialism was a key factor when analyzing the culture of this book because of the controversy that the character Meursault causes in readers. We all agreed Meursault 's absurdist attitude towards the world and detachment from everything emphasized the meaningless of life. We talked about how Camus intentionally created a character so true and claiming to his actions to signify this factor.

Albert Camus’ utilizes an existential philosophy, absurdism, in his story, “The Stranger”. Absurdism is when humans live meaningless lives in an irrational universe. Meursault, the protagonist in “The Stranger”, has an absurdist view to life, which the story revolves around. Meursault's unique view of life is unique and different from the ethics of the society. Absurdism plays a key role in Meursault's life as the absurd sun influences his actions while his absurdist philosophies make him a stranger to society.

Albert Camus was a French-Algerian writer, who made an enterprising contribution to a wide range of issues in moral philosophy. Camus was a moralist as well as a political theoretician and stood in high public esteem not only in France but also all over Europe after World War Ⅱ. Albert Camus spent a dismal childhood with poverty and bereavement of his father’s death. In his school years, Camus became an avid reader, developing a lifelong interest in literature as well as profoundly opened his eyes to philosophy. Therefore, Camus principally dealt with philosophy themes in his work. In this short biography of Albert Camus, we will explore his philosophy of absurdism and its effect on Camus’s morality. Besides, the reader will be examining Camus’s influences on existentialism.