How to Accept Death in The Stranger by Albert Camus

There is one thing in this world that no one can escape, that everyone fears, and makes people who are close to that person miserable, and that is death. Death is the worst thing that can ever happen to a person, and is just as bad for the people who are close to them. There is an emptiness that comes with the death of a loved one or someone close. That blankness in the world does something to the people who encompass that person who passed. It changes people, whether it is for better or worse. Death is a part of life and depending on how people are affected can dictate whether it will leave a positive or negative change to their life and that conversion happened to me with the death of my mother, Fran.

Albert Camus’s novel, The Stranger is regarded to the philosophical ideas of Existentialism, yet seems to also incorporate Absurdist tenets throughout the book that show ideals of being a unique type of individual with different actions that society disagrees with.

Everyone will die. Meursault’s awareness of death contributes to his nonchalant attitude toward every death he witness or must endure in The Stranger. Death fails to upset Meursault. In The Stranger, Albert Camus emphasizes mortality in order to expose the ignorance humanity has towards the inevitable or unknown end.

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.

In The Stranger by Albert Camus. Meursault does not feel any great sadness over his mother's death, yet everyone in the novel seems to try to justify his actions. Why doesn’t Meursault feel any type of sadness or remorse for this mother's death? He seems to not have any kind of feelings or nothing for his mother's when she was alive if he did, he would not have been more remorseful for her death. Meursault acts as though he was not close to his mother's and like he didn’t want to attend her funeral. His friends also seem to back him up by defending him in saying reasons why he shows no feelings or sadness for his mother's death, they say “that’s his way of showing how he feels everyone shows how they feel in different ways”.

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.

Death is all around. We hear this a lot causing it to have a light-hearted viewpoint and is less meaningful. But we need to know because death is all around us we need to learn to accept death in others. In the book Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, the last three short stories address how we accept death through Kaushik losing his mom when he is a teenager, and showing how the move to America and the reminders of his mom, later affects his life. The theme of accepting death is pushed through the last three short stories in Unaccustomed earth, with how we need to let go of place to visit a person and their memories, not claiming to accept death until we are willing to let go, and finally know when we try to prolong death though we try

The French philosopher Roland Barthes once said, “Literature is the question minus the answer” (Barthes 2). This statement hold true for most works of literature that explore a central question. According to Barthes, literature often raises a question, but leaves it up to the reader to determine the answer. The Stranger by Albert Camus is an excellent example of how a central question, “Is there value and meaning to human life?” is raised and left unanswered, resulting in different interpretations of the answer, depending on the viewpoint of the reader. Although the question is never explicitly answered, Camus offers perspectives on what French society regarded the answers to be, such as connections with others, elusion to freedom, and faith in religion and God.

Death plays a major role in the novella The Outsider. The story both begins and concludes with a death, creating the idea that death is all a part of the human condition; we all die in the end, which reveals Camus’ own ideologies of absurdism. Death is explored through the structure of the novella, through the parallels between the death of Meursault’s mother in the beginning and the lead up to his execution in the end. When Meursault’s, he shows what most would consider an unusual reaction to the death of a love one and accepts it. He shows little emotion to the subject and demonstrates his understanding of death, it is part of our human condition and he has no control over it. ’It’s not my fault’ (page 9). Majority of this absurdist content is addressed as Meursault awaits his execution in his prison cell. Whilst sitting there one evening, his thoughts wonder to the memory of Marie, as he tried to reason why she hadn’t written to him. It crossed his mind that she may be ill or dead, and again like with his mother, feels no emotion towards the possible death of his girlfriend. ‘It was the natural order of things… I wasn’t interested in her anymore if she was dead’ (page 110). Meursault sees life as

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.

When dealing with death, emotion and acceptance are ways of expression by using syntax and diction in writing. Therefore, it is important to accept death rather denying it. In the excerpt from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it is manifested that Huckleberry Finn finds himself at fault. “... I reckoned I was to blame, somehow.” He does not accept the actuality of what is happening around him. Instead, Huckleberry Finn expresses himself by crying to himself when he covers Buck’s face. “I cried a little when I was covering up Buck’s face, for he was mighty good to me.” In the poem “I Am Vertical”, it is exhibited that Sylvia Plath shows a rather eerie acceptance

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.

Many people often base their opinions on a person by judging his whole life in general and his attitude towards life without caring about who the person really is deep down inside. This unfair reasoning can occur in the courtroom when people are put on trial and the judge and the jury must delve into the life of the accused and determine if he is a hazard to society. Occasionally, the judge and jury are too concerned with the accused’s past that they become too biased and give an unfair conviction and sentencing. In his novel, The Stranger, Albert Camus uses the courtroom as a symbol to represent society that judges the main character, Meursalt, unfairly to illustrate how society forms opinions based on one’s past.

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.

“Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.” Henry Miller