Essay The Stranger

“I find that the very things that I get criticized for, which is usually being different and just doing my own thing and just being original, is the very thing that’s making me successful.” Country singer Shania Twain explains that the things she does in her daily life, making her different from everyone else, actually makes her unique, despite the fact that it goes against social norms. A non-conformist person is someone who goes against societal norms because they are an individual who will do what they prefer to do, regardless of what others may think. In the novel The Outsider, Meursault is indifferent and passive to a

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.

In Albert Camus novel, The Stranger (The Outsider), the main character Meursault displays a unique indifference to his surroundings and the world around him. It takes him a degree of time to come to terms with his indifference, but when he does he feels truly free from society's constricting bonds. He leads an apathetic lifestyle that is characterized by his constant lack of a definitive personality. Meursault wanders through life as if in a drunken stupor, living the life of a pleasure seeker. When he accepts his death he is relieved of the pressure of dealing with guilt and with relationships towards other people.

Meursault is an independent and absurd guy who refuses to lie about himself to save his life. At the beginning of the book he avoids conversation and showed existentialism. For example, when the caretaker asked him, why he doesn’t want to see his mother’s body, he just simply said “I don’t know”. Another reason is when he would say, “marriage, no marriage, who cares.” Towards the ending of the book he starts to open up. In order for him to realize how wrong he was, he had to suffer the consequences. Meursault states, “For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone; I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate(2.5.165). “Meaning, he finally has awareness and is open-minded about his life.

Marie’s feelings for Meursault are almost admirable. Even in jail she continues to put a smile on her face for him and visit him. She must really love him. His visit with her is odd because he cares more of what's going on around him than his time with her. It’s odd because he says he misses Marie and sex so much but he doesn’t even take the time to really look at her. I keep wondering where Raymond is. After all this was his fight to begin with, in my opinion he should have been the first visitor for Meursault.

Meursault says this when he comes back from his mother’s funeral and is able to convey the meaningless of life and reflect on his mother’s death. Meursault still lacks remorse or grief and fails to reminisce about his mother in a typical or normal way. Instead, Meursault feels that since now his mother is gone, his apartment is too big for him. He doesn’t express how her death affects him emotionally, but spatially and abstractly. This signifies just how alone he is and how he views himself to be too small when inhabiting such a big world. Even though Meursault fails to display any signs of distress due to his mother’s death, this scene is probably the closest he gets to somewhat admitting he misses his mother enough to notice that she

Simmel defines the stranger as one that is both close and far; that is physically close, but socially distant. He disassociates his concept from the understanding of the stranger as one who comes and goes. Rather, the stranger he speaks of in this case is one who comes and stays, but has not been socialized under the same conditions as mainstream society. Despite this, the stranger is not a person who is withdrawn from society and is unaware of social norms. Rather, someone is inorganically appended to the society, but still an organic member of the group (ibid, 149). The stranger is seen as and valuable member of society because it is, in no way connected to any one individual. The stranger holds a certain objectivity, and can be confessed to without the threat of judgment on the confessor (ibid, 145).

because an end result of his distance is a sort of acceptance of others, thus

Meursault experiences a philosophical triumph as his execution dates nears, due to his acceptance of the absurd, which confirms his identity; much like the absurd world, he doesn’t acknowledge human experiences and relationships. He is content with this, and welcomes the crowd, confident that nothing can take away his satisfaction. This shows that while he gains philosophical peace, he still is unable to grapple with interpersonal relationships and the role he was intended to play in society. Meursault does not overcome society’s judgment, but rather revels in the hatred. Through his conversation with the chaplain, Meursault discovers happiness in the fact that the absurd world mirrors his own indifference. Meursault compares his beliefs about life to those the chaplain holds, and comes to some finality in his thought process. He settled on a firm stance, “sure about [himself], about everything, surer than [the chaplain] could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death waiting for me” (Camus 108). Meursault becomes infatuated with the absurd world, rather than rejecting it in disgust or horror. He strongly identifies with the absurdity, “opening up to the gentle indifference of the world” (Camus

Albert Camus creates a series of characters in The Stranger whose personality traits and motivations mirror those that are overlooked by the average man. Camus develops various characters and scenarios that are considered rude and unpleasant, but because it has become common, society accepts it as norms. Camus incorporates atrocious personality traits of the characters, variety, consistency, and everyone’s fate through the creation of the characters.

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.

When Meursault mother died, he started off by saying “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: "Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours."(Actively learn the stranger) That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.”. When a normal person's mother dies, they are certain about her death, they want to know the day their mother passed and how she died, but Meursault was not concerned about her death or how she died. That is very unusual for someone to act in that type of event.

The chaplain comes to see Meursault against Meursault’s own wishes and the chaplain tells him that he should turn to God for comfort in his final days. Meursault does not believe in God and he tells this to the chaplain. The chaplain seems so sure about everything in life and about everything that will happen but to Meursault, the only certainty is that everybody dies. If it does not happen today, it will happen tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then the day after. Life is indifferent to everybody and nothing in it is important unless the person makes it important. There are no pre-set values that everyone must believe in when they are born. The choices a person makes are what define him because existence precedes essence. If someone chooses to value love, then it is important to him or her and he or she should care about it. If someone chooses to believe in God, then He is only important to him or her and only he or she should care about Him. The reason that he did not cry at his mother’s funeral is because he does not believe that this is the appropriate reaction since everybody dies at one point or another. The reason that he said that he probably does not love Marie and that it is not important, is because he does not have love as one of his values; therefore, he should not care about that emotion. Finally, the reason he did not show remorse for killing the Arab is because he did not feel that emotion. What Meursault does value is the truth. He

Truth and honesty is the aspired driving force within one’s life but it can be as destructive as deceit and dishonesty. People always yell, “Tell the truth, be honest with me!” but when all things are said, their first reaction is to call out the lack of sympathy of the person. In the novel, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Meursault lives his life through truth and honesty but societal morals and values often bring him down in more ways than one.

It is often seen to be a symbol of life, power, strength and energy. But in the outsider is used to symbolize something else. The sun is the indicator to Meursault’s emotions and actions. He is constantly referring to the sun and using it in a way to express how he is feeling. “And what with the sun and the smell of leather and horse-dung from the hearse, and the smell of vanish and incense and the sleepless night I’d had, I was so tired that I could hardly see or think straight.” (Chapter one, Part one pg. 21) Meursault uses the sun as one of his excuses to his disinterest and so called tiredness at his mother’s funeral. Again when the murder of the Arab occurred he mentions