Note: The Stranger has been on my list ever since Namjoon mentioned reading it here.
The Stranger (1942) is a compendious read which dwells on the philosophy of the ‘meaningless of the universe’ or absurdism and presents a covert social comment upon the intersection of human emotions and conduct against societal responses within that landscape.
Meursault is the protagonist who lives in Algeria and struggles with exhibition of his emotions and feelings unlike an average person. The first part of the book deals with the aftermath of Meursault's mother’s death and describes his daily dwellings through a first-person vantage:
“It occurred to me that…..Mother was now buried, and tomorrow I’d be going back to work as usual. Really, nothing in my life had changed.”
“Marie came that evening and asked me if I’d marry her. I said I didn’t mind; if she was keen on it, we’d get married. Then she asked me again if I loved her. I replied…that her question meant nothing or next to nothing – but I suppose I didn’t.”
Meursault, therefore, is a man who does not shoulder typical societal reactions towards situations as would be expected from an average man. He does not shed a tear when his mother dies, he does not feel joy on the prospect of marrying his girlfriend and proceeds to kill an almost-strange man without motive and feels no remorse afterwards. He comes off as detached and emotionally distant since the very first line of the book (“Mother died today. Or, Maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.”) He lives in the present and operates through a fairly limited repository of feelings and morals.
“….I’d like to have a chance of explaining to him , in a quite friendly, almost affectionate way, that I have never been able really to regret anything in all my life. I’ve always been far too much absorbed in the present moment, or the immediate future.”
‘The protagonist has his idea of honesty: being true to his immediate impressions, refusing to exaggerate or give consistency to his emotions, refusing to say more than what he knows.’ (Found on page.85) He lives outside societal expectations and is ultimately adjudged a “monster, a man without morals” and sentenced to death by public execution. The public prosecutor prepares the case against Meursault based on his lack of proper emotional response against a societal yardstick and not so much on the actual act of killing a man.
“This man has no place in a community whose basic principles he flouts without compunction. Nor, heartless as he is, has he any claim to mercy. In demanding a verdict of murder….I am following…the dictates…of the righteous indignation I feel at the sight of a criminal devoid of the least spark of human feeling.”
Meursault is, as what Albert Camus philosophises, an absurdist. Absurdism, as a theory, began from a place of human being’s need of meaning and how we as humans are innately driven to look for meaning in an ultimately meaningless universe. Absurdism denies the existence of ‘free will’ which differentiates. it from ‘existentialism’ . It calls for embracing the absurdity of being a human and having an honest confrontation with it. The protagonist does not believe in God or carries any faith and towards the very end of the book lays down bits and pieces of what makes up his moral trajectory signifying his case of ‘absurd’:
“Actually, I was sure of myself, sure about everything….sure of my present life and of the death that was coming. That, no doubt, was all I had; but at least that certainty was something I could get my teeth into – just as it had got its teeth into me.”
“What difference could they make to me, the deaths of others, or a mother’s love, or his God; or the way a man decides to live, the fate he thinks he chooses, since one and the same fate was bound to “choose” not only me but thousands of millions of privileged people….All alike would be condemned to die one day;…And what difference could it make if, after being charged with murder, he were executed because he didn’t weep at his mother’s funeral, since it all came to the same thing in the end?”
Throughout the book Meursault does not look too far into the uncertain future and not once does he think over his responses towards the society. ‘It was only when he really, honestly admits death’s inevitability, he begins to see the value of each moment of life before death. Because of death, nothing matters – except being alive.’ (Para 7) He accepts ‘death’ as the final destination and realises it will be the same for everyone regardless if someone wept, showed remorse, believed in God or followed myriad pseudo-religious acts for the purpose of finding meaning. He accepts the ‘absurd’ and finally opens himself to the “benign indifference of the universe”.
The Stranger is an account of a man put to death because he didn’t weep at his mother’s funeral (emphasis applied). It’s an account of a man who ultimately accepts the futility of it all within the grand scheme of things whilst living inside a framework of societal barbs which command the contrary.
