The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Stranger poses one poignant, implicit (sometimes not too subtle) question: what if life has no greater meaning than the stream of one’s experiences? What would life look like if you made no appeal to a higher power, greater order, or eternal values? Albert Camus provides the answer through the eyes of his protagonist, Mr. Meursault right from the first paragraph, “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I had a telegram from home: ‘mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It may have been yesterday.”

Meursault seems cold with his lack of sentiment surrounding his mother’s funeral. At the same time he is very human and practical. His mother’s death has been immanent for a while. They have steadily grown apart. Her funeral was not a decisive moment, and Meursault feels no need to manufacture grief that hasn’t naturally arisen. He does not lack emotion entirely. Throughout the story he feels a natural affinity for the people around him and generally tries to help them out.

Like most humans Meursault hopes for a long, full life. Faced with his impending death after he has been condemned to be executed, his rational mind struggles with his irrational hope:

I wasn't unaware of the fact that it doesn't matter very much whether you die at thirty or at seventy since, in either case, other men and women will naturally go on living, for thousands of years even. Nothing was plainer, in fact. It was still only me who was dying, whether it was now or in twenty years’ time. At that point the thing that would rather upset my reasoning was that I’d feel my heart give this terrifying leap at the thought of having another twenty years to live.

With death immanent, Meursault explodes with insults on the prison chaplain who is trying to minister to him. His last impulse for hope has been extinguished:

Nothing, nothing mattered and I knew very well why. [The minister] too knew why. From the depths of my future, throughout the whole of this absurd life I’d been leading, I’d felt a vague breath drifting towards me across all the years that were still to come, and on its way this breath had evened out everything that was then being proposed to me in the equally unreal years I was living through.

After this final outburst he is overcome by a total peace, "As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world."

The story is dramatic, but is it realistic? Is the extinguishing of all hope, even in God, the path to transcendence? Is all meaning in life an illusion to overcome? Through his protagonist Camus lays out a negative path to transcendence (a path of increasing indifference) which is hard for me to relate to because he leaves out moral intuition and the desire for a single Truth.


The Stranger by Albert Camus The Stranger poses one poignant, implicit (sometimes not too subtle) question: what if life has no greater meaning than the stream of one’s experiences? What would life look like if you made no appeal to a higher power, greater order, or eternal values? Albert Camus provides the answer through the eyes of his protagonist, Mr. Meursault right from the first paragraph, “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I had a telegram from home: ‘mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It may have been yesterday.” Meursault seems cold with his lack of sentiment surrounding his mother’s funeral. At the same time he is very human and practical. His mother’s death has been immanent for a while. They have steadily grown apart. Her funeral was not a decisive moment, and Meursault feels no need to manufacture grief that hasn’t naturally arisen. He does not lack emotion entirely. Throughout the story he feels a natural affinity for the people around him and generally tries to help them out. Like most humans Meursault hopes for a long, full life. Faced with his impending death after he has been condemned to be executed, his rational mind struggles with his irrational hope: I wasn't unaware of the fact that it doesn't matter very much whether you die at thirty or at seventy since, in either case, other men and women will naturally go on living, for thousands of years even. Nothing was plainer, in fact. It was still only me who was dying, whether it was now or in twenty years’ time. At that point the thing that would rather upset my reasoning was that I’d feel my heart give this terrifying leap at the thought of having another twenty years to live. With death immanent, Meursault explodes with insults on the prison chaplain who is trying to minister to him. His last impulse for hope has been extinguished: Nothing, nothing mattered and I knew very well why. [The minister] too knew why. From the depths of my future, throughout the whole of this absurd life I’d been leading, I’d felt a vague breath drifting towards me across all the years that were still to come, and on its way this breath had evened out everything that was then being proposed to me in the equally unreal years I was living through. After this final outburst he is overcome by a total peace, "As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world." The story is dramatic, but is it realistic? Is the extinguishing of all hope, even in God, the path to transcendence? Is all meaning in life an illusion to overcome? Through his protagonist Camus lays out a negative path to transcendence (a path of increasing indifference) which is hard for me to relate to because he leaves out moral intuition and the desire for a single Truth.
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