Absurdity has played a huge role in the Stranger. The most significant parts of the books were completely absurd and help contribute to Camus philosophy of absurdism. First, Meursault never gets upset when his mother dies and instead worries about trivial things like how making the trip to the old persons home is hard, "And also because it took up my Sunday-not to mention the trouble of getting to the bus, buying tickets, and spending two hours traveling" (5). In addition, Meursault goes out with a girl the day after his mother dies, "she seemed ver surprised to see I was wearing a black tie and she asked me if I was in mourning. I told her Maman had died. She wanted to know how long ago, so I said, yesterday" (20). Then Meursault agrees to help Raymond get away with beating his mistress and shows no remorse, "Since I didn't say anything, he asked if I'd mind doing it right then and I said no" (32). When Meursault shoots the arab and goes to court, he is not put on trial for shooting a person, like one would expect him to. He instead is largely put on trial for not treating his mother right. The prosecutor's entire case is that Meursault shouldn't have put his mother in old person's home but should have taken better care of her. In fact the prosecutor goes a step further and argues that people like Meursault ruin society by making it seem ok to mistreat people. Basically the entire book is completely absurd. This absurdity; combined with a motif I discussed earlier, sleepwalking through life; was put in the book the express Camus's philosophy of absurdism. The philosophy is basically a school of thought which states that the human efforts to find meaning in life will fail, because there is none. This is essentially the theme of The Stranger. As I talked about before, Meursault went through life in a kind of daze, not really caring about anything. This was because he had no purpose, he had stopped trying to find the purpose in life. The rest of society refused to accept this though. They technically punished him for the way he treated his mom, but what they were really punishing him for was stopping to find the purpose in life, stopping to succumb to the absurdity that is this human condition.
This book sounds incredibly interesting in the sense that it almost seems to create a counterargument to the teachings of Buddhism. Buddhism teaches people to find the meaning of life by looking to their inner selves for guidance. I find it fascinating that this book completely contradicts that there is any meaning in life to find and shows a character who is ultimately about himself, but does not achieve any sort of promise through being engaged with himself. It makes me wonder if this book is talking about more than just the meaning of life. It almost seems to be an attack on religion with this character who commits all of these sins of disregarding his mother, murdering, and battery. Religion promises some meaning to the life we live, but this story completely contradicts it. I think I might read this at some point because I am becoming strangely intrigued by challenging religion... well the Catholic religion for any matter. I also think that the image of this man sleep walking through his life could be reflectant of the laziness people exhibit in their every day lives and their constant desire for leisure time. I would love to know the time period in which this book was written and set to give me some larger cues as to what this author tries argue here.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how all of your posts seemed to have connecting ideas within them. I liked seeing how certain ideas progressed throughout the book. This character sounds evil and maybe almost like a vampire. But I could be wrong because it doesn't seem like too many people want to swoon over him in any sense. Furthermore, I wonder what the death of the mother meant to the story as a whole. There had to be a symbol there just because of the harsh relationship the main character had with her.
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ReplyDeleteSorry, I made a grammatical error. I couldn't change it without removing the post.
DeleteJames, I completely agree with you that the entirety of The Stranger is absurd. I read The Stranger as one of my additional books for the summer assignment, and encountered much of what you did. You’re right; Meursault doesn’t seem to care about life and what goes on around him. When he kills the Arab, he doesn’t do so out of spite, he does so out of fear. Meursault is blinded by the glint off of the Arab’s sword, so he decides to kill him. To most people this seems like a totally irrational reaction, but as you know Meursault isn’t like most people. He is the characterization of the ideas of existentialism; his life has no purpose, and while he is in jail he spends a lot of his time thinking, he eventually comes to the conclusion that life has no meaning.
ReplyDeleteI also encountered absurdity in my independent reading. I read Catch-22, which, without giving away too much of the story, is about a group of airmen who are beleaguered by bureaucracy. Their situation is also absurd in that there is no way for them to get out of flying missions for the air force. If they wish to be grounded. they must report themselves as insane to the base doctor. However, if they do so, they are then determined to be sane as they are able to report themselves as insane. While not as philosophically rooted as The Stranger, Catch-22 does an excellent job of criticizing bureaucracy. If you enjoyed The Stranger, I suggest you read Catch-22 for the next independent reading assignment.