How Did Jean Grenier Influence Camus's Life?

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Recommended: Albert Camus "the stranger" as an existentialist novel

Jean Grenier indirectly influenced Camus’s life after he persuaded Camus to join the Communist party in 1935 (Gay-Crosier). In the party, Camus directed the Maison de la Culture, which was an organization that introduced major metropolitan artists to the public and promoted indigenous Mediterranean art and civilization, and formed the Theatre du Travail (Labor Theater), a theater group for which Camus wrote and acted. Eventually, though, Camus was expelled from the Communist party due to his ideological differences.

After his expulsion from the party (from 1938 to the outbreak of World War I) Albert Camus worked as a journalist for the Alger Republicain, an aggressive opposition paper in Algeria. There Camus was responsible for the city …show more content…

After his banishment Camus went through a period of artistic and intellectual maturation, which can be seen in his A Happy Death, Betwixt & Between, and Nuptials . Hints of the simplistic narrative style found in The Stranger come from the occupational style of journalism (Camus began work on The Stranger during his time at the Republicain) as well as from Hemingway’s journalistic style (Moser). These traces of this specific style also convey the sense of immediacy that Camus’s philosophy is founded …show more content…

In the novel we can recognize Camus’s preoccupation with the nature of being and his rejection of reason and order in the universe ("The Stranger"). Even more evident in The Stranger are the parallels between the main character Meursault and Camus himself. Meursault has a sense of world and morality unlike anyone in his society and is therefore distanced from everyone because he has realized that life itself is meaningless. He understands that life is what one makes of it while being aware of life and death (the two certainties). Camus argued that realizing that life is meaningless allows one to uphold traditional human values because they safeguard one’s life and lead to utmost

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