Love And Love: Meursault's View Of Love

When it comes to love, Meursault has an outlook that is very different from most. He believes that love “doesn 't mean anything but that [he] didn 't think” (35) he loved Marie. She becomes very sad by this and thinks that he doesn 't care about her at all. She doesn 't realize that Meursault is not like others, he has no views on the topic of love and does not label his feelings. Later on, Marie asks him if he will marry her. He replied that “it [doesn 't] make any difference to him and that [they] could if she wanted to” (41). He says he will marry her just to please her, by doing what she wants, he is conforming and doing what others want him to do. He is not doing anything to create himself, and goes with the flow of what others expect.

He realizes that “life isn 't worth living . . . It doesn 't much matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy, since . . . it would all come down to the same thing anyways” (114). Meursault believes that “when and how don 't matter” (114). With this it becomes clear to him that what matters is how one lives the short life they do have. He comes to a realization and is then upset by the fact that “everything was happening without his participation” (98), life included. His “fate was being decided” (98) for him, he does not like the thought of this and wants to change. Right then his absurd views on the world help him to create himself. As the chaplain lectures him and tries to make Meursault conform to the beliefs of others, he is angered. He then becomes fully aware that “[he] had only a little time left and [he] didn 't want to waste it on God” (120). Life is short, so don 't let others create your essence and the rules in which one lives by. Don 't waste the little things life has to offer, conforming to the beliefs in which others

After his realization, Meursault sees that his mother too began to live in the last of her days. He understands “why at the end of her life she had taken a fiance, why she had played at beginning again” (122). Meursault wants to go out with a bang just like his mother had. Even in a place where life has no purpose “evening was a wistful respite” (122). The time before death is a short period to really live life, finding rest and relief before death comes and wipes it away. Meursault learns a lesson from this and then understands what he must do to give his life purpose. He feels “ready to live it all again too. . .and opened [himself] to the gentle indifference of the world” (122). The essence he used to create himself was everything that went against the beliefs of society. He wants people to “greet [him] with cries of hate” because this validates the fact that he is not like them. Camus uses absurdism to lead Meursault to find himself, not what others want of him, but what he wants. In the actions Meursault took to break free from conformity did he gain true