Meursault's Absurd In The Stranger, By Albert Camus

Meursault’s boss offers him a position in a new office he plans to open in Paris. Meursault replies that it is all the same to him, and his boss becomes angry at his lack of ambition. Meursault muses that he used to have ambition as a student, but then realized that none of it really mattered. Meursault lives his life almost unconsciously, nearly sleepwalking through a ready-made structure that his society provides him.

Salamano is one of Meursault’s neighbors, who I feel plays an important part in this story. Salamano says that he initially had human companionship in his wife, but she died and he had to settle for the animal companionship of his dog. As time has passed, Salamano’s dog has become increasingly ugly and sick, until the point where it, too, has left

him. Physical decay represents a marker and reminder of Camus’s philosophy of the absurd, which asserts that humans are thrust into a life that inevitably ends in death. At the beginning of the novel, the indifference Meursault feels is located exclusively within himself, in his own heart and mind. By this point, however, Meursault has come to realize how similar the universe, or at least Camus’s conception of it is to his own personality. He begins to understand that not only does he not care what happens, but that the world does not care either.
Reflecting on the moment when Raymond gave him the gun, Meursault says, “It was then that I realized you could either shoot or not shoot.” His comment implies that no difference exists between the two alternatives. Now when the Arab returned to Meursault later in the chapter he still had the knife and came after him and Meursault shot him 5 times and killed him. He was then thrown in prison, and it was there where he began to emerge self-awareness and self-consciousness.
The news article that Meursault studies about the Czechoslovakian man who was disguised and murdered by his mother and sister because of his wealth serves to expand and enlighten us upon the themes of absurdism that Camus illustrates in The Stranger.

Camus’s absurd philosophy asserts that the events of the world have no rational order or visible meaning. The story of the returning son murdered by his mother and sister is a perfect example of what he is trying to show us in The Stranger. There is no reason for the son to have died. His terrible, ironic fate is not compatible with any logical or ordered system governing human existence. Like Meursault’s killing of the Arab, the son’s death is a purposeless, meaningless tragedy that defies rationalization or justification. Now because of the murder Meursault is put on trial the following summer and while he is on trial, Meursault comes to understand that his failure to interpret or find meaning in his own life has left him vulnerable to others, who will impose such meaning for him. Until this point, Meursault has unthinkingly drifted from moment to moment, lacking the motivation or ability to examine his life as a narrative with a past, present, and

future.
Meursault is sentenced to death by guillotine. He awaits everyday waiting for the footsteps of the men to come and execute him. During this time Meursault has done much thinking and begins to think to himself that death is inevitable. This realization of death’s inevitability constitutes Meursault’s triumph over society. Expressing remorse over his crime would implicitly acknowledge the murder as wrong, and Meursault’s punishment as justified. The chaplain tries to come to him and speak to him about God, but he still is unwillingly to accept that there is a God.
After reading The Stranger I personally feel that Meursault is an absurd hero. My first example is Meursault is sentenced to death and while awaiting execution, is a metaphor for the human condition. Meursault perfectly exemplifies the absurd characteristics of revolt, freedom, and passion outlined by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus. Meursault refuses to accord himself with custom, and asserts his freedom by doing what strikes him as appropriate at any given moment. This includes smoking and showing indifference at the vigil for his dead mother, going to the beach and sleeping with a woman the day after his mother's funeral, and forging a letter for his friend Raymond, who is said to be a pimp and beats his mistress. This exercise of freedom also represents a revolt against any attempt to place restrictions on his life. His passion is evident in his enthusiastic pursuit of new pleasures and new experiences: he loves being alive.