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Existential themes in the stranger
What does meursault realize at the end of the stranger
A critique on the stranger by albert camus
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Recommended: Existential themes in the stranger
One of the main points stressed in the stranger is that people have no meaning to life. It is stressed that all lives will come to an end guaranteed and that all of their actions are meaningless. This expresses that he believes that all life is equally meaningless. Late in the story after a dispute with the chaplain is when Meursault realizes this. He notices that just as he had no effect to the world the world had no effect on him. He was going to die anyways just like everyone else. He was born and will die with no importance to the world and so will everyone else. Strangely enough, only after comprehending that realization was he able to obtain his happiness. He comes to the thought that it doesn’t matter how you die because you’re going
to die anyway. This gives him the mental idea to get rid of his desire to leave the court uncharged of crimes and instead finding a more suitable condition for him, death. He was happy to get rid of the idea that death was avoidable. Most of the actions of Meursault were just as “meaningless” as his life. He wanted to marry Marie but he didn’t have a reason. He was just doing it because its just what you do with someone that you are in a relationship. When he went to court and was asked about what his reason was for killing the arab in the desert he complained about the heat. During his mothers funeral the heat bothered him more than the burial of his own mother.
Part I of The Stranger begins with Meursault's attendance at his mother's funeral. It ends with Meursault on the beach at Algiers killing a man. Part II is concerned with Meursault's trial for that same murder, his ultimate sentencing to death and the mental anguish that he experiences as a result of this sentence. Several curious parallels emerge here, especially with regard to Meursault's perception of the world.
going to die yet he sees the bright side of it; which is that unlike most deaths, were you
In The Stranger, Albert Camus describes the life of the protagonist, Meursault, through life changing events. The passage chosen illustrates Meursault’s view during his time in prison for killing the Arab. In prison, one can see the shifts in Meursault’s character and the acceptance of this new lifestyle. Camus manipulates diction to indicate the changes in Meursault caused by time thinking of memories in prison and realization of his pointless life. Because Camus published this book at the beginning of World War II, people at this time period also questions life and death similar to how Meursault does.
In the experimental novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, he explores the concept of existentialism and the idea that humans are born into nothing and descend into nothingness after death. The novel takes place in the French colony of Algiers where the French-Algerians working-class colonists live in an urban setting where simple life pleasures are of the upmost importance in the lives of working class people like the protagonist of the novel Meursault. What is fascinating about this novel is that it opens up with a scene of perpetual misfortune for him through the death of his mother although he seems to express otherwise. The reader perceives this nonchalance as a lack of care. Maman’s death and its impact on Meursault appear in both the very beginning and very end of the two-part novel, suggesting a cyclical pattern in the structure. This cyclical pattern suggests not a change in the moral beliefs of Meursault but rather his registering society’s systems and beliefs and craft meaning in his own life despite the fact that he meets his demise in the end. Camus uses Maman’s funeral to characterise both Meursault and the society and customs created by the society Meursault lives in in order to contrast the two while at the same time reveal how while society changes, Meursault does not. Rather, Maman’s funeral becomes of unprecedented importance in Meursault’s life and allows him to find that nothing means anything in his meaningless world at the time of his death. He finds peace in that.
Life has been defined as the property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism. Further, that very definition from the Webster's dictionary says nothing when it comes to the everyday experiences one faces throughout a lifetime. The experiences one faces makes, breaks, and shapes us into how we act and live. T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men" portrays a world in which humans lack connections to each other and to G-d. Similarly, the main character, Meursault, from the short novel The Stranger, by Albert Camus, represents a man who does not feel any condition to anyone or anything. Meursault seems not to have a sense of emotion for the occurring actions in his life, and as a result, Camus pictures him as a senseless man. Many people in society go through life-breaking crisis that takes them several weeks even months to get over, meanwhile Meursault goes through some of the most immense problems during his life, yet he shows little emotion to ward his reality.
Albert Camus’ The Stranger offers one man’s incite into the justice of society. Monsieur Meursault, the main protagonist in the novel, believes that morals and the concept of right and wrong possess no importance. This idea influences him to act distinctively in situations that require emotion and just decision, including feeling sadness over his mother’s death, the abuse of a woman, and his killing of an innocent man. In these situations Meursault apathetically devoids himself of all emotion and abstains from dealing with the reality in front of him. When confronted by the court over his murder, he reiterates his habitual motto on life that nothing matters anyways, so why care? His uncaring response inflames the people working within the
In Part One of The Stranger, Albert Camus avoids religious confrontations with Meursault in order to subconsciously place blame on Christ for his criminal actions. Camus restricts Meursault’s relationships to further distance him from his mother. Meursault then alienates himself from the typical spiritual ceremonies and actions to demonstrate his distrust of religion. Simultaneously, Camus uses diction of clear and bright elements to characterize people in the novel, excluding Meursault. Camus associates dark colors with Meursault to depict a sadistic persona. To conclude, Camus places Meursault in recurring situations which result in him being distracted by “the light”. Camus uses these literary techniques in The Stranger to demonstrate man’s condemnation of God.
When Meursault is described to us in the early stages of "The Outsider" we see
Everyone will die. Meursault’s awareness of death contributes to his nonchalant attitude toward every death he witness or must endure in The Stranger. Death fails to upset Meursault. In The Stranger, Albert Camus emphasizes mortality in order to expose the ignorance humanity has towards the inevitable or unknown end.
He instilled hope into himself and those around him every chance he had. He understood the challenges he and his fellow prisoners faced, but he would not let it defeat him or anyone else. When his friends begin to give in to the situation, he won’t let them. He exclaims, “To die, it’s easy.
While the isolation of the two characters from society led them to commit their foul acts, the differences between the two characters are truly what pushed the stories along and let to the eventual outcomes of both novels. Throughout The Stranger Meursault's complete lack of emotional understanding on a human level, combined with his inability to focus on anything other than the physical tangible present, led to inevitable demise. By looking through Meursault's eyes we see that he focuses almost entirely on what is, and not what could be. This is why he vividly describes such scenes as the walk to his mother’s funeral, yet skims over the actual burial of his dead mother. This is also shown in his description of Marie, always focusing on her
In Albert Camus’ novel, The Stranger, the protagonist Meursault is a character who has definite values and opinions concerning the society in which he lives. His self-inflicted alienation from society and all its habits and customs is clear throughout the book. The novel itself is an exercise in absurdity that challenges the reader to face the nagging questions concerning the meaning of human existence. Meursault is an existentialist character who views his life in an unemotional and noncommittal manner, which enhances his obvious opinion that in the end life is utterly meaningless.
of life and accepts death as a part of it. At the same time, he
The Stranger is told through Meursault’s point of view as tells the stories of his past. Because it is told through his perspective, his biased perspective and outlook on life are the only insights the reader gets and, therefore, he is portrayed as selfish. In my opinion, by portraying Meursault as a emotionless ‘robot’, the author is trying to convey the reader to believe that Meursault is selfish; but, in reality, he does not even seem to care about himself – which would contradict the definition of selfishness. Meursault’s detachment from ‘normal’ human emotions and bluntness is carried throughout the novel as the permanent tone and a representation of Meursault’s philosophy on life. Meursault’s philosophy is that nothing really matters, he feels indifferent about everything that happens in his life and reacts very nonchalantly to things that a typical human will feel obligated to feel and act a certain way.
Albert Camus wrote The Stranger during the Existentialist movement, which explains why the main character in the novel, Meursault, is characterized as detached and emotionless, two of the aspects of existentialism. In Meursault, Camus creates a character he intends his readers to relate to, because he creates characters placed in realistic situations. He wants the reader to form a changing, ambiguous opinion of Meursault. From what Meursault narrates to the reader in the novel, the reader can understand why he attempts to find order and understanding in a confused and mystifying world.