Similarities Between The Stranger And To Kill A Mockingbird

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Many authors use personal experience or beliefs to inspire them to write. In these novels, the authors are both complete examples of this. Both Albert Camus and Harper Lee were influenced by their real-life surroundings when writing The Stranger and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, had a very similar life as a young girl to Scout Finch, the main character in this book ("Harper Lee Biography"). Some of the most obvious correspondences include: both girls are tomboys and both girls had a father that was a southern lawyer ("Harper Lee Biography"). Growing up, Lee befriended Truman Capote, soon to be author of Breakfast at Tiffany's, who visited during the summer. In the book, much like real-life, Scout met Dill …show more content…

Both Camus and Meursault thought life had no rational or redeeming meaning. It is known that Camus' philosophical ideas have heavily influenced his writing, which would make sense of why the main character struggles with such problems ("The Stranger"). His philosophy was that "morals orders have no rational or natural basis, and that life's lack of "higher" meaning should not necessarily lead to one's despair" ("The Stranger").
Camus was not a philosopher of existentialism, which is what many people assume, he is in fact a philosopher of absurdism (Shmoop Editorial Team). The main difference between existentialism and absurdism is the belief that there is no meaning to life. There are many examples of this in the book, the difficulty for Meursault to explain motives for killing the Arabs, or being more "free" in prison that outside of it (Shmoop Editorial Team). In fact, Camus was a humanist, which means that "his faith in man's dignity in the face of what he saw as a cold, indifferent universe" ("The …show more content…

He was an observer rather than inattentive, but it seems like he detached himself from the world. Innocence and Guilt also interested Camus, as we see in The Stranger. Meursault is almost absent minded about the fact that he murdered someone.
As we read both The Stranger and To Kill a Mockingbird, we can easily see the similarities between the books and authors. While they both wrote fictional books, we can only assume it is about their lives in some way. The author's real-life surroundings have influenced their

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