The Absurdist: Albert Camus

This week we concentrated on the work of Algerian writer and philosopher, Albert Camus. His novella, The Stranger, first published in English in 1946, follows the adult life of protagonist, Meursault.

The most prevalent theme in my eyes is death. The story opens with Meursault receiving a letter to attend his mother's funeral, after which, a chain of everyday events unfolds, leading to him killing an Arab man while on the beach with his friends and ultimately resulting in his own execution. So, the narrative discourse of the book, while somewhat shocking and peculiar, is not exactly ground breaking and worthy of discussion, but for the perspective from which it is told, namely, from the first person of Meursault himself. For Camus' 'hero', it would seem, is an existentialist and, moreover, may be described as an absurdist.

While existentialism concerns the meaning behind defining one's life and place within the universe, absurdism states that the connection of body and soul, resulting in emotional perception, as well as sensory, is... well, absurd. The two are very closely linked, but the latter, it would seem to me, is somehow scathing of life and its sociological structures, to the point that it would appear to scoff at those foolish enough to take it seriously. In chapter 4, Meursault openly declares that he dislikes policemen and almost enjoys describing the disrespectful behaviour of his friend, Sintes, towards an officer on duty. That he is repulsed by a figure whose job it is to uphold the laws of the land, drawn out by generations before him, is significant in that he is seeking to undermine a symbol of the constraints that surround daily life for every person and into which we are forcibly born.

The existentialist in Meursault begins to shine through as the story progresses and in chapter 5, he says, 'one never changed his way of life'. He would seem to be disregarding the supposed instinct for achievement in life, admitting that he too was ambitious as a student, before realising 'that was pretty futile'. A person's sole 'achievement' should be survival to the day when death will inevitably arrive, but the life through which one must survive is down to luck and fortune and we must accept it for what it is. This itself sounds closely linked to an existentialist theory, loosely termed, 'thrown-ness', i.e. we are 'thrown' into our own lives and there must we make do.

However, Meursault, for all his calm, assured expositions on the meaninglessness of life around him, appears mentally unstable at times. At the vigil of his mother's funeral, (chapter 1), the bright light and white walls are intense and uncomfortable, as he feels himself under the scrutiny of the 'dull' eyes and 'nest of wrinkles' of her elderly friends. He can hear only an eerie sobbing for the entire duration, creating the impression that Meursault himself is experiencing the 'act' of death. Throughout the story, he also describes the stifling heat that disorientates him and which eventually leads him to confronting the Arab man with Sintes' revolver, thus becoming his ultimate downfall. Such mental disturbances may possibly highlight Meursault's isolation from the rest of society, pointing towards his emotional detachment from his sensory perceptions.

Camus' hero, therefore, would seem somewhat uninspiring to his readers. Although commendable in his self-belief and valiance in defending his own morals, his apparent psychological illness appears to undermine this. However, his 'heroic exploits' are not to be fully recognised until the final chapters of the book, when Meursault, condemned to death by the guillotine, comes to understand humankind's insignificance in the grand context of the universe. A chaplain's attempts to turn him to God are bluntly rejected and he realises that his public indifference towards death may serve society in ridding it of the selfish seriousness with which men and women approach a meaningless life. Meursault's death becomes framed as the sacrifice of a martyr, on the scale of the biblical story of Jesus Christ. He, as a character, seems to have evolved in the short space of time from chapter 1 and his disturbed perceptions of death at the vigil, to become a stronger representative of the existentialist, absurdist philosophy.

As a hero, Meursault is a counteractive literary figure, a response to the traditional romanticists of the Enlightenment era and onwards. Camus effectively proposed that the real heroes are those who are passive, rather than active, which is reflected in Meursault's own admiration for a stranger he meets, describing her as a 'robot'. Camus believed that an unfaltering, mechanical approach to life is 'less inauthentic', disregarding strong emotional attachments to anything or anyone as frivolous. The Stranger certainly was a ground breaking piece of literature and anything but ordinary.