What is an ordinary life? It is to live from day to day: work, eat, sleep, have some fun, meet other people. Meursault lives such an ordinary life.

He isn't a hypocrite. He neither tells a lie nor deceives. He is honest. But his life is ruled by indifference and inertia.

As the story unfolds, Meursault is offered the opportunity to move to Paris and travel in France. But he shows little interest. He tells his boss that one life is as good as another and his present one suits him quite well.

Meursault constantly suffers from feelings of weariness and heat. These disagreeable feelings eventually seal his fate, turning him into the instrument of death.

After a series of events, he is apprehended and imprisoned. Now he is waiting for his trial and punishment. And he has become a total stranger.

He has often thought that if he were compelled to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but gaze up at the patch of sky just overhead, he would have got used to it by degrees.

However, on the whole, "The Stranger" is a book about human society. According to the novelette, society is a conglomeration of hypocritical, lying, conforming and selfish beings that is always ready to judge strangers who cross a certain borderline. And for those strangers, society has no mercy.

It makes one think deeply about the nature of society and the role of the individual within it.

The Outsider

Albert Camus



   In spite of my willingness to accept this glaring certainty, I simply couldn't. Because, in reality, from the moment judgement was passed, the evidence my sentence was based on seemed ridiculously out of proportion to its inevitable conclusion.


What exactly is an Outsider? It could be one who defies the norms established by society. Someone who makes choices without considering their probable outcomes as per society's standards or simply acts as life presents itself. Monsieur Meursault is such an outsider to society and even a stranger to himself. He has no fondness for playing games or telling lies. Instead, he accepts life as it comes, devoid of any underlying sense of morality, prejudice, or conformity. The character of Meursault is a rarity. As conscious and emotional beings, we typically have opinions, prejudices, and a natural inclination to have belief systems, form ethics, and define morality. We seek order in our lives. But is this tendency truly natural? Maybe it is, or perhaps it isn't. Meursault believes there is no inherent meaning in life. Is this really the case? Is there no grand design or meaning to our existence? If so, why are we living? What is the point of our being here? Does it mean we are leading an inauthentic existence or are we living in a simulation, as some modern physicists suggest? According to Camus, there is a constant conflict between humanity's inclination to seek inherent meaning and value in life and our inability to find any. Camus argues that once we become aware of our absurd life, we should embrace it and continue to explore and search for the meaning of life.

The protagonist, Meursault, lacks any of these seemingly natural tendencies. He is a man without feelings and incapable of feeling remorse. The book begins with one of the most profound opening lines in literature -
  My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I received a telegram from the old people's home: ’Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Very sincerely yours.’ That doesn't mean anything. It might have been yesterday.
The narrator may seem oblivious to the world, which is abhorrent to most people. On certain occasions, one is expected to behave in a particular way, and when someone loses their mother, they are supposed to show emotions that society deems natural. However, our narrator, to the dismay of all, is consciously aware of the absurdity of life even in the face of the profound loss (or what seems to be) of his mother. He portrays the ironies of imposing meaning in a void and the absurdities that surround us as humans, all marching towards the same cold, lifeless fate. While those around him are stunned by his coldness towards the loss of his mother, perhaps they have been conditioned to behave in this way. We have become civilized (at least we think so) for a long time, but since the dawn of civilization, we have accumulated so much that, in a sense, we are moving away from our natural aspects. We have conditioned ourselves to various dogmas and belief systems over the centuries, and if someone does not abide by them, they are seen as an outsider in our society.

Our narrator has a sense of innocence towards life. He is naïve (yet certainly not inexperienced in his understanding of life) in that he is astonished when people look at him with horror for his display of indifference towards life's conformists. He is a man of few words or feelings beyond those that decisions seldom have much impact on the grand plan of the world. However, it is his decisions that affect him in this world, particularly by those who believe that his decisions will come back to haunt him in a next world that presumably does not exist, according to the narrator. The narrator is shown an unsympathetic attitude by society for his choices in life, choices that do not conform to their view of life. But in reality, their norms or laws are as pointless as they themselves are. And that is the absurdity of life. The narrator is well aware of this absurdity and acts in accordance with it. The unintended murder by Meursault places him in an awkward position in society as he claims the trigger went off due to being overcome by the sun and heat. Does the intention matter? After all, it leads to a murder regardless of the intention. Perhaps it does, as if it didn't, there would be no difference between the jury and a killer. But this presumption serves as a priori for the trial of Meursault, as it is eventually proven that the murder was intended. Meursault describes the trial as absurd since he is the center of the whole trial, yet he is not allowed to express himself, as if he doesn't exist as a conscious being. The trial, which is based more on his conduct during his mother's funeral rather than the act of murder, gradually turns the trial room into a symbol of justice based on values considered essential to human beings. The one who does not conform to these values is condemned to death in the eternal trial room of justice, a justice that appears equally absurd as it seems to be driven by some sort of dogma rather than evidence. While he is ready to accept his fate - the punishment - he finds the judgment ridiculous. He doesn't plead for mercy because he takes life as it comes, even if it hides something as profound (or seemingly so) as death beneath its folds. The book ends with a philosophical doctrine by the narrator that resembles Christ, as Camus himself called Meursault "a man who… agrees to die for the truth" and characterized him as "the only Christ that we deserve".
   And I as well, I too felt ready to start life all over again. As if this great release of anger had purged me of evil, emptied me of hope; and standing before the symbolic night bursting with stars, I opened myself for the first time to the tender indifference of the world. To feel it so like me, so like a brother, in fact, I understood that I had been happy, and I was still happy. So it might be finished, so that I might feel less alone, I could only hope there would be many, many spectators on the day of execution and that they would greet me with cries of hatred.
We can observe that even on the verge of death, Meursault does not demand sympathy from anyone. Instead, he wants the world to greet him with hatred because he has no regrets at all.

Camus once said that he did not want to ridicule any belief system per se but rather wanted to present the underlying absurdity of life. He claims that there is only one philosophical problem in life, and that is suicide. According to him, the only question worth asking is whether life is worth living or not. Camus points out, however, that there is no more meaning in death than there is in life, and that it simply evades the problem once again. Camus concludes that we must instead "entertain" both death and the absurd, while never agreeing to their terms. He has often been labeled as an existentialist, although not to his liking. While existentialism suggests that there is no inherent meaning in life and we should accept it, thereby defining our lives and taking responsibility for living by it, absurdism states that the very acceptance of the absurd condition of life is the beginning of true existence because while accepting the absurd situation, one must not stop searching for the meaning of life. In this sense, Camus' philosophy is more humanitarian in approach, while existentialism is a systematic philosophy.


The Outsider is a classic story about the absurd nature of life. I absolutely loved it. It is highly recommended to anyone who is eager to explore the absurd nature of life or life in general.


  
    4.5/5
  


*edited to remove bloopers.