Albert Camus’s Philosophy Of Absurd In The Outsider

The Outsider, originally called L'Étranger, is a novel written by French author Albert Camus. Published in 1942, the book hit the then society with its crafted story and the unprecedented philosophical idea revealed. While during the wartime in Paris, seeing the ruthless slaughtering and sanguinary violence, Camus came to deliberate upon the question that if human existence has any purposes or discernible meanings. He eventually developed his philosophy of absurd, that is the life of human does not have a rational or redeeming meaning. Unlike Camus’s later works, which are mostly philosophical essays, The Outsider is fiction consisted of a main character called Meursault, which is a shadow of Camus himself, and the stories happened between him and the world that he is detached from, and Camus’s philosophy of absurd is entangled with the text, intruding into readers’ sight while they are reading. The peculiarity and amorality of Meursault constructed him as a distant observer outside the world, and series of events pushed this outsider into the real world, which Meursault always shows indifference and detachment to.

Everything starts with a tragedy about Meursault’s mother: “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. (My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. )” Meursault received a telegram from the old people’s home and he was informed that his mother was dead. He was neither miserable nor astonished, and the first reaction he had is that he needs to take a long trip from Algiers to Marengo, where the home that he put his mother in is located, and this trip would change his routine week-schedule that he has to ask for two days off. In the very first chapter of the book, Camus leads the readers’ right into the world of the protagonist and uses explicit language to tell that Meursault does not pay any emotions to his mother’s death, and the protagonist’s indifference is further depicted after he said to his boss: “Ce n’est pas de ma faute. (It’s not my fault. )”. Meursault simply could not understand why would people around him behave differently and give him remarks such as “You only have one mother. ” He feels strange, even uncomfortable. He could not fully comprehend the meanings under other people’s remarks and needs to ponder about the logics behind every con- versation, although his deductions and logics are completely different with common values. This is a hint of his detachments from the world and the common people, which will act more distinctively in his mother’s funeral. After Meursault arrived at the house, he was greeted with the crew of the house. Everyone gave him condolence, but what he showed was emotionlessness. Before the funeral started, he drank a cup of coffee offerer by the caretaker and smoked a cigarette together with the caretaker. While he was doing that, he hesitated. “Mais j’ai hésité parce que je ne savais pas si je pouvais le faire devant maman. J’ai réfléchi, cela n’avait aucune importance. J’ai offert une cigarette au concierge et nous avons fumé. (But I hesitated because I didn’t know if I should smoke in front of Mama. I thought about it: it was no importance whatsoever. I offered the caretaker a cigarette and we both smoked. )”

Throughout the whole journey, he always kept his calmness and acted as an outsider of Mother’s death like the person who died has nothing related to him, which gradually builds on the vivid traits of the protagonist Meursault. During the funeral, the friends of the deceased came and most of the women were crying, while Meursault only felt uncomfortable about the occasion: he noticed that all the people are sitting opposite to him and the caretaker, “J’ai eu un moment l’impression ridicule qu’ils étaient là pour me juger. (For a split second, I had the ridiculous feeling that they were there to judge me. )” After that, as the funeral lasted longer, Meursalt grew a sense of impatience. When he and the crew of house were carrying Mother’s coffin, he noticed a man was following their group even if he’s physically disabled. The man’s name is Thomas Pérez, one of the elderly residents of the house. Before Mother’s death, she and Pérez had an intimate relationship that the other residents joked that he was her fiancé. Pérez’s relationship with Madame Meursault is one of the few genuine emotional attachments Camus depicts. The sun was burning, and they were all sweltering; Camus gave detailed descriptions of Marusault’s feelings, and from this point, readers can directly see Meursault’s role inside the whole event, an distant observer who never really involved: “Il y a eu encore l’église et les villageois sur les trottoirs, les géraniums rouges sur les tombes du cimetière, l’évanouissement de Pérez. . . douze heures. (Then there was the church and the townspeople out on the streets, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetry, the moment when Pérez fainted. . . the earth - the color of blood - thrown over Mama’s coffin, the soft white roots mixed in with the dirt, more people, more voices, the villiage, waiting in front of a cafe, the relentless droning of the engine and my joy when, at last, the bus pulled into the cluster of lights of Algiers and I knew I could soon go to bed and sleep for twelve hours. )”

After Meursault came back to Algiers, he immediately came back to his normal life. He started a relationship with a former co-worker of him, Marie Cardona. Like Meursault, Marie was physically attracted to him at first: she likes to kiss him in the public and the act of sex. But unlike Meursault, who was only attracted to Marie physically, Marie’s obsession with him led to emotionally attachments, and this is one of the reasons why that even Meursault expressed his indifference to love and marriage, Marie still continued to devote for this relationship. She was attracted by his peculiarities because she sometimes laughed at the remarks and behaviors of him and showed affections. Meursault did not show any emotionally attachments towards Marie as well, and every time when he thought of Marie was when he felt the need of sexual comfort. When he saw her silk dress, when he saw her eyes shining, when he saw her tanned body. . . None of these moments involves genuine affections. “Elle avait un de mes pyjamas dont elle avait retroussé les manches. Quand elle a ri. . . elle a encore ri de telle façon que je l’ai embrassée. (She was wearing one of my pajama tops with the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed, I wanted her again. A moment later, she asked me if I loved her. I told her that didn’t meaning anything, but I didn’t think so. She looked sad then. But while we were making lunch, she laughed again, for no apparent reason, and the way she laughed made me kiss her. )”

Depicting the interactions between Meursault and Marie, Camus added another layer of absurd onto the skin of Meursault, who showed indifference to his mother’s death, started affair with a girl right after Mother’s funeral, and doesn’t construct any genuine affections within a relationship. Camus is filling this character with more and more details, further leading to a figure of outsider who is incompatible with the society and common moral values. With the development of the plot, there is another notable trait of the protagonist Meursault besides his relationships several characters — his sensitiveness towards the nature and the surroundings. There is a chapter in the book that depicts the scene of Meursault staying on his balcony for the whole day and observing the pedestrians on the street and the changing colors of the sky. “À cinq heures, des tramways sont arrivés dans le bruit. . . . Ils hurlaient et chantaient à pleins poumons que leur club ne périrait pas. Plusieurs m’ont fait des signes. L’un m’a mêmecrié: «On les a eus. » Et j’ai fait: « Oui », en secouant la tête. À partir de ce moment, les autos ont commencé à affluer. . . . La journée a tourné encore un peu. . . Plusieurs d’entre elles, que je connaissais, m’ont fait des signes. . . (The trams came back at five o’clock, making a lot of noise. They had been to the sports stadium in the suburbs and carried groups of spectators who were huddled on the running boards and hanging on to the guardrails. The next trams were full of the players; I recognized them by their sports bags. They were shouting and singing at the top of their lungs — their club would go on forever. Several of them waved to me. One of them even shouted out: ‘We thrashed them!’ And I nodded my head as if to say ‘Yes’. After that, more and more traf- fic began streaming by. . . . Above the rooftops, the sky grew reddish and as night fell the streets started filling up. The people who’d gone for a walk came back, a few at a time. I recognized the distinguished-looking man amongst the others. The children were either crying or letting themselves be dragged along. The local cinemas suddenly let a waves of spectators out into the street. . . )”.

These detailed and vivid depictions of the spectators and players, the par- ents and the children, written from the perspective of Meursault put heavy brushstrokes on him as the figure of a distant observer: a man smoking cigarettes and standing high from the ground, looking and observing at every creature walking by, acting like he had built his own kingdom and no one could ever sneak in or try to disturb him. This scene most directly reveals the detachments of the protagonist from the rest of the world, pushing the development of the story further to the second part of the story, where the twist in Meursault’s life happened and Camus’s philosophy of absurd is represented to its strongest points. After Meursault met Marie and started the relationship with her, he then met a man in his apartment called Raymond Sintes, who works at a warehouse and doesn’t have a good reputation. He chatted with Meursault and then invited him to his house for dinner. When Raymond asked Meursault to be his friend, Meursault hesitated but didn’t refuse. Raymond acts as a catalyst to the change in plot. After Raymond beats and abuses his mistress (Meursalt helped Raymond write a letter to seduce his mistress to come to his house under Raymond’s request), he comes into conflict with her brother, an Arab. Raymond then draws Meursault into conflict with “the Arab. ” When Raymond invited Meursault and Marie to go on vacation to a beach, they met the Arab. A serious fight broke out between Raymond and the Arab, and Raymond was injured. After they came back to the living place, Meursault took Raymond’s gun and went out to the beach. He met the Arab again, and while the tension between the two gradually built up and the Arab started to walk towards Meursault, Meursault pulled the trigger and shot the the Arab. While Meursault’s action has no discernible reasons, he was arrested and put on trial. With the existence of Raymond Sintes, readers can actually see the differences between an amoral person, Meursault, and an immoral person, Raymond. Meursault does not make the distinction between good and bad in his own mind, while Raymond treated women violently and he almost killed the Arab before Meursault met him on the beach and took the action. Also, Meursault mostly acts to events happened to him passively, while what Raymond did was initiating events: inviting Meursault to dinner and drawing him into trouble. Raymond brought the significant change to the life of Meursault, which is the ending of the whole book: Meursault received a death sentence. Even after Meursault was arrested and put into cell, Meursault was still not flustered. “Même sur un banc d’accusé, il est toujours intéressant d’entendre parler de soi. . . . L’avocat levait les bras et plaidait coupable, mais avec excuses. (Even in the dock, it is always interesting to hear people talk about you. During the summing up of the prosecutor and my defence lawyer, I can honestly say that a great deal was said about me; even more about me, perhaps, than about my crime. )”

And in the last part of the story, all the previous characters came to speak and all the foreshadows were revealed. “Every character encountered in the early part of the story – Mersault's girl, the owner, and even one customer, of a restaurant where he eats, the people at his mother's funeral, the people who live in the same building – has a part to play in the trial, which is the main thing in the book. . . . Very little matters to him until the end, and even then he maintains his amazing objectivity. ” During the trial, the prosecutor put the focus on the fact that Meursault did not show any emotions or feelings to his mother’s death, and even immediately started a relationship with a girl after that. He emphasized that Meursault is a intelligent man who knows what he was doing, and he did not even show any regret. With the exaggerated and strong speech by the prosecutor, the jurors and some other people in the courtroom start- ed to show an expression of hatred towards Meursault. These made Meursault had a feeling that he had never had before. “Je ne regrettais pas beaucoup mon acte. . . (I didn’t really regret what I had done that much. But such viciousness astounded me. I would have liked to explain to him, politely, almost with a hint of emotion, that I have never truly been able to regret anything. )”

When Meursault tried to explain for himself, the lawyer stopped him and told him the best thing for him to do is to be quiet. Meursault thought is just unfair to let the whole procession done while he did not actually say any word except for explaining why he committed the crime and he replied quickly and nervously that is because of the sun, since he’s the person that’s being judged. This is the first time of him behaving like other common people: he wanted to cry when he found how everyone hates him, he felt nervous when the prosecutor accused him of being cruel and has no soul. “Camus strengthens this court-as-society symbolism by having nearly every one of the minor characters from the first half of the novel reappear as a witness in the courtroom. Also, the court’s attempts to construct a logical explanation for Meur- sault’s crime symbolize humanity’s attempts to find rational explanations for the irrational events of the world. These attempts, which Camus believed futile, exemplify the absurdity Camus outlined in his philosophy. ” The trial was the climax of the whole book, when Meursault’s emotionlessness towards Mother’s death is considered more than the crime it- self, when Meursault clearly saw people’s hatred towards him for the first time. His view of the world became firmer when he said “no” to the judge when the judge asked if he has any questions about the final decision of sentence to death. His thinking begins to broaden once he is sen- tenced to death, and the chaplain acts as a catalyst for Meursault’s psychological and philosophical development. When he was put into cell again, the chaplain asked for to meet him, but he refused for three times. The chaplain visited Meursault anyway, and nearly demanded that he take comfort in God. The chaplain seems threatened by Meursault’s stubborn atheism. Eventually, Meursault became enraged and angrily asserted that life is meaningless and that all men are con- demned to die. This argument triggers Meursault’s final acceptance of the meaninglessness of the world. And the story ended here.

Though The Outsider is a work of fiction, it contains a strong resonance of Camus’s philosophy of absurd. “In his essays, Camus asserts that individual lives and human existence in general have no rational meaning or order. However, because people have difficulty accepting this notion, they constantly attempt to identify or create rational structure and meaning in their lives. The term ‘absurdity’ describes humanity’s futile attempt to find rational order where none exists. ” Though Camus didn’t explicitly refer to his philosophical idea of absurd within the text, the portagonist himself is the representation of such an idea: neither Meursault’s external world nor his internal world has rational order. He does not have any discernible reasons to marry Marie or kill the Arab. “Society nonetheless attempts to fabricate or impose rational explanations for Meursault’s irrational actions. The idea that things sometimes happen for no reason, and that events sometimes have no meaning is disruptive and threatening to society. The trial sequence in Part Two of the novel represents society’s attempt to manufacture rational order. ” But as the title says, Camus built a character who has the figure of a distant observer that is not involved in the world that is apart from himself; he greets the world with gentle nonchalance — a man doesn’t intentionally cause any harms, but stick to his own belief that life has no meaning and accepted his death with no regret. Indeed, Meursault is amoral and indifferent, but when he sees the tender indifference that the world shows him, mingled with genuine affections and cruel assertions, he accepted it. Albert Camus brings the characters to life using a crafted story.

As the first work Camus ever published, The Outsider doesn’t explicitly explain Camus’s philosophical ideas of absurd, but “it is a staple of high school curricula and virtual rite of passage for adolescents who may see something of themselves in Meursault, that avatar of sullen rebellion. ” Readers might have seen something of themselves in Meursault, but the really phenomenal thing about this book is how Albert Camus implicitly applies his ideas on the character of Meursault as a real figure.

Citations

1. Camus, Albert. The Outsider, translated by Sandra Smith. Penguin Group, 2012.
2. SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Stranger. ” SparkNotes. com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web. 12 Jan. 2018.
3. Spaeth, Ryu. “The Camus Investigation. ” New Republic, 22 Sept. 2016, newrepublic. com/article/ 137009/camus-investigation.
4. POORE, CHARLES. “Books of The Times. ” The New York Times, April 11, 1946, http:// www. nytimes. com/books/97/12/14/home/camus-stranger. html