Syed Irfan/International Journal of Social and Applied Sciences (IJSAS)
www.abhinandanpublications.com/ijsas
Vol. 2, Issue 1, Jan-Feb 2013, pp. 300-308
The Stranger-Symbolism And Imagery By Albert Camus
Syed Irfan
Introduction: Albert Camus (älbĕr´ kämü´), 1913–60,
French writer, b. Algiers. Camus was one of the most important
authors and thinkers of the 20th cent. While a student at the
Univ. of Algiers, he formed a theater group and adapted,
directed, and acted in plays. He became active in social reform
and was briefly a member of the Communist party. Shortly after
his essay Noces [weddings] appeared (1939), he went to Paris as
a journalist. In World War II he joined the French resistance and
was principal editor of the underground paper Combat.
Noted for his vigorous, concise, and lucid style, Camus soon
gained recognition as a major literary figure. His belief that
man's condition is absurd identified him with the existentialists,
but he denied allegiance to that group; his works express rather a
courageous humanism. The characters in his novels and plays,
although keenly aware of the meaninglessness of the human
condition, assert their humanity by rebelling against their
circumstances.
The philosophical essays in Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942, tr. The
Myth of Sisyphus, 1955) formulate his theory of the absurd and
are the philosophical basis of his novel L'Étranger (1942, tr. The
Stranger, 1946) and of his plays Le Malentendu (1944, tr. Cross
Purpose, 1948) and Caligula (1944, tr. 1948). The essay
L'Homme révolté (1951, tr. The Rebel, 1954), dealing with
historical, spiritual, and political rebellion, treats themes found
in the novels La Peste (1947, tr. The Plague, 1948) and La Chute
(1956, tr. The Fall, 1957). Other works include the plays L'État
de siège (1948, tr. State of Siege, 1958) and Les Justes (1950, tr.
The Just Assassins, 1958), journalistic essays, and stories.
Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature. The first
draft of an autobiographical novel, found in a briefcase after his
death in a car crash, was published as Le Premier Homme (1994,
tr. The First Man, 1995).
For Camus, life has no rational meaning or order. We have
trouble dealing with this notion and continually struggle to find
rational structure and meaning in our lives. This struggle to find
meaning where none exists is what Camus calls, the absurd. So
strong is our desire for meaning that we dismiss out of hand the
idea that there is none to be found. Camus wrote The Stranger as
an enticement to his readers, to think about their own mortality
and the meaning of their existence. The hero, or anti-hero, of
The Stranger is Meursault. His life and attitudes possess a
strange rational order. His actions are strange to us, there seems
to be no good reason behind them. For example. we are given no
reason why he chooses to marry Marie or gun down an Arab. As
a result, he is a stranger amongst us. And when confronted with
the absurdity of the stranger's life society reacts by imposing
(accepted) meaning on the stranger.
In the second half of The Stranger, Camus depicts society's
attempt to manufacture meaning behind Meursault's actions. The
trial is absurd in that the judge, prosecutors, lawyers and jury try
to find meaning where none is to be found. Everyone, except
Meursault, has their own ‗reason' why Meursault shot the Arab
but none of them are, or can be, correct. In life there are never
shortages of opinion as to why this or that thing occurred. How
close to any of them get to the meaning behind action? An
interesting motif in The Stranger is that of watching or
observation. Camus is writing a book about our endless search
for meaning. We are all looking for a purpose in our lives. The
characters of The Stranger all watch each other and the world
around them. Meursault watches the world go by from his
balcony. He later passively watches his own trial. The world
around him is a fascination to Meursault. He keenly observes the
sun, the heat, the physical geography of his surrounding. The
eyes of the other are also depicted by Camus. Antagonism
behind the eyes of the Arabs, as they watch Meursault and his
friends. The eyes of the jury and witnesses at his trial. Finally
the idea of the watching crowd, representing the eyes of society.
For the modern American reader, few lines in French literature
are as famous as the opening of Albert Camus‘s ―L‘Étranger‖:
―Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.‖ Nitty-gritty tense issues aside,
the first sentence of ―The Stranger‖ is so elementary that even a
schoolboy with a base knowledge of French could adequately
translate it. So why do the pros keep getting it wrong? Within
the novel‘s first sentence, two subtle and seemingly minor
translation decisions have the power to change the way we read
everything that follows. What makes these particular choices
prickly is that they poke at a long-standing debate among the
literary community: whether it is necessary for a translator to
have some sort of special affinity with a work‘s author in order
to produce the best possible text.
Arthur Goldhammer, translator of a volume of Camus‘s Combat
editorials, calls it ―nonsense‖ to believe that ―good translation
requires some sort of mystical sympathy between author and
translator.‖ While ―mystical‖ may indeed be a bit of a stretch,
it‘s hard to look at Camus‘s famous first sentence—whether
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Vol. 2, Issue 1, Jan-Feb 2013, pp. 300-308
translated by Stuart Gilbert, Joseph Laredo, Kate Griffith, or
even, to a lesser degree, Matthew Ward—without thinking that a
little more understanding between author and translator may
have prevented the text from being colored in ways that Camus
never intended. Stuart Gilbert, a British scholar and a friend of
James Joyce, was the first person to attempt Camus‘s
―L‘Étranger‖ in English. In 1946, Gilbert translated the book‘s
title as ―The Outsider‖ and rendered the first line as ―Mother
died today.‖ Simple, succinct, and incorrect. In 1982, both
Joseph Laredo and Kate Griffith produced new translations of
―L‘Étranger,‖ each opting for Gilbert‘s revised title, ―The
Stranger,‖ but preserving his first line. ―Mother died today‖
remained, and it wasn‘t until 1988 that the line saw a single
word changed. It was then that American translator and poet
Matthew Ward reverted ―Mother‖ back to Maman. One word?
What‘s the big deal? A large part of how we view and—
alongside the novel‘s court—ultimately judge Meursault lies in
our perception of his relationship with his mother. We condemn
or set him free based not on the crime he commits but on our
assessment of him as a person. Does he love his mother? Or is
he cold toward her, uncaring, even?
First impressions matter, and, for forty-two years, the way that
American readers were introduced to Meursault was through the
detached formality of his statement: ―Mother died today.‖ There
is little warmth, little bond or closeness or love in ―Mother,‖
which is a static, archetypal term, not the sort of thing we use for
a living, breathing being with whom we have close relations. To
do so would be like calling the family dog ―Dog‖ or a husband
―Husband.‖ The word forces us to see Meursault as distant from
the woman who bore him.
What if the opening line had read, ―Mommy died today‖? How
would we have seen Meursault then? Likely, our first impression
would have been of a child speaking. Rather than being put off,
we would have felt pity or sympathy. But this, too, would have
presented an inaccurate view of Meursault. The truth is that
neither of these translations—―Mother‖ or ―Mommy‖—ring true
to the original. The French word maman hangs somewhere
between the two extremes: it‘s neither the cold and distant
―mother‖ nor the overly childlike ―mommy.‖ In English, ―mom‖
might seem the closest fit for Camus‘s sentence, but there‘s still
something off-putting and abrupt about the single-syllable word;
the two-syllable maman has a touch of softness and warmth that
is lost with ―mom.‖ So how is the English-language translator to
avoid unnecessarily influencing the reader? It seems that
Matthew Ward, the novel‘s most recent translator, did the only
logical thing: nothing. He left Camus‘s word untouched,
rendering the famous first line, ―Maman died today.‖ It could be
said that Ward introduces a new problem: now, right from the
start, the American reader is faced with a foreign term, with a
confusion not previously present. Ward‘s translation is clever,
though, and three reasons demonstrate why his is the best
solution.
First, the French word maman is familiar enough for an English-
language reader to parse. Around the globe, as children learn to
form words by babbling, they begin with the simplest sounds. In
many languages, bilabials such as ―m,‖ ―p,‖ and ―b,‖ as well as
the low vowel ―a,‖ are among the easiest to produce. As a result,
in English, we find that children initially refer to the female
parent as ―mama.‖ Even in a language as seemingly different as
Mandarin Chinese, we find māma; in the languages of Southern
India we get amma, and in Norwegian, Italian, Swedish, and
Icelandic, as well as many other languages, the word used is
―mamma.‖ The French maman is so similar that the English-
language reader will effortlessly understand it.
As the years pass, new generations of American readers, who
often first encounter Camus‘s book in high school, grow more
and more removed from the novel‘s historical context. Utilizing
the original French word in the first sentence rather than any of
the English options also serves to remind readers that they are in
fact entering a world different from their own. While this hint
may not be enough to inform the younger reader that, for
example, the likelihood of a Frenchman in colonial Algeria
getting the death penalty for killing an armed Arab was slim to
nonexistent, at least it provides an initial allusion to these extra-
textual facts. Finally, and perhaps most important, the American
reader will harbor no preconceived notions of the word maman.
We will understand it with ease, but it will carry no baggage, it
will plant no unintended seeds in our head. The word will
neither sway us to see Meursault as overly cold and heartless nor
as overly warm and loving. And while some of the word‘s
precision is indeed lost for the English-language reader, maman
still gives us a more neutral-to-familiar tone than ―mother,‖ one
that hews closer to Camus‘s original.
So if Matthew Ward finally corrected the mother problem, what
exactly has he, and the other translators, gotten wrong? Writing
of ―The Stranger‖ ‘s first line in the Guardian, Guy Dammann
says, ―Some openers are so prescient that they seem to burn a
hole through the rest of the book, the semantic resonance
recurring with the persistence of the first theme in Beethoven‘s
fifth symphony.‖ The linguistic fluency of any good translator
tells them that, syntactically, ―Aujourd’hui, maman est morte,‖ is
not the most fluid English sentence. So rather than the more
literal translation, ―Today, Mother has died,‖ we get, ―Mother
died today,‖ which is the smoother, more natural rendering. But
the question is: In changing the sentence‘s syntax, are we also
changing its logic, its ―mystical‖ deeper meaning?
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Vol. 2, Issue 1, Jan-Feb 2013, pp. 300-308
The answer is a resounding oui! Rendering the line as ―Mother
died today‖ completely neglects a specific ordering of ideas that
offer insight into Meursault‘s inner psyche. Throughout the
course of the novel, the reader comes to see that Meursault is a
character who, first and foremost, lives for the moment. He does
not consciously dwell on the past; he does not worry about the
future. What matters is today. The single most important factor
of his being is right now. Not far behind, though, is Maman.
Reflective of Camus‘s life, Meursault shares a unique
relationship with his mother, due in part to her inability to
communicate (Camus‘s own mother was illiterate, partially deaf,
and had trouble speaking). Both Camus and Meursault yearn for
Maman, for her happiness and love, but find the expression of
these emotions difficult. Rather than distancing mother from
son, though, this tension puts Maman at the center of her son‘s
life. As the book opens, the loss of Maman places her between
Meursault‘s ability to live for today and his recognition of a time
when there will no longer be a today.
This loss drives the action of the novel, leading inexorably to the
end, the final period, the thing that hangs over all else: death.
Early in the book, Camus links the death of Meursault‘s mother
with the oppressive, ever-present sun, so that when we get to the
climactic beach scene, we see the symbolism: sun equals loss of
mother, sun causes Meursault to pull the trigger. In case we
don‘t get it, though, Camus makes the connection explicit,
writing, ―It was the same sun as on the day I buried Maman and,
like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all of the veins
pulsating together beneath the skin.‖ As the trigger gives way,
so, too, does today, the beginning—through the loss of
Maman—succumb to death, the end. The ordering of words in
Camus‘s first sentence is no accident: today is interrupted by
Maman‘s death. The sentence, the one we have yet to see
correctly rendered in an English translation of ―L‘Étranger,‖
should read: ―Today, Maman died.‖
Symbolism As Philosophy In “The Stranger”: The
idea of life being symbolic could be strongly questionable, but
for Albert Camus, absurdity has become his philosophy. When
he wrote The Stranger, his ideas developed during the wartime
in Paris and his own personal memories. Born on November 7,
1913, in Algeria, France, Albert Camus started his writing as a
journalist, writing for an anti-colonialist newspaper after
dropping out of the University of Algiers. His several attacks of
tuberculosis and living in poverty caused him to drop out of
school and influenced his writing. Camus‘ first published book,
The Stranger, conveys his philosophy of life being absurd
through the life of a young man named Meursault.
Meursault, the narrator, lives in Algiers alienated from society
and shows no feelings. When his mother dies, he shows no
emotions toward his mother‘s death and seems to show that he is
forced to go to his mother‘s funeral. After leaving the home for
old people, he goes for a swim in the local beach of Algiers and
finds a former co-worker, Marie. He starts a relationship with
her and eventually sleeps with her. His neighbor, Raymond, tells
him about how he beat up his girlfriend after thinking that she
was cheating on him and asks Meursault if he can write her a
letter to bring her back to Raymond. His other neighbor,
Salamano, tells him about his old, crippled dog and how he‘s the
only thing he has in his life to take care off. He goes off to the
beach with Raymond, Marie to spend a little time off from work.
Once at Masson‘s house, Raymond‘s friend, they go for a swim
and notice that there are some Arabs following them. Raymond,
Masson, and Meursault are at the beach and get in a fight with
the Arabs. Meursault convinces Raymond not to shoot at the
Arabs and asks for the gun. Once they head back, Meursault
decides to go back to the beach and shoots one of them. He is
taken to jail and faces trouble with his emotions. His lawyer gets
furious at him because he feels no remorse for killing the Arab
and for not crying at his mother‘s funeral. During the course of
his trial, the judge and the jury only seem to care for the feelings
he has toward his mother‘s death and not the actual crime. He is
then sentenced to death for killing someone and not having any
emotions towards his mother. The book shows Camus‘ absurdist
philosophy: life has no purpose, and humanity is irrational. He
doesn‘t know how to show his emotions and is the major reason
why he is sentenced to death. At his mother‘s funeral, he doesn‘t
want to see his mother in the casket. Instead, he decides to have
some coffee and smoke a cigarette with the caretaker. Whenever
Marie mentions them getting married, he tells her that it‘s up to
her and it makes no difference. Marie still thinks that she will get
married with Meursault after he gets out of jail. His neighbor,
Raymond, becomes a good friend of Meursault and asks him to
do him some favors. HE thinks his girlfriend is cheating on him
and beats her. He later wants to get back to her because he wants
to get revenge for her cheating on him. Raymond gets in a fight
with one of his girlfriend‘s brothers, an Arab. His other
neighbor, Salamano, is always complaining about his old dog
and is always yelling at him. Once the dog gets lost, he realizes
that he didn‘t cherish as well as he should have and now, he‘s
lost the only thing he cared for. The book showed the point of
view of the world by Meursault. Some of the ideas could be
questionable by people who follow their religion and think that
life is important. Camus shows how he viewed life when he was
young due to the illness he had and the troubles he went through.
He seems very similar to the main character and the character
may even have reflected his own life. There weren‘t a lot of
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Vol. 2, Issue 1, Jan-Feb 2013, pp. 300-308
concrete details, but it was an easy book to read. The book
should receive four stars out of five.
Imagery In “The Stranger”: In his novel The Stranger,
Albert Camus gives expression to his philosophy of the absurd.
The novel is a first-person account of the life of M. Meursault
from the time of his mother's death up to a time evidently just
before his execution for the murder of an Arab. The central
theme is that the significance of human life is understood only in
light of mortality, or the fact of death; and in showing
Meursault's consciousness change through the course of events,
Camus shows how facing the possibility of death does have an
effect on one's perception of life. The novel begins with the
death of Meursault's mother. Although he attends the funeral, he
does not request to see the body, though he finds it interesting to
think about the effects of heat and humidity on the rate of a
body's decay (8). It is evident that he is almost totally unaffected
by his mother's death – nothing changes in his life. In other
words, her death has little or no real significance for him. When
he hears Salamano, a neighbor, weeping over his lost dog (which
has evidently died), Meursault thinks of his mother – but he is
unaware of the association his mind has made. In fact, he
chooses not to dwell on the matter but goes to sleep instead (50).
It is when he is on the beach with Raymond Sintès and M.
Masson and they confront two Arabs (who have given Raymond
trouble) that Meursault first seems to think about the
insignificance of any action – therefore of human existence. He
has a gun and it occurs to him that he could shoot or not shoot
and that it would come to the same thing (72). The loss of a life
would have no significance – no affect on life as a whole; and
the universe itself is apparently totally indifferent to
everything.Here he implicitly denies the existence of God, and
thus denies morality, as well as the "external" meaning (if it may
be so distinguished from the internal or individual existential
meaning) of life and death. (This latter, existential meaning is
later affirmed, as we shall see.) Meursault kills one of the Arabs
in a moment of confusion, partially out of self-defense, but does
not regret it eve though it means going to prison and, ultimately,
being executed. He has the fatalistic feeling that "what's done is
done," and later explains that he has never regretted anything
because he has always been to absorbed by the present moment
or by the immediate future to dwell on the past (127). In a sense,
Meursault is always aware of the meaninglessness of all
endeavors in the face of death: he has no ambition to advance
socio-economically; he is indifferent about being friends with
Raymond and about marrying Marie; etc. But this awareness is
somehow never intense enough to involve self-awareness – that
is, he never reflects on the meaning of death for him – until he is
in prison awaiting execution. Of course, the "meaning" of
another's death is quite difference from the "meaning" of one's
own death. With the former, one no longer sees that person
again; with the latter, one's very consciousness, as far as we
know, just ends – blit! – as a television picture ends when the set
is switched off. Death marks all things equal, and equally
absurd. And death itself is absurd in the sense that reason or the
rational mind cannot deal with it: it is a foregone conclusion, yet
it remains an unrealized possibility until some indeterminate
future time. The "meaning" of death is not rational but, again, is
existential – its implications are to be found not in abstraction
but in the actuality of one's life, the finality of each
moment.Before his trial, Meursault passes the time in prison by
sleeping, by reading over and over the newspaper story about the
(unrelated) murder of a Czech, and by recreating a mental
picture of his room at home in complete detail, down to the
scratches in the furniture. In this connection, it must be admitted
that he is externally very sensitive and aware, despite his lack of
self-understanding and emotional response. This is evidence by
his detailed descriptions. He is especially sensitive to natural
beauty – the beach, the glistening water, the shade, the reed
music, swimming, making love to Marie, the evening hour he
like so much, etc. He even says that if forced to live in a hollow
tree truck, he would be content to watch the sky, passing birds,
and clouds (95).After his trial (in which he is sentenced to be
executed), he no longer indulges in his memories or passes the
time in the frivolous way he was accustomed to spend Sundays
at home. At first, he dwells on thoughts of escape. He cannot
reconcile the contingency of his sentence (Why guilt? Why
sentenced by a French court rather than a Chinese one? Why
was the verdict read at eight pm rather than at five? etc.) with the
mechanical certainty of the process that leads inevitably to his
death (137). When he gives up trying to find a loophole, he
finds his mind ever returning either to the fear that dawn would
bring the guards who would lead him to be executed, or to the
hope that his appear will be granted. To try to distract himself
from these thoughts, he forces himself to study the sky or to
listen to the beating of his heart – but the changing light reminds
him of the passing of time towards dawn, and he cannot imagine
his heart ever stopping. In dwelling on the chance of an appeal,
he is forced to consider the possibility of denial and thus of
execution; therefore, he must face the fact of his death – whether
it comes now or later. One he really, honestly admits death's
inevitability, he allows himself to consider the chance of a
successful appeal – of being set free to live perhaps forth more
years before dying. Now he begins to see the value of each
moment of the life before death. Because of death, nothing
matters – except being alive. The meaning, value, significance
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of life is only seen in light of death, yet most people miss it
through the denial of death. The hope of longer life brings
Meursault great joy.
Perhaps to end the maddening uncertainty and thus intensify his
awareness of death's inevitability (therefore of the actuality of
life), or, less likely, as a gesture of hopelessness, Meursault turns
down his right to appeal (144). Soon afterwards, the prison
chaplain insists on talking to him. Meursault admits his fear but
denies despair and has no interest in the chaplain's belie in an
afterlife. He flies into rage, finally, at the chaplain's persistence,
for he realizes that the chaplain has not adequately assessed the
human condition (death being the end of life) – or, if he has, the
chaplain's certainties have no meaning for Meursault and have
not the real value of, say, a strand of a woman's hair (151).
Meursault, on the other hand, is absolutely certain about his own
life and forthcoming death. His rush of anger cleanses him and
empties him of hope, thus allowing him finally to open up --
completely and for the last time -- to the "benign indifference of
the universe" (154). He realizes that he always been happy. The
idea of death makes one aware of one's life, one's vital being –
that which is impermanent and will one day end. When this
vitality is appreciate, one feels free – for there is no urgency to
perform some act that will cancel the possibility of death, seeing
as though there is no such act. In this sense, all human activity
is absurd, and the real freedom is to be aware of life in its
actually and totally, of its beauty and its pain.
A Story Of Pre-War Algiers: The scene of ―The
Stranger‖ is Algiers--not the Algiers full of Allied uniforms and
beefs and armament and confusion and jeeps roaring up the rue
Michelet that so many Americans have known--but a purely
French and Arab Algiers of some time before the war hit that
steep town. The frying-wet heat of summer, however, is familiar.
The stranger of the story is a young man who commits an
unpremeditated crime in a moment of aberration and then is
slowly and methodically condemned to death for it. Mersault,
the killer who cares about practically nothing, Camus seems to
be saying, doesn't make a lot more sense than the prosecution
that by bringing in all kinds of extraneous material succeeds in
killing him. Mersault's unkindness toward his mother weighs
more heavily in the court's scales against him than the fact that
in a drunk and heat-dazed moment he shot an Arab. There may
be poetic justice in that, though it doesn't seem to be the
futilitarian point that Camus is making. (Incidentally, the fate of
the Arab's family is completely overlooked in the proceedings.)
Mr. Gilbert's translation of the novel is at times rather Britannic.
Phrases such as ―good and proper‖ and sentences such as
―You've knocked around the world a bit, and I daresay you can
help me,‖ sound closer to London than to Algiers. But the
translation does bring out Camus' narrative skill and his ability
to gain his effects with a minimum of scenes and words. 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. The story is told in the first person, so
that there is nothing between the reader and Mersault as the tale
of his feckless, doomed, uncaring life is told. Very little matters
to him until the end, and even then he maintains his amazing
objectivity.
A Kinship With Housman: Camus' brilliantly told story
of controlled despair reminded me of another ―stranger and
afraid in a world I never made,‖ and it seemed to me that there
were similarities between him and the Housman who in ―Last
Poems‖ (Holt) wrote:
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not: they must still
Wrest their neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's!
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury.
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.
There is a good deal of that attitude in ―The Stranger,‖ though its
doomed protagonist could not bring himself to accept Housman's
final moral. Existentialist Albert Camus used the novel The
Stranger as a tool to convey his philosophical beliefs. In the
novel, Meursault acts as the ultimate Existentialist. He shows no
emotion, personality, or hope. The characters that interact with
Meursault, however, do express emotion, and their feelings
exacerbate the lack of his. The contrast of emotion conveyed by
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Vol. 2, Issue 1, Jan-Feb 2013, pp. 300-308
other characters and the absence of emotion on Meursault's part
act as foils, making it easier for the reader to see how unfaltering
his Existentialist views are. Meursault's actions toward Marie,
Monsieur Perez, and the chaplain make his Existentialist views
and lack of emotion clear. At a glance, the relationship between
Marie and Meursault seems valid, but with any inspection at all
it can be determined that the consanguinity is completely
physical with no presence of love or passion. Meursault's actions
toward Marie, the person who should have been closest to him,
easily show that he lacks passion, and the sentiment of love.
When Marie first enters the novel it seems that Meursault has
feelings for her, but that assumption is not hard to relinquish. His
thoughts of Marie are always physical. He never mentions her
personality, her habits, or her qualities that make him want to be
with her. Instead, he focuses on her body and its availability,
making it clear that that is the reason he loves her. When Marie
visits Meursault in prison, he comments on her appearance, but
not on how her presence or thoughtfulness to visit makes him
feel. "Already pressed up against the grate, she was smiling her
best smile for me. I thought she looked very beautiful..." (74).
Marie, who is also partly motivated by the aspects of a physical
relationship, does make it clear to Meursault that she has strong
emotions for him, but accepts his lack of feeling for her, "That
evening Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to
marry her. I said it didn't make any difference to me and that we
could if she wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I
answered the same way I had the last time, that t didn't mean
anything but that I probably didn't love her, So why marry me,
then?' she said. I explained to her that it really didn't matter and
that if she wanted to, we could get married. Besides, she was the
one who was doing the asking and all I was saying was yes.
Then she pointed out that marriage was a serious thing. I said,
No.' She stopped talking for a minute and looked at me without
saying anything. The she spoke. She just wanted to know if I
would have accepted the same proposal from another woman,
with whom I was involved in the same way. I said, "Sure." (41-
42).
Without the presence of Meursault's relationship with Marie it
would not have been known to the reader that Meursault's
feelings toward women are merely physical. When Maman died,
Meursault's only regret was that he had to sit in the burning sun
for an extended amount of time. He could not even bring himself
to remember the date that she died, or her age. The dramatic first
lines of this novel immediately bring the realization that
Meursault has no feeling for his mother. "Maman died today. Or
yesterday maybe, I don't know." The extent of Meursault's lack
of mourning is not as clear until Monsieur Thomas Perez is
introduced. While Meursault is complaining about the sun,
Monsieur Perez is fighting his physical ailments to keep up with
the funeral procession. Perez's feelings toward Maman were so
strong that he was allowed, against the rules of the funeral home,
to attend the interment. The extent of Perez's grieving, paired
with Meursault's annoyance toward the event, illuminates
Meursault's lack of sorrow.
When the jail's chaplain visited Meursault soon before his
execution, he did not expect such a rejection of faith. Meursault
so staunchly rejects the chaplain's efforts that it is clear that he
has no hope as well as no religious cares. The chaplain's
experience was one of many changed hearts. He assumed that, in
Meursaults final hours, he would have a spiritual awakening and
realize the truth in what he was trying to present. The chaplain,
in his frustration, expresses to Meursault, "Every man I have
known in your position has turned to Him," (116-117).
Meursault, however, never falters. His Existentialist beliefs
come out in full force during this point in the novel. The belief
of atheism and notion that nothing remains after existence is
gone, can be clearly seen in Meursault's conversation with the
chaplain. Though the chaplain is only present in one chapter, he
acts as an important foil. Meursault's lack of hope, strong
atheism, and importance of existence, can be most strongly seen
in this confrontation.
Though Meursault's lack of emotion is not hard to decipher, the
presence of Marie, Monsieur Perez, and the chaplain make the
novels statement, as well as Meursault's Existentialist beliefs, so
much stronger. Without the company of characters who do
possess the ability to show sentiment, Meursault would have not
seemed so extreme. Although they may be minor characters, the
foils used by Camus are priceless to his novel. They not only
illuminate the main character, but also put his beliefs into the
spotlight.
Camus was influenced by a diverse collection of foreign authors
and philosophies in the 1930s. The mood of nihilism was high.
Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky had remained significant in thought
since the turn of the century. German phenomenology was
flowing into France. Sartre was struggling against the shallow
rationalism of Cartesian thought. Faulkner, Hemingway, and
Dos Passos were translated into French and many guess that
their styles and concepts made their way into the philosophy of
Camus at this time. These influences and moods helped
formulate the philosophies of Existentialism and the Absurd as
associated with Sartre and Camus. Due to Camus' working-class
upbringing, he grows up with a suspicion toward idealism and
introspection. He was never one to invest in dreaming. He was
interested in living life and the struggle for meaning without the
distraction of dreams and fabrications. Although Camus later
tried to distance himself from the concept of Existentialism,
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critics still place him there and his own ideas were influenced by
the forum of Sartre and other Existentialist philosophers of the
time.
According to Existentialism, man existed among and against
other men in a brutal adventure to which one must give meaning
through his actions. The Absurd deals more with the irresolvable
paradox between objective judgment of an action and the
subjective motivation behind its performance. The disappearance
of truth and goals gives way to the absurdity of existence. Yet
Camus too is concerned with the creation of meaning in a
meaningless world through the process of living life. The mood
of pessimism, which many would take from Existentialism and
the Absurd, was strengthened by the political developments of
the 1930s. The rise in power of the authoritarian dictators Hitler,
Mussolini, and Franco had a harmful effect on the countries of
Europe and did not bode well for the upcoming years. The
authoritarian regimes solidified Camus as a stong supporter of
the Left. Camus fought stubbornly against war. One can notice
the effects of malaise in Camus' earlier writings, reflecting the
conflicts of war as well as Franco-Algerian tensions. Economic
difficulties in Algeria had increased the conflict. Officially
Arabs were equal citizens to the French but they were often
treated as a conquered people. When the Popular Front failed to
enact a plan increasing Arab franchise, radical Arabs moved
toward Nationalism. Conflict existed too between French
interests and the pied-noir's, who were also treated as second
class citizens but needed French protection in order to compete
for working-class jobs against cheap Arab labor. Meursault of
―The Stranger‖ belongs to this group and one can understand his
feelings toward French institutions as well as the tension
between those of Arab and French origin in the story by taking
this into account. The myths of the French-Algerian are evident
throughout the novel, such as the notion that they live on the
frontier, are pagans, are sexualized, live through their bodies and
sport, and oscillate between indolence and intense emotion.
Camus wrote of Arab issues in the paper, Alger-Republican, and
campaigned for Arabs who had been wrongly accused. He also
wrote of the inadequate French social policy concerning schools
and medical care. It was at this time, he began writing The
Stranger.
By 1939, Alger-Republican was campaigning heavily against the
war. Camus placed hope in Neville Chamberlain and wanted
concessions to be made. After the newspaper was banned in
1940, Camus left Algeria in search of a job. Working at Paris-
Soir, Camus finished the manuscript of The Stranger by May of
that year. During that time he also worked on the drafts of a
play, Caligula, and an essay, ―The Myth of Sisphus‖, which he
felt, with The Stranger, would be parts of one whole,
constituting the cycle of the Absurd. Camus revised The
Stranger while living back in Algeria with his wife's family and
then sent an edition to Lyon in April 1941 where Gallimard
agreed to publish it. French publishers at the time however had
to work with the German Propaganda Staffel and so censorship
was an issue. The Occupation authorities found nothing
damaging to their cause in the book and it was published as
written. The first edition consisted of only 4,000 copies.
Ironically, it was very well received in anti-Nazi circles and this
support, along with Sartre's article on the novel, launched
Camus' career. In the context of Occupation, the book was
celebrated for its focus on the illegitimacy of authority, a world
without values, and the primacy of the individual. It soon
became a classic of French literature in many circles and Camus
was quickly recognized as a great French/European writer of the
1940s.
Though a work of fiction, Albert Camus‘s The Stranger
represents a key work of French existential literature. Lacking
any discernible reason for his actions, Meursault claims that
nothing in life matters since we will all inevitably die. Detached
and apathetic, Meursault ―represents the quintessential
existential hero‖ (Galens 54). Likewise, he believes that ―[a]
person‘s identity does not exist in anything except that person‘s
actions.‖ As such, Meursault ―is outside of the bounds of social
order [and ultimately] alienated even from those closest to him‖
(Galens 57). In truly embracing the idea that human existence
holds no greater meaning, Meursault not only abandons all hope
for the future, but also accepts the natural futility of the
world. ―First used to describe literary works by Albert Camus‖
(Galens 60), absurdist philosophy states that while ―[m]orality,
religion, science, and philosophy purport to discover unchanging
universal principles and values,…death chance, and the
impenetrability of human motives render life essentially
incomprehensible and controvert claims for transcendent
meaning‖ (Michelman 265). While in prison, awaiting his
execution, Meursault comes to realize that just as he had ―lived
[his] life one way, [he] could just as well have lived it
another…[and] nothing [would] matter‖ (Camus 121). For
Meursault, ―life is absurd‖ (Michelman 266). A product of the
intellectual climate of the times, ―Meursault‘s ultimate
vindication is in having remained true to himself and to his
feelings in a society that cultivates deception and hypocrisy‖.
According to the existentialists, ―[t]here is no outside force
governing our lives‖ (Moser). As such, Meursault ―does not
hesitate to draw the inevitable conclusions from a fundamental
absurdity‖ (Rein). For instance, after attending his mother‘s
funeral, it occurs to Meursault that ―one more Sunday was over,
that Maman was buried now, that [he] was going back to work,
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and that, really, nothing had changed‖ (Camus 24). A man of
existential logic and character, Meursault ―confronts issues [such
as]…the apparent randomness of violence and death [and] the
emptiness of a social morality in the face of an irrational world‖
(Stanley 288).
Representing a life of ―normality,‖ Marie represents the happy
life Meursault desires to live. As depicted in Camus‘s The Myth
of Sisyphus, “[h]appiness and the absurd are two sons of the
same earth. They are inseparable‖(Camus The Myth of
Sisyphus). So too, Marie is the only reason Meursault has for
regretting his crimes. However, despite his clearly displayed
affection towards Marie, Meursault claims that love ―[doesn‘t]
mean anything [and] that [he] didn‘t think [he loved her]‖
(Camus 35). Furthermore, on the one visit Marie is allowed at
the prison, Meursault has little to say to her; he is distracted by
the noise and confusion around him, and focuses mainly on the
sensual desires she arouses. Wanting to prolong her stay,
Meursault forces himself to utter a few responses, ―mainly just
to say something‖ (Camus 75).
Meursault‘s readiness to follow the ordinary dictates of social
courtesy, however, is best seen in his relations with Salamano,
the elderly neighbor who resembles his mangy dog; Salamano
seems pathetic and somewhat repulsive in appearance. In the
reader‘s first encounter with Salamano, he is cursing and beating
his dog in the apartment stairway. Meursault does no more than
utter a greeting and make a friendly inquiry, to which he obtains
a rather rude reply. A few days later, the dog runs away.
Meursault invites him in, listens to his story, asks some
questions to keep the conversation going despite feeling bored,
and even pleases the old man by saying the dog ―was well bred‖
(Camus 57). Although Meursault does not bother to agree when
Salamano suggests that he must be feeling very sad since his
mother‘s death, he urges Salamano to stay a bit longer and says
he is sorry about the dog. Meursault‘s kindness toward
Salamano contrasts with his usual indifference and reserve, and
furthermore reveals a fine sense of tact. Immediately following
his shooting of the Arab, Meursault‘s perspective abruptly
changes; he recognizes that a momentous event has just
occurred. Unlike his mother‘s death or his engagement to Marie,
this deed marks a conscious turning point in Meursault‘s
perspective on life. Curiously, he ―regards it as a beginning
rather than an end, even though he has lost his freedom‖ (Galens
57) and, as he puts it, ―shattered the harmony of the day, the
exceptional silence of a beach where I‘d been happy‖ (Camus
59).
While Meursault offers no more explanation for the additional
four shots, ―the act itself still belongs to his habitual pattern of
behavior: impulsive, instinctive, and unconscious‖ (Galens 59).
Nevertheless, Meursault understands that this act will have
consequences for the future. In Meursault‘s own words, ―it was
like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness‖
(Camus 59). Despite the strange ordinariness and the odd
banality of his life, part one of The Stranger ends at a familiar
literary moment. A dramatic and mysterious event has erupted in
the midst of the commonplace. The mystery is, of course, not
who did it, but why it was done. Most readers would expect the
story to proceed now toward an explanation of Meursault‘s
motives; searching his own soul, he should find a key to his
behavior. In life, the judicial process bears the burden of
assessing motives and assigning responsibilities; while the court
in The Stranger attempts to do just this, it cannot as Meursault
―does nothing but denounce…the real and miserable aspect of
man‘s fate‖ (Galens 55). With an inevitable guilty charge based
more on Meursault‘s indifference at his mother‘s funeral than on
his murder of another human being, Meursault is sent to prison
where he changes very little. He talks several times about his
difficulty in learning to think prisoner‘s thoughts, but he brings a
certain aptitude or predisposition to the task. He relinquishes his
sensual pleasures without much struggle. He feels that ―if [he]
had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but
look up at the sky flowering overhead, little by little, [he] would
have gotten used to it‖ (Camus 77). Living as he does, outside
the symbolic orders of meaning, he is essentially un punishable.
Everything is simply a condition of existence; nothing is
retribution and nothing is reward.
Ultimately, Meursault is a troubled soul trying to find happiness
in an indifferent world. His attitude should inspire no
admiration, and certainly is not to be imitated. He is a quasi-
antihero. Where typical heroes devote their entire lives to a
cause, Meursault has no faith in any cause, and indeed
recognizes no meaning. Despite his tenacity for living in the
present moment, Meursault is blind to the fact that every choice
he makes is made with his knowing that no matter what choice is
made, he will ultimately die. Most of the time implicitly, but
sometimes explicitly, Meursault regards his own impulses as
natural. When Marie asks whether he would say yes to any girl
who proposed marriage to him, he replies, ―Naturally‖ (Camus
42). When he comes upon the Arab on the beach, he says
―Naturally, I gripped Raymond‘s gun‖ (Camus 58).
Intellectually lazy and irresponsible, Meursault does not see his
―natural‖ impulses as signs of indifference to society; in
Meursault‘s own words, he ―gave up the idea [of defending
himself in court] out of laziness‖ (Camus 66). This laziness
pervades Meursault‘s attitude so much that he assumes
everything is equal if he has no feeling about it: one woman is as
good a wife as another; one man makes as good a friend as
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Vol. 2, Issue 1, Jan-Feb 2013, pp. 300-308
another; one job is as good as another job; shooting the Arab is
just the same as not shooting him. Meursault is completely prey
to his own conditioned responses, utterly unaware that they, too,
express the very sort of meaning and purpose that he does not
want to acknowledge. This apathetic ignorance produces a
monster of pure egotism. Likewise, this laziness allows
Meursault to become one with the reality of death. As described
in Albert Camus‘s The Myth of Sisyphus, ―the inescapability of
death voids the very possibility of ‗ultimate‘ or metaphysical
freedom.‖ For Meursault, ―death is the ultimate canceler of
freedom: what a man chooses, how he lives, what he has done,
all make no difference, since the one same fate—death—chooses
all alike‖ (Maus 141).
Unconsciously, then, Meursault accepts his inevitable death and
execution. In effect, he commits not only ordinary suicide, by
not attempting to redeem himself in front of the court, but also
what Camus calls philosophical suicide; more specifically,
Meursault needs the moral order of society to which he is
consciously indifferent to in order to continue on living. In The
Myth of Sisyphus, Camus asks: ―Is one going to die, escape by
the leap, rebuild a mansion of ideas and forms to one‘s own
scale? Is one, on the contrary, going to take up the heart-rending
and marvelous wager of the absurd?‖ Meursault, is not really
taking up the ―wager of the absurd;‖ in essence, rather than
continuing to struggle in the gray twilight of the life of the
absurd, Meursault leaps into the maternal sea of death, thereby
ending his meaningless life on Earth (Camus The Myth of
Sisyphus).
Conclusions: As the reader immediately learns in The
Stranger, Meursault is aware of feelings and opinions in others,
yet he acknowledges few emotions in himself. Particularly in
situations where one expects feelings, he professes to have none.
Thus he feels little sorrow at his mother‘s death, little joy at
Marie‘s love, little pleasure at the boss‘s offer of a promotion,
and little, if any, remorse for his crime. He expresses no anger
and hardly any regret even at the loss of his freedom. He
seemingly feels no resentment toward Raymond, who drew him
into the quarrel with the Arabs, nor towards his lawyer, who
handles his case poorly, nor toward the court, which condemns
him to death. Ultimately, Meursault‘s most consistent feelings
are a combination of fatigue, boredom, and ―indifference to the
activities of the outside world‖ (Stanley 281). Using Albert
Camus‘ very own words, the reader sees that ―[a] novel is [only]
a philosophy put into images‖ (Kirjasto). No image is more
poignant than Meursault‘s suicide-by-existentialism, whereby
his continued indifference to the world ultimately leads to his
death. In the end, Camus demonstrates that from his perspective,
human condition has no greater meaning then the two facts of
existence: we live, we die.
References:
1. ―Albert Camus.‖ www.kirjasto.sci.fi. Web. 28 Apr. 2010.
<http://kirjasto.sci.fi/acamus.htm>.
2. Camus, Albert, and Matthew Ward. The Stranger. New
York: Vintage International, 1989. Print.
3. Camus, Albert. ―The Myth of Sisyphus.‖ David Banach
Saint Anselm College Course Server. Web. 29 Apr. 2010.
<http://dbanach.com/sisyphus.htm>.
4. Galens, David. ―Existentialism.‖ Literary Movements for
Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on
Literary Movements. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2002. 51+. Print.
5. Maus, Derek C. Readings on The Stranger. San Diego, CA:
Greenhaven, 2001. Print.
6. Michelman, Stephen. Historical Dictionary of
Existentialism. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2008. Print.
7. Moser, Patrick J. ―An Overview of The Stranger.‖
Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Apr. 2010.
<http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/LitRC?vrsn=3&OP=c
ontains&locID=baltcntycpl&srchtp=athr&ca=1&c=30&ste=
16&stab=512&tab=2&tbst=arp&ai=U13017462&n=10&do
cNum=H1420007782&ST=Albert+Camus&bConts=27844
7
8. Stanley, Deborah A., and Marie R. Napierkowski, eds. ―The
Stranger.‖ Novels For Students. 1999. Print. (Submitted
nowthatsbizarre
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