Existentialism, in the modernist sense, is the idea that we live in an absurd world. God is either silent or non-existent so our lives are inherently meaningless. Without the voice and judgment of God what becomes most important in our lives is what we think and what we do. This all comes down to what we choose. Albert Camus hated to be associated with the term “existentialism” but his short novel The Stranger has become a central work in the canon of that theme. His depiction of Meursault as a man who goes through life making the least amount of choices possible could be why it is regarded as the quintessential work of existentialism despite Camus’ disapproval of what that means.
Reading Camus’ theoretical work The Rebel can help to provide a lot of insight into what he intended with The Stranger. In The Rebel, Camus gives a clear and precise interpretation of the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. He argues that humans differ from animals because we have language, awareness of our own death, and the ability to engage in self-reflection. Animals, without language orient themselves in the world through instinct and physical sensations only. A human who self-reflects in isolation never realizes their full potential as a human, therefore the judgments of other people are necessary for the validation of one’s existence. What people judge an individual on is what they say, what they think, and what they do. Therefore, an individual’s choices become the primary factor in who or what a person actually is. The central character in The Stranger, Meursault, is barely more than an animal because he is largely devoid of the qualities that make humans human.
Meursault is an office worker in Algiers. As the story starts, his mother dies in a nursing home and he has to go to her funeral. He had previously lived with his mother but he chose to put her in the home, one of the only choices he makes in the entire book. At the funeral, he never cries and admits that he rarely spoke to his mother. A lot is made of this later at his murder trial. Meursault’s strongest feelings are physical sensations. At the funeral, in the passage where he murders an Arab boy, and during his trial, the presence of heat and light become so intense that he is unable to think about what is happening around him. Notice also that these strong sensations occur during the key events of the novel and the most significant turning points of his life, the times when he should be doing the most thinking.
The day after the funeral he starts a relationship with a woman named Marie. He meets her at a public swimming pool where they mostly do not talk but he touches her a lot. Marie is just as shallow as Meursault. She wants to marry him and he agrees but when asked, he says he does not love her. In fact, he takes more interest in the dresses she wears than he does in her personality which is almost minimal anyhow. He is indifferent to who he marries or if he even marries at all. Getting married is the same as not getting married. Anybody who would agree with that statement has obviously never had a psychotic girlfriend. He only agrees to marry her because he lives in the here and now without thinking about his past or future; the question of marriage is what he confronts in the present and he willing submit to it because he avoids making decisions. Meursault has no values and no plans because he has never engaged in any kind of self-reflection.
Later, a pimp named Raymond asks Meursault to be complicit in an act of violence against an Algerian woman. He asks Meursault to write a letter in order to lure her to Raymond’s apartment so he can spit in her face and beat her up. Meursault, without thinking, agrees to comply. He does not actually agree with the scheme but he does not disagree with it either. He just goes with it without thinking about the consequences. Later when the neighbor Raymond actually does beat up the woman, Meursault watches, without any empathy, and stands there as if he were watching a tv show. He lacks empathy because he lacks values, judgment, and morality. All of these qualities are what makes a person fully human. Without self-reflection, Meursault can never begin to reach for his full moral potential.
As Meursault continues to remain a tabula rasa, he visits the beach with Raymond and another friend. They encounter two Arab boys, one of which is the brother of the woman Raymond physically assaulted. A fight begins and Raymond gets stabbed but doesn’t die. Muersault later takes a gun and shoots the Arab brother five times. The boy dies and Meursault gets arrested. During the incident, he never thinks about what he is doing or why he does it. He is an automaton feeling nothing but the heat on the Algerian sun. Later when the examining magistrate asks him why he paused between the first and second shots, Meursault can not answer the question. He is so lacking in self-awareness that he can not answer even that. He doesn’t even begin to acknowledge his own guilt until his trial when he sees the dirty looks other people are giving him.
Murdering someone is the same as not murdering someone. That is the logic of a psychopath, a person incapable of empathizing with the pain of others. What if someone were to say that murdering six-million Jews is the same as not murdering six-million Jews? After the Holocaust there would not be one Jewish person who could find this statement acceptable. It is likely that most fascists would not find it agreeable either. While Hitler orchestrated the Holocaust, his deeds were carried about by people just like Meursault. They were people who followed orders, who never asked questions, and living only in the moment while engaging in almost no self-reflection. They were ordinary people just waiting to be led around by the nose like a bunch of domestic animals. Meursault is a symbol of modern humanity, a mass of unthinking, unfeeling, shallow creatures who shuffle through life without asking why, without pursuing higher goals or higher values. They are faceless, bland, simple, mechanized, blowing without direction like leaves in the wind never taking charge of their own life situation. Meursault ends up in prison because the modern world is a prison and one that society makes for itself by refusing to actively engage in making choices.
If you want to know where Camus is coming from in this account, take this into consideration: during Algeria’s War of Independence, he took sides with the Arabs against the French colonialists. From this we can deduce that he would sympathize with the Arab woman Raymond beat up and her brother who fights him to avenge that act of violence. He would sympathize with them over the white people that Meursault associates with. Meursault’s friends are emblematic of the rapes and atrocities that the French nation committed against the North Africans during colonialism. Meursault and his ilk are the exact opposite of everything Camus believes a human should be.
Meursault’s trial does not go in his favor. There is no question of his guilt so the affair is entirely about what kind of person he is. It is his life that is being judged. Since his actions were so insignificant, the court has to fall back on nothing but his values and his choices to determine what kind of person he is. The prosecution lies to convict him and the defending attorney lies to declare his innocence. Meursault makes almost no effort to assert himself, speaking only once during the whole procedure. The prosecuting lawyer even makes an emotional appeal to the jury by saying that Meursault’s act of murder inspired someone to commit parricide in a completely unrelated case. The charge is absurd and illogical; the lawyer makes no effort to defend his claim. Yet Meursault refuses to contest it. He just accepts what happens no matter what it is.
In the end he is sentenced to death. While waiting on death row, Meursault has a conversation with a priest. He rejects religion and says that he is happy without it. When he comes closer to the day of his execution at the age of 30, it is only then that he begins to reflect on the meaning and the value of his life. But by then it is too late. He wasted his life by not thinking, not feeling, not choosing.
Meursault is happy with his life. He is probably the happiest person in the novel but he is happy because he is an idiot. In The Rebel, Albert Camus states that creating a meaningful life in an absurd world is more important than happiness. Meursault’s life means nothing because he never created meaning in his life. He has no values because his self-reflection is minimal. His life means nothing because his most important choice was to avoid making choices. In Camus’ terms, he is an absolute nihilist, a man who negates all human values. Murder is the same as not murdering. Marriage is the same as not marrying. The is deconstruction, the dismantling of all hierarchies. Without a hierarchy of values, we are left with nothing but the self-cancellation of nihilism. Camus buried the deconstructionists long before the tenets of poststructuralism were ever articulated. Meursault is happy but he doesn’t deserve his happiness; he made no effort to earn it. His unwillingness to engage in making effective choices led him straight to death row. He never took control over his own life, even at the critical moment when he murdered an Arab boy, someone who would have had nothing against Meursault if he had never been an accomplice in the violent assault against his sister. Meursault gets everything he deserves.
So in the end Meursault is happy. Do we have the right to judge him? The answer is a resounding Yes. We have every right to judge him. When people get angry and shout “aren’t you being awfully judgmental of others?” they are in effect saying “i don’t like you because your judgments of others aren’t the same as my judgments of others.” Judging others is a necessity because we need others to validate ourselves; without them we exist in a void without any reference points. If we don’t judge others than we don’t think. Not judging others would mean that murder is the same as not murdering because we have no opinion on the matter. If I see a mutilated body on the sidewalk, I form the judgment that murder is horrible and unnecessary. By judging the testimony of the person who committed the homicide, I judge that sadism and violence are wrong. If the murderer ends their testimony by saying they are happy I am justifying in making the judgment that he has no right to his happiness and deserves severe punishment for the crime. If I refuse to engage making judgments I can form no network of ideas, no hierarchy of values, no consistent system of morals, and I can never grow as a human being. I am left with nothing but physical sensation and animal instinct, a state of nihilism in which inability to choose and inaction become very realistic and dangerous possibilities. By judging the happiness of a murderer I can learn that murder is wrong without having to commit the crime myself and I can conclude that I have no right to my own happiness if it is contingent on the torture of innocent people. It is our DUTY to judge others if we are to reach our full potential as humans.
So who is the titular stranger? At first, you wouldn’t think it is Meursault. He has a group of friends. He is also known by others in his community, some of which do not particularly like him. The general public knows about him because his case has been written about in the papers. He is validated by others and, socially speaking, he is definitely not a stranger. But Meursault is a stranger to himself. Without self-reflection he does not know who he is, what is motivations are, or what his values are. From Camus’ point of view that is what the masses of modern humans are, strangers to themselves. Submissive, underdeveloped people who do not understand themselves well enough to make choices that will lead to their fulfillment of human potential.
The Stranger is a good book about the modern dilemma because the negation of human qualities in the character of Meursault makes us immediately aware of what our human qualities actually are. Camus engages in nihilism but he was not an absolute nihilist. His purpose in writing this story was not to attack, condemn, and destroy Meursault. By negating the humanity of him, Camus calls us to action. He wanted us to do more self-reflection. He wanted us to think deeper and inquire into our values. He wanted us to use our imagination and thrive as a species of individual human beings rather than a faceless mass of blank people who do nothing but what other people want them to do. He wanted us to build a better society, one where the atrocities of murder, colonialism, injustice, and future Holocausts are impossible.
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Vintage Books, New York: 1954.
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