Me

Professor
March 27, 2014

The Stranger
The Stranger by Albert Camus is a profound book of transformation. The philosophy
expressed in the novel is liberating. Once condemned to die, the central character Mersault
realizes he is free. Before his complete disentanglement from everyday drama is to occur he
drifts around life without realizing his own state. In the second part of the book he grows more
and more liberated until prior to execution, the final transfiguration occurs, and eventually
transcends philosophy.

The central character Mersault is living a life detached from the things that most people in
his time and place find important. Mersault attends his mothers funeral without crying, befriends
a hoodlum, murders a man, has a philosophical/spiritual revelation and eventually, is executed.
He was always free without knowing it because life is meaningless and society is led astray by
their own insecurities, habits and distractions. He is liberated by this knowledge. The book
reminded me of all the philosophical topics I was trying to free my mind from. Good, evil,
morality, the confusions and contradictions of man, societal values, and ultimately, the
impermanence of our existence. Ive been depressed ever since I read The Stranger.

I would imagine that, in every time, in every world, their have been many strangers. The
habits of society change constantly. No one with a critical mind can be completely at ease with
every single aspect of human culture as a whole, or any subculture. We live in fear. Meursault
didnt. To some, Meursault seems to be living a life of disconnect and disinterest regarding
everything but bodily, immediate pleasures. I would disagree. What does it matter? Seems to
be his catch phrase and it feels as though its a statement more than an actual question. When his
girlfriend Marie is with him, he seems to be going through the motions as opposed to actually
being wrapped up in them, he eats quickly without savoring his food and he makes friends he

doesnt particularly like. The absurdity of his values and of human values are shown throughout.
Its the story of a man who is lost. Lost in an absurd world, yet, found in that he chooses not to
be deeply attached to the absurdity of it all. Meursault is an observer in the chaotic culture we
call humanity. He is not a good man in the sense that he only does good. But, he is a good man
because he has the courage to live his life. Even through his lies, he is true to himself.
Phillip Rhein
Meursault is dragged through defeat after defeat before he is able to acknowledge the one
glaring truth that he chose to ignorethat the infinite value of life lies in the very finiteness of its
nature. ONLY WHEN HES TRULY FACING DEATH IS THE PHILOSOPHY
CRYSTALLIZED. If Meursault would have been acting on behalf of the military, they would
have said: Why didnt you get more of em, for the police: Good job heres a medal, you
risked your life!, even if he would have been a more highly regarded member of society, he
would have been punished less severely or not at all. The stranger is about the fear and disgust
that society has for anyone and anything that is out of their momentary, socially accepted, norm.
As Mersault is nearing the time of his execution he says; all that remained to hope was that on
the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet
me with howls of execration. This could be viewed as hostility but, in my opinion, in his words,
there is only, peace, acceptance and in a way, sacrifice. Mersault is gladly willing to subject
himself to the inevitable fate his role has led him to.

Any piece of literature which can accurately convey the human experience, will most likely
be full of contradictions, as we humans are. There are high tides and low tides in every ocean.
Meursault is right when he says: Im just like everyone else. He is a walking contradiction. The
only difference is that he is true to his contradictions. Whenever there is something he does not
want to feel (or maybe genuinely doesnt feel), he will simply say; It doesnt matter. Some
things matter, some things dont. When his mother dies, it doesnt matter because, its
completely natural. When Marie comes over to sleep with him, it matters to him, because, he
enjoys it. Meursault creates an entire relationship based on the fact that he didnt feel like
cooking, so, he accepted his neighbors invitation to eat. This relationship with Raymond,
eventually leads to Meursault murdering a man. The night he goes to dine at Raymonds house,
he writes a letter helping his new friend get back at what is either his lover or his prostitute. It is

a lie. Anything expressed in such a letter would have to be intimate and personal to Raymond
and the girl, even, if the theme is universal. Well, maybe because love is similar everywhere,
its not lying. Either way, shortly after, Raymond badly beats the woman. The police take him.
Meursault gives false testimony that the girl is cheating. He didnt know, yet still testified.
According to Arthur Scherr said; Critics who depict Meursault as an insensitive, ignorant
"juvenile delinquent" are wrong. What he doesn't understand is that at that point in part one he is
not someone in charge of his own fate he is a philosophical delinquent. He will not have the
eliphany until part 2. When his lawyer asks him to embellish his feelings regarding his mothers
death, he says no. He refuses to lie. It is more of a truth to say that he was sad about his
mothers death than to forge a love letter. I dislike that behavior and it offends every moral fiber
of my brain. Its plain wrong. He is a hypocrite. I am a hypocrite. We are all hypocrites.

I feel for Meursault while hating him at the same time. In the Stranger and the world we
live in, society looks at the exterior and judges based on their own insecurities. In the book
though, the fact that Mersault did not cry to mourn his mother was what sent him to his grave.
They found something they didn't like about his character and capitalized on it.
Camus was labelled an existentialist, something which he did not feel applied to him. It
wasnt a box he was willing to place himself in. I dont blame him, I also feel that he wasnt an
existentialist. According to Oxford University Press Dictionary, existentialism, which was the
philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre, is defined as:
a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person
as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.
Such, in any case, is The Stranger, a work detached from a life, unjustified and
unjustifiable, sterile, momentary, already forsaken by its author, abandoned for other present
things.p.112
The philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre WAS offended..existentialism. work of all that
contradicted his own made him feel as though something which detaches one from the world
cannot connect us further than any material distraction. Im sure Camus would agree with me in
saying that every critique of existence has been expounded on and Sartre is only adding his
uncertainty to the uncertainty of the void.

Camus does not require that attentive solicitude that writers who have sacrificed their
lives to art demand of the reader, The Stranger is a leaf from his life. And since the most absurd
life is that which is most sterile, his novel aims at being magnificently sterile. Art is an act of
unnecessary generosity.p112
It is possible that The Stranger requires an even greater amount of an attentive solicitude
than more superficially complex pieces. When the picture is painted for you, the meaning is
reduced. Simplicity is much more open to interpretation.
how is JPS existentialism different from Camus philosophy its directly in opposition to
existentialism man supplying meaning and man can act and make a difference.JPS didnt.

When Meursaults final breakthrough comes, if we modify it slightly, it seems as though it could
be Camus philosophical manifesto.
...we've been waiting for that dawn -tomorrow's or another day's -- which will justify us.
Nothing, nothing has the least importance,
and we know quite well why.
From the dark horizon of our future a sort of slow, persistent
breeze has been blowing toward us, all our lives long,
from the years that are to come. And on its way that breeze
has leveled out all the ideas that people try to foist on us,
in the equally unreal years we have been living through.
What difference could they make -- the deaths of
others, or a mother's love, or your God; or the way a man
decides to live, or the fate we think we choose -- since one
and the same fate is bound to "choose" not only us, but
thousands of millions of privileged people who call themselves
our brothers. Surely, surely you must see that?
Every man alive is privileged; there is only one class of men -the privileged class. All alike will be condemned to die one day;
your turn, too, will come.
-- adapted from The Stranger
The fact that our will inevitably fails us and that Camus expressed that, should be taken
into consideration. In, ones will doesnt matter. If he was an existentialist, he wouldnt have
spoken of the lack of free will that man has. We are stuck in our destiny no matter what we will.
How could renouncing all hope be existentialist? It is the opposite of existentialism.

To me, in a sense, Camus philosophy, is liberation. When one has completely accepted
mans impermanence, there is relief. How can one suffer who has completely accepted
reality/illusion? Its liberation beyond the will of the individual. There is no will after death and
even the strongest willed humans cannot control destiny. I dont embrace every habit of
Mersaults daily life or Camus/Mersaults philosophy, but would like to add to it with part of a
Hindu text called the Ashtavakra Gita;
Feel the ecstasy, the supreme bliss where this world appears unreal like a snake in a rope,
know this and move happily.
For Camus, on the contrary, the tragedy of human existence lies in the absence of any
transcendence.... (pp. 11516)
I would argue that; the liberation lies in the absence of transcendence.
In the end it is meaningless, but, that shouldnt dictate the way one plays out the illusion. If
everything mattered, every single human being would be a failure. It is an enormous burden to
feel as though everything matters and that there is a standard we have to live up to. Even if that
standard is our own.
I find it interesting that the oldest epic we have today, the epic of Gilgamesh, is essentially
about the same thing as the meaning I get from the Stranger, seeing the void.
"Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let
death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands
-The Epic of Gilgamesh
Also titled (in Assyrian); He Who Has Seen the Abyss.

Absurdism
The absurd man thus catches sight of a burning and frigid, transparent and limited
universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given, and beyond which all is collapse
and nothingness. He can then decide to accept such a universe and draw from it his strength, his
refusal to hope, and the unyielding evidence of a life without consolation.
Meursault knows that the absolute religious and social values by which he was judged are
conventional and outworn. He is cognizant of all this; yet in full realization of the limitations of

society, his final wish is not to withdraw from it but to resubject himself to the tortuous
entanglements of day to day living. (Phillip Rhein)

Abidance in ones natural state of quiescence by

renouncing everything else is bliss. All other sadhanas (practices)
are for novices. One who abides as self stands
apart from the ways of the world duty, dualities and
mistaken thoughts are not for him. His nature is
wonderful. Freedom from bondage alone bestows this
exalted state.
Ashtavakra Gita WHY??

In the Stranger and the world we live in, society looks at the exterior and judges based on
their own insecurities. In the book though, the fact that Mersault did not cry to mourn his mother
was what sent him to his grave. They found something they didn't like about his character and
capitalized on it.

sartre
Since God does not exist and man dies, everything is permissible.... [The] absurd man,
rebellious and irresponsible, has nothing to justify. He is innocent, innocent as Somerset
Maugham 's savages before the arrival of the clergyman who teaches them Good and Evil, what
is lawful and what is forbidden. (pp. 10911)
To claim the absurd man is guilty is absurd. The absurd man is neither innocent nor guilty
because in such a state of acceptance, the polarities of existence are irrelevant.
ABSURDISM

also p112

Camus's story is analytic and humorous. Like all artists, he invents, because he pretends to
be reconstituting raw experience and because he slyly eliminates all the significant links which
are also part of the experience. (p.118)
To me, there is no humor in the stranger.

This is what enables Camus to think that in writing The Stranger he remains silent. His
sentence does not belong to the universe of discourse. It has neither ramifications nor extensions
nor internal structure. (p. 120)
As the Zen saying goes; The finger that points to the moon, is not the moon. What is
nothing to a fool might be everything to the wise.

sartre
Where Bergson saw an indestructible organization, [Camus] sees only a series of instants.
It is the plurality of incommunicable moments that will finally account for the plurality of
beings. What our author borrows from Hemingway is thus the discontinuity between the clipped
phrases that imitate the discontinuity of time.
No, he sees the exact opposite, the insignificance and nonexistence of the moments.
There are no moments, there is no moment.

SCHERR, ARTHUR. "Camus's THE STRANGER." The Explicator 59.3 (2001): 149.
Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.

Consequences of the absurd, how did Camus define absurdity?

We all die. Life is absurd. Peoples values are absurd.

When he was one year old, Camus father was killed because of the absurdity of society
during World War I. Its safe to say that for many nights as a child Camus would say: where is
my father and for what purpose did he die?

Im sure that would influence the seeds of absurdity to sprout from concrete let alone
Camus mind.

Chapter 9 Ashtavakra Gita

He further affirms that knowledge dawns only
when the pairs of opposites are renounced and that
destruction of vasanas (desires etc) is the destruction
of samsara (world) and that alone is the true state of
being.

It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing
up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart
open to the benign indifference of the universe.

To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that
I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope
was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they
should greet me with howls of execration.
Albert Camus, The Stranger
Work in quotes.
At least a first draft.

Monday algebra test english essay

wednesday more on paper

On page 1; bottom of page one; fill out caps.

pg 2 work in quote at top, QUOTE
Everyone has felt like take away and everyone knows someone
last paragraph where i put the raymond thing in remove it.
Scherr quote philosophical delinquent
WORK ON EXISTENTIALISM JPS FIRST
CAMUS VS SARTRE DIDNT LIKE BC HIS PHILOS THEN QUOTE MANIFESTO
THATS CAMUS PHILOSOPHY
FROM CAMUS LABELED,

Sartre, Jean-Paul. "'Camus's 'The Outsider'' (1943)." Trans. Annette Michelson. Literary
and Philosophical Essays of Jean-Paul Sartre. Jean-Paul Sartre. Criterion Books, 1955. Rpt. in
An Explication of 'The Stranger,'' in Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays'. Ed. Germaine
Bre. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource
Center. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.