“L’Étranger” or “The Outsider”, is a novel written by the french author Albert Camus first published in 1942. It is one of the most representative works of the “Absurd” movement. Although Albert Camus didn’t consider himself as an existentialist and didn’t want to be related to Sartre, some experts, like Francisco Gutierrez Sánchez, classify him under this movement. Camus found himself closer, mainly, to absurdism although he is often included in determinism and nihilism too.
Albert Camus: brief biography
Albert Camus was born on November 1913. After his father passed away during the I World War, he moved from Mondovi to Argel, where he was inspired to write The Outsider. His grandmother didn’t want him to study but one of his teachers helped him to access to university. However, he suffered from tuberculosis and had to interrupt his studies. He died in France, on 1960 because of a traffic accident. A more extensive summary about his life can be consulted here: http://www.uned.ac.cr/sociales/publicaciones/documents/11Espiga4.pdf
In Camus it is obvious the deep impact of the II World War, that led to an atmosphere of hopeless and absurd. He captured this at writing different genres, like theater in “Caligula” (1944), although he felt more comfortable writing novels, like “The Outsider” and “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942). As Wikipedia explains, Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times”
The outsider: plot
As it figures in “Spark Notes” (see references),the novel takes place on a stifling and claustrophobic Argel. Afther his mother’s death, Meursault decides to take a few days off his job. He goes to his mother funeral and he doesn’t show any feeling, just indiference. Then he cames back to the city where he comes across Marie, with who he sets up a relationship just for pleasure, without feelings, as he express“Then she wanted to know if I loved her, I answered that she didn’t mean anything but that undoubtely I didn’t love her”.
By chance he meets his neighbour Raymond, who has given a terrible beating to a wife he had a relationship with. The woman’s brother and other arabs follow him wherever he goes. As Raymond want Meursault to be his friend, Meursault decides to follow his desires, again full of indiference.
Raymond invites Marie and Meursault to one friend’s house on the beach. While the men are strolling down the beach, a fight with the arabs breaks out and Meursault catch Raymond’s gun to avoy a tragedy. They go to the house but Meursault is distracted and goes again to the beach. There, he comes too close to the arab that shows him a knife and Meursault shoots at him several times. “I understood that I had ruined the day’s balance, [...] Then I shot four times at an inert corpse [...] they were four brief hits with which I was knocking on misfortune’s door”
Meursault is judged and sentenced to death penalty inside and absurd atmosphere he gets accustomed to. During the trial he declares that he killed the man because it was hot and he gives a speech full of hopelessness: “ [...] but everybody knows that life is not worth living…[...]one must die, obviously when or how doesn’t matter“. Being in prison doesn’t seem to be a problem for him “Then I understood that a man that hadn’t lived out of prison more than one day could live without making any effort a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories not to get bored”
A priest visits him but he doesn’t care about God. “ When he asked me if I regretted what I had done, I answered that more than shame I felt boredom, I felt that he didn’t understand me“. He tells the priest about how absurd his life is “I would have liked to explain him [...] that I never had been able to feel real sorrow for anything” and finally he is executed. He sees his death as an advantage that ends his pointless life.
How does “The Outsider” symbolize Camus’ philosophy?
On “The Outsider” we can see two schools of tought: first, the philosofical thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and ,then, Sartre’s existencialism.
Nietzsche depicts the apollinean and the dionysian to work on one of his most famous theory: God’s fall. He claimed “ God is dead“. He means that, ultra-senstive values and platonism have lost the prominent role and that is no longer possible to remit to inmaterial certainties. Of this way the man meets nihilism, a lack of an universal truth that can lead his life. The man can create new ideals or develop passive nihilism being empty, disappointed, like Meursault.
Sartre describe his existencialism as follows <<The man can be defined according to two possibilities:
1.”To be” is first conceived as essence and then existence. The man is shaped before it borns with prestablished concepts that define what he will be.>>
2.Sartre suggests the contrary. Existence precedes essence. The man is born and then he defines himself.
Like there is no god, the man is responsible for his actions, not only individually but also jointly. Man’s anxiety is due to this strong responsibility. Moreover, Sartre disassociates the future from present. Finally, he thinks that life, though absurd at first, adquires sense when the man choose an action. He gives his life the sense he has chosen.
On the Outsider, Meursault also thinks that he is alone, that there’s no God to help him. However, Camus distances himself from Sartre and Nietzsche because Meursault doesn’t care about anything. His main feeling is indiference.
Meursault can’t accept Nietzche’s optimism of the Eternal Return, as he is so certain of his death that can’t do another thing but wait for it and accept it. Death provides him safety and he surrenders to it.
However, if Meursault loves life and accepts his limits, why does he kill? Camus characterizes his characters to live on a sensory way, animalized, representing the dyonisian.
Meursault doesn’t live alone, people judge him. Here appears the joint responsibility of Sartre. Nietzsche says that subjectivism becomes certainty, giving a determinated value to a human-being, he doesn’t have the possibility to “be” and that human-being becomes an object. Here is Camus’ critic: Meursault is sentenced because of his indiference to his life. His crime is perceived as something that doesn’t belong to the proper society, as the absurd of society. Camus claims that there is no space for other values than the imposed ones. The judge want Meursault to become an object, ready to accept all the certified values. Nietzsche and Meursault disaprove how society punishes the different. As Marla Zarate depicts on the essay, Camus criticizes the imposed certainties, which couldn’t or shouldn’t exist on a world defined at random. The murderer was just a consequence of Meursault’s impossibiliy to channel his basic instincts on a excessively rationalized society.
References:
- Angel G., Roberto (2007): La filosofía de Nietzsche y Sartre en el extranjero. Espéculo. Revista de estudios literarios. Retrieved, November 30, 2011, from http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero36/camusart.html
- Camus, Albert(1942). The Outsider
- Cid, Martín, Albert Camus. Martin Cid: espacio literario. Retrieved, November, 30, 2011 http://www.martincid.com/Autores/camus.php
- Gutiérrez Sánchez, Francisco (2011): Camus y el existencialismo. Espiga. Retrieved, November 30, 2011 from http://www.uned.ac.cr/sociales/publicaciones/documents/11Espiga4.pdf
- Nietzsche, Friedrich(1885): Thus spoke Zarathustra
- Sartre, Jean Paul (1944) No exit/Huis Clos (1944)
- SparkNotes Editors. (2003). SparkNote on The Stranger. Retrieved December 1, 2011, from http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/stranger/
- Wikipedia (2011): Albert Camus. Wikipedia: The free Encyclopedia. Retrieved December 1, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus
- Zárate, Marla (1998): La Rebeldía Mítica de Camus. Anales del seminario de la historia de la filosofía. Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Retrieved December 1, 2011 from http://www.ucm.es/BUCM/revistas/fsl/02112337/articulos/ASHF9898110063A.PDF
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