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The Importance Of Existentialism In The Stranger By Albert Camus

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In The Stranger by Albert Camus’ which sets in 1940s French Algeria, shows the significance of the absent character Maman. Monsieur Meursault is an existentialist which he shows his lack of emotion and translation towards Maman and her death. Madame Meursault and her son have a meaningless sense of love in there relationship and no sense of family and life. Monsieur Meursault not only shows the lack of love and emotion though his Maman but though Marie, shooting the Arab, and being judged as a criminal through the trials. In the beginning of the book the setting is in Marengo where Maman lived and the funeral was. After the funeral Monsieur Meursault goes back to Algiers. That day he gets back he goes to the beach and he meets his friend and used to be lover Marie. Marie is attracted …show more content…

Raymond and Meursault run into trouble with the Arab which is Raymond ex-girlfriends brother. Meursault describes the day being “The sun was the same as it had been the day I’d buried Maman, and like then, my forehead especially hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the skin” (59). He brings his mother’s death and funeral up when talking about the sun. Meursault ends up shooting the Arab four times. “I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of the beach where I’d been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness” (59). Meursault has no remorse, he does not feel guilty for what he did. “I didn’t feel much remorse for what I’d done. That I had never been able to truly feel remorse for anything. My mind was always on what was coming next, today or tomorrow” (100). Meursault is a careless person he does not feel guilty for killing the Arab or being sad or guilty for Maman

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Meursault is eventually convicted and sentenced to death because of his inability to conform to the societal expectations of French Algeria in the 1940’s. 3. Characters: Meursault- the protagonist and narrator of the novel, Meursault is a young shipping clerk who has detached himself from the world around him. He is indifferent

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A connection I can make with all of these quotes is that they all affected Meursault. The color red, sun, and the heat all affected Meursault 's thought process and his actions. He does not know this, but these quotes will affect him in the current situation and in the future. The first motif is the color red. In this novel, the color red has the symbolic meaning of blood and love.

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Meursault was guilty of shooting the Arab multiple times, killing him immediately. With no remorse, Meursault fired the gun at the Arab after he was already dead. When Meursault was tried for the murder, he was convicted more on the content of his character, rather than the crime itself. The prosecutor brought up the topic of his mother’s death often, which was noticed by the defensive attorney, “Come now, is my client on trial for burying his mother or for killing a man?” (Camus 96).

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Meursault is not an emotional person. Meursault often seems not to react to major events that happen to him. For example when his mom dies, he says, “Really, nothing had changed”(24). There is an obvious emotional disconnect. Either he was not close to his mother or her death had little to no effect on him.

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Introduction: In the novel The stranger, written by Albert Camus Meursault kills a man, “The Arab” in act of self defense. After Meursault is put to trial, his lawyer becomes more focused on Meursault's attitude and believes. When meursault mother died, he had a very unemotional attitude, which causes problems later on in his trail. He is later sentence to the death penalty.

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The trigger gave” (59). This was another instance where he blames his actions on the sun. He said that the heat just caused the trigger to fire on its own since Meursault had no reason to murder someone. Once again, heat clouds his judgement and it ends up

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He is unable to make ration and irrational decisions when using the gun and he is unable to think clearly. All of his action when the sun is on him reflects his ignorant to recognize himself and a driving force to commit crimes. Meursault’s actions are not done by him thinking, but more when the sun reflects makes Meursault more motivated to take action. The reason

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However, the real reason for Meursault killing the Arab is due to the fact that his sole purpose was to attain immediate physical contentment. Throughout the novel, his actions were purely based on whatever would give him physical pleasure and allow him to avoid pain

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Now lastly we will see how a person can be good with their actions. In “The Stranger” , Meursault says, “ I went to the movies twice with Emmanuel, who doesn’t understand what is going on the screen.” On page 34 it states how Meursault helps Emmanuel , “...You have explain things to him.” As we see , and read we learned that both times that Meursault had gone to the movies with Emmanuel, Meursault was nice enough to explain what was going on, on the screen so Emmanuel could also enjoy the movie. As we see Meursault can be a good person with good intentions helping Emmanuel despite what he had done to the Arab later on in the

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At the beginning of the novel, the reader gets a tone of emptiness from Meursault’s reaction to the death of his mother. People would offer him condolence, but his way of interacting with others made Meursault seem a bad guy and unusual. When he explained to his boss the reason of taking two days off, Meursault even said, “It’s not my fault.” (Camus 3). Meursault stating that shows the significance of the death of his mother to him.

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In the novel, “The Stranger,” by Albert Camus, Meursault represents an immoral character. Most readers would believe him to be psycho or immoral and in most cases they were correct. Meursault is an emotionless silhouette of a man, but it doesn’t mean he was evil. In some ways, I sympathize with Meursault as a character because was misunderstood in many ways. Society judged him and thought he as evil because he had lack of emotion.

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During the bland summer that leaves us empty with news, two new crimes have come up and surprised all of us. Both of these trials include the murder of two people. The first case, a person committing an act of patricide against a family member they knew well. The second, a case even more terrible: the killing of an Arab in the hands of a Frenchman. The killer’s name is Meursault.

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(59) After long passages describing the painful violence of the sun, Camus’s transition into the murder is shockingly abrupt, provoking a sense of bewilderment at the unexpected randomness of the murder, conveying effectively the irrationality of Meursault’s murder of the man. However, during the trial, when Meursault reveals that he murdered the Arab only because of the sun, refusing to allow others impose their logical but false interpretations upon his life, “people laughed” (103) and even his own “lawyer threw up his hand” (103) as they are unable comprehend and accept such an irrational motivation. To protect themselves from this harsh reality of the universe, they can only fabricate and impose their own logical explanation for Meursault’s behavior. The prosecutor, for instance, is convinced Meursault murdered the man in cold blood, certain in the narrative he has constructed out of events completely unrelated to the murder, from Meursault’s “ignorance when asked Maman’s age” (99) to his association with a man of “doubtful morality” (99). In both cases, Meursault’s indifference for societal standards of morality has painted him as a man immoral and cold-hearted enough to premeditate the murder.

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966 Words | 4 Pages

Then he starts talking to his neighbor, Raymond, and he is a bit of trouble. He would beat up his girlfriend and the cops would go to his house a lot. Raymond invites Meursault and Meursault’s girlfriend to a beach house his friend, Masson owns, when he see the brothers of the girlfriend raymond would beat up, they got into a fight. Then after Meursault took a walk and saw the guy they just fought they kept staring at each other when the arab pulls a knife on him and Meursault had raymond 's gun in his pocket. Then he kills the man.

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1190 Words | 5 Pages

The trigger gave.” (Camus 59). Although we assume that he had killed the Arab after the first shot, Meursault shoots him another four times after because he does not think it matters. He uses the sound and feel of the gun firing those shots to give him a brief break from the heat and pressure of the day. With this perspective on life, Meursault understands that not only does he not care about the situation, but the world does not care either.

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