“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.” (Camus 1) If someone were to say this in our world, it would be condemned, and the person would be thought of telling a sick joke or having even a mental problem. In reference to an absurd world, though, this usage of extremist ideals about death can better explain the concept and how it is seen by the writer. The themes of death explored using absurdism in The Stranger is shown with a general disregard for death by Meursault and the strange way he sees life based on these existentialist views. The Stranger is a perfect example of an existentialist novel that was written for that time period, as during this time around the area of France and Europe there was an existentialist movement that Albert Camus, the author, was involved in. …show more content…
One way that he exemplifies these traits is in his view that death is meaningless. Death is an inevitability that all life has to go through, so when someone dies, even someone as close as his mother, it is merely another death. Another way is how he sees life, shown in how he focuses on physical things in life such as touch over emotions. Because death is meaningless, he sees life in a certain regard, in the sense that he focuses less on an emotional standpoint and more on a physical one. The last way Camus explains death using absurdism is using other characters to give Meursault situations or conversations in which he shows his views in those strange ways. These are some of the ways that Camus uses his absurd world and characters he has created to portray his