Criticism And Symbolism In Albert Camus's The Stranger

The main character of The Stranger Meursault is much like Sisyphus, the man who was cursed with absurdity to push a boulder up a mountain every time it rolled down. This describes Meursault’s life and the events that take place during the novel including the death of his mother, his relationship with Marie, writing the letter for Raymond, swimming with his friends, killing the Arab, the trials, his imprisonment, talking with the chaplain, and his inevitable demise.

Albert Camus originally wrote The Stranger in French. L’Étranger was written in the early 1940s in France, and was published in 1942 (Nobelprize 1). The setting of the novel is in Algeria, slightly before World War II. The title symbolizes Meursault’s mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical (during his imprisonment) isolation from the other people in the novel. The tone is detached, sober, and occasionally sarcastic and ironic. He wrote The Myth of Sisyphus around the same time he wrote The Stranger. During this time, he was working for the French Resistance in Paris (Nobelprize 1). The metaphor of exile that Camus uses to describe the human predicament and the feeling that life is a futile struggle without meaning can understandably come from a man who is struggling against a brutal and omnipotent regime far from his home.

There is absurdity in the conflict between the man who wants to find reason and unity in the universe versus the universe that provides him with nothing but mute and meaningless phenomena. The feeling of absurdity exiles us from the home-like comforts of a meaningful existence, but hoping to find some meaning in life puts off facing the consequences of the absurd, the meaninglessness of life. The Chaplain asks, “Have you no hope at all? And do you...

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...o took his daughter in exchange for a fresh-water spring in Corinth. The absurd hero earned the wrath of the gods (Camus Sisyphus 18). The second myth is about Sisyphus capturing the spirit of Death so that no one would die. When the gods freed Death, his first victim was Sisyphus. Sisyphus told his wife not to offer any of the traditional burial rites when he died. He complained to Hades about this and asked to return to earth to chastise her. Once out of the underworld, he refused to return and eventually died from old age (Camus Sisyphus 28).

Both myths end in Sisyphus’ inevitable punishment of pushing the boulder up the mountain every time it rolled down, but “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” (Camus Sisyphus 30). At the end of The Stranger, Meursault comes to a full acceptance of his absurd position in the universe and cannot but conclude that he, too, is happy.