Absurdity in Camus' "The Stranger"

Camus’ The Stranger becomes the controversial novel throughout the French Literature history. According to Jean Sartre’s A Commentary On The Stranger, he makes notes of how Camus makes the absurd uses of the messages in his work. Camus lacks the good aim in conveying the themes for his novel. For this essay, I would like to use Jean Sartre’s article to explain the absurd structure of Camus’ The Stranger through the uses of messages.

There is Camus’ absurd uses of message in the novel. The senseless man doesn’t want to commit suicide; he wants to live without letting go “any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusion and without resignation, either” (78). The awkward man affirms by revolting. He sees death with lovely attention, and this “liberates him” (78). He is irresponsible for the man’ sentence to death. The article then mentions “One experience is as good as another, so what matters is simply to acquire as many of them as possible. ‘For the absurd man, the ideal is the present and the succession of present moments before an ever-conscious spirit’” (78). Crossed with this ethic, “all values collapse” (78). The senseless man has “nothing to prove”. He is blameless for what is acceptable and what is prohibited. Even if he is innocent for every sense, he is considered an ignoramus. This concludes of why Camus uses the title “Stranger” for his novel. Meursalt is considered one of the strangers who “shock a society by not accepting the rules of its game” (78). That is why some people show positive feelings while others express hatred toward him. By judging him “according to our customary standards” (79), we, as the readers, can show that he is the stranger.

Hence, the book mention...

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...). Meursault hence stays “impenetrable, even from a vantage point of the absurd” (85). As readers, we can see that “his fictional density is the only thing that can make him acceptable to us” (85).

Overall, Camus’ The Stranger becomes the complete absurd work through the inappropriate uses of messages. We can show that he is not successful in making the straightforward messages because he does not clearly develop his point of the novel. This is how he illogically structures his novel by making aimless thematic point.

Works Cited

Sartre, Jean-Paul, John Kulka, Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Existentialism Is a Humanism =: (l'existentialisme Est Un Humanisme) ; Including, a Commentary on the Stranger (explication De L'étranger). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Print.

Camus, Albert. The Stranger. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. Print.