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Literary analysis of the stranger albert camus
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Literary analysis of the stranger albert camus
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Albert Camus, born in 1913 was a mastermind in writing French literature. He influenced the minds of a great deal of people by giving the world significant literature including books as The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, A happy death and many more. The one that I will be discussing in this paper is the book named, “The Stranger”. The story started with Meursault’s mother’s death. It was a fascinating start with a crucial piece of information with a good attempt of engaging audience. There would have been a huge transition in the story if the story had started with the trial which in terms of the protagonist, would have led to more curiosity among the readers and left them captivated about the final verdict of the jury. In the book Camus mentioned, “I was questioned several times immediately after my arrest.” (Camus,40) If the author had started the book with this dialogue, the tone of the book would have been more intriguing. Considering …show more content…
She is a talented individual and holds a Ph.D. degree in geoscience from Stony Brook University, New York.
Question: What is the tone set up by the narrator in The Stranger?
Answer: The narrator generates a negative tone right from the beginning of the book. The book started with narrator’s death and we as a society have a mind set of expecting people to mourn over our family and friends’ death. However, the honest personality of Meursault, acts opposite of the tone and sets a pessimist tone and maintains it throughout. Question: Discuss if the protagonist has any lasting effect on the human behavior. Answer: The protagonist shows no emotion, is disheartened and has no moral values. While, the character reflects an honest man who believes that there is no need to lie even if it hurts other individuals. Henceforth, it has both, an optimistic and pessimist effect on human
Society has always been known to judge people based on their age, sex, appearance, culture and social status. In the second part of the novel “The Stranger” the narrative stile changes and we as the reader no longer see the story developing in front of us, but we read a case, a trial that already happened. Albert Camus is guiding us thru the trial and the state of the defendant with an objective narrative stile, allowing us to make out own opinions about Meursault’s crime and the outcome of his actions.
Part I of The Stranger begins with Meursault's attendance at his mother's funeral. It ends with Meursault on the beach at Algiers killing a man. Part II is concerned with Meursault's trial for that same murder, his ultimate sentencing to death and the mental anguish that he experiences as a result of this sentence. Several curious parallels emerge here, especially with regard to Meursault's perception of the world.
The Stranger is a novel by Albert Camus. Albert Camus, a French, Noble prize winning author, journalist and philosopher, was born on the seventh of November 1913. He died on the fourth of January 1960. He was instrumental in bringing the philosophical views of absurdism to public attention. The Stranger was published in 1942 and is an example of the outlook and themes of Camus’s philosophy of the absurd.
This passage is set before Meursault’s execution with the chaplain entering the scene, and telling Meursault that his “heart is blind”, leading to Meursault to yell and delve into his rant, and moment of consciousness. The passage has a calm in the beginning as if Meursault catches his breath from yelling previously, and he starts to reassure himself that he is not wrong for expressing his views as it went against the public’s religious beliefs, and states that this moment was so important to him that it was if his life was merely leading up to it. Why this particular scene is important to Meursault is that this is an instance where he successfully detaches himself from the world, and begins to deconstruct the world’s ideals as his rant shifts on to focusing on how nothing in life mattered. Meursault describes his gripes with the chaplain’s words as he explains his reasoning as to why the concept of a god is flawed as Meursault saw that everyone was inherently the same, with equal privileges just how often people could express them separated them. The passage continues with Meursault arguing that everyone would be faced with judgment or punishment one day, and explains why his own situation was not significant as it was no different. After that explanation the passage ends with Meursault posing the concept of everything in the world being equal both in wrongdoing and life in general, evident in his example of saying “Sala¬mano's dog was worth just as much as his wife.” Although the passage shows Meursault challenging the ethics and morals that the world around him follows, it does have instances like the end in which we see that the rant is still expression of Meursault's complex emotions, as it is unclear whether it is fear or a...
Albert Camus’ The Stranger offers one man’s incite into the justice of society. Monsieur Meursault, the main protagonist in the novel, believes that morals and the concept of right and wrong possess no importance. This idea influences him to act distinctively in situations that require emotion and just decision, including feeling sadness over his mother’s death, the abuse of a woman, and his killing of an innocent man. In these situations Meursault apathetically devoids himself of all emotion and abstains from dealing with the reality in front of him. When confronted by the court over his murder, he reiterates his habitual motto on life that nothing matters anyways, so why care? His uncaring response inflames the people working within the
Meursault resists being typecast into an archetypal moral category in many of his deeds and actions. Many of his actions in Part One of the novel help contribute to the fuzzy picture of the character. For example, at his mother's funeral, Meursault does not cry or weep in the typical mourning fashion, but rather sleeps during the vigil and entices one of the other mourners present to smoke a cigarette with him. This would be typically considered "evil" behavior, in the context of the story. He could easily been seen as disrespectful and seditious toward his mother and the established procedures of mourning, which seem to be fairly definite at that era in France. However, this "evil" mold can easily be shaken if one considers that Meursault may be more shaken than anyone else present at the funeral. Considering the other events in the novel, it seems as though he does not have a large capacity for emotion. Based on this, it is not unreasonable to assume that the events leading up to and including his mother's death may have overtaxed his limited scope of emotion, and he was therefore nearly incapable of mourning in the "normal" or expected way for his mother, but rather had to resort to his own, more c...
The emotionless anti-hero, Monsieur Meursault, embarks on a distinct philosophical journey through The Stranger. Confident in his ideas about the world, Meursault is an unemotional protagonist who survives without expectations or even aspirations. Because of his constant indifference and lack of opinions about the world, it can be denoted that he undergoes a psychological detachment from the world and society. It is through these characteristics that exist in Meursault that Camus expresses the absurd. Starting from the very first sentence of the book, “Maman died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” (Camus 1) The indifferent tone from these short sentences convey a rather apathetic attitude from Meursault’s part. Not only does he not feel any sorrow, he also “felt like having a smoke.” (Camus 4) Communicating perfectly Meursault’s disinterest, “[he] hesitate, [he] didn’t know if [he] could do it with Maman right there. [He] thought it over; it really didn’t matter.” (Camus 4) The death of his mother prompts an absurdist philosophy in which he experiences a psychological awakening and begins to place no real emphasis on emotions, but rather on the physical aspect of life.
The Stranger by George Simmel and The Concept of the Political by Carl Schmitt are two influential essays in sociology about how people –or groups of people- interact with those who are different from them. The way the authors view those who are different from them contrast in many ways, but both support the idea of a human collective being besieged by foreign ideas. The way that Simmel approaches it is more accepting than Schmitt, saying that it is good to have some people who are impartial and unhindered by the ties of the community. Schmitt, however, implies that dissent from the major political opinion is unnecessary and will lead to problems in a country. He further claims that any who bear ideas that will radically change the collective’s
“But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins.” Meursault is not unlike Sisyphus. In the novel, The Stranger, by Albert Camus, we watch this character change from a carefree man who loves being alive and free to a man who is imprisoned for a meaningless murder he commits but who eventually finds happiness in his fate.
In The Stranger, Albert Camus describes the life of the protagonist, Meursault, through life changing events. The passage chosen illustrates Meursault’s view during his time in prison for killing the Arab. In prison, one can see the shifts in Meursault’s character and the acceptance of this new lifestyle. Camus manipulates diction to indicate the changes in Meursault caused by time thinking of memories in prison and realization of his pointless life. Because Camus published this book at the beginning of World War II, people at this time period also questions life and death similar to how Meursault does.
The Stranger written by Albert Camus is an absurdist novel revolving around the protagonist, Meursault. A major motif in the novel is violence. There are various places where violence takes place and they lead to the major violent act, which relates directly to the theme of the book. The major violent act of killing an Arab committed by Meursault leads to the complete metamorphosis of his character and he realizes the absurdity of life.
In Albert Camus’ absurdist novel, The Stranger, Meursault’s detachment from society and his killing of the Arab reveal moral and ethical implications for him and his society. As is common in many absurdist novels, Camus discusses the estrangement - and later development - of an individual in a benign and indifferent universe, one in which conformity prevails. Camus not only satirizes the conformity of society, but religion and the legal system as well. By writing in the first person (from the standpoint of Meursault), he draws in the reader, making the evils of society more prevalent.
The Stranger, a novel written by Albert Camus shows a world were being authentic is impossible. Meursault, the main character, is a strange person from the point of view of society and at the end of the book he is sentenced to death “for killing an Arab.” The society that judges Meursault as a stranger is the representation of our world, and Meursault is a person who tries to live his live following what he thinks is important in life; he is authentic. Meursault lives in a world really different from the real world. At the end of the book it is seen how the prosecutor, a “lawyer” of the state, defines Meursault as a person that is very different from the rest of society. The reason why Meursault is different from the rest of the world is that he doesn’t have the same ideals than society, and the things that society things are important Meursault considers them as unimportant. By having different reasons to live life, Meursault lives separated from society; he lives in a separate world. At the end of the book Meursault is obligated to come to reality. The judgment of Meursault let us see the impossibility of the. Meursault is not only himself but also a representation of the people how try to be different, and the prosecutor and the rest of the society are a reflection of our own world. The whole book is a reflection of our world.
When Meursault's mother dies his reaction is surprisingly dull. He reacts in a way that seems like he doesn't care. His unpredictable reaction...
Within the Stranger, Albert Camus brought up many questions and, on most cases, did not answer them. He designed a different character to society and showed us how he lived. His name, Meursault. His ideas on absurdism are shown many times in part one of The Stranger. In class, we had explored the idea of absurdism and had gone over examples in the story of it. Absurdism is definitely a theme in this novel.