Many authors use personal experience or beliefs to inspire them to write. In these novels, the authors are both complete examples of this. Both Albert Camus and Harper Lee were influenced by their real-life surroundings when writing The Stranger and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, had a very similar life as a young girl to Scout Finch, the main character in this book ("Harper Lee Biography"). Some of the most obvious correspondences include: both girls are tomboys and both girls had a father that was a southern lawyer ("Harper Lee Biography"). Growing up, Lee befriended Truman Capote, soon to be author of Breakfast at Tiffany's, who visited during the summer. In the book, much like real-life, Scout met Dill
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Both Camus and Meursault thought life had no rational or redeeming meaning. It is known that Camus' philosophical ideas have heavily influenced his writing, which would make sense of why the main character struggles with such problems ("The Stranger"). His philosophy was that "morals orders have no rational or natural basis, and that life's lack of "higher" meaning should not necessarily lead to one's despair" ("The Stranger").
Camus was not a philosopher of existentialism, which is what many people assume, he is in fact a philosopher of absurdism (Shmoop Editorial Team). The main difference between existentialism and absurdism is the belief that there is no meaning to life. There are many examples of this in the book, the difficulty for Meursault to explain motives for killing the Arabs, or being more "free" in prison that outside of it (Shmoop Editorial Team). In fact, Camus was a humanist, which means that "his faith in man's dignity in the face of what he saw as a cold, indifferent universe" ("The
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He was an observer rather than inattentive, but it seems like he detached himself from the world. Innocence and Guilt also interested Camus, as we see in The Stranger. Meursault is almost absent minded about the fact that he murdered someone.
As we read both The Stranger and To Kill a Mockingbird, we can easily see the similarities between the books and authors. While they both wrote fictional books, we can only assume it is about their lives in some way. The author's real-life surroundings have influenced their
Albert Camus is a skillful writer noted for showing aspects of culture and society through the depiction of his characters. In The Stranger, Camus illustrates the existentialism culture and how that comes into play in the life of the protagonist Meursault. The Stranger, as suggested by the title, is a novel revolving around the protagonist, Meursault, who is a stranger to the French-Algerian society as he challenges its values. Camus vividly portrays Meursault’s journey through the use of imagery, irony, and symbolism. In The Stranger, Albert Camus uses the minor character, Raymond Sintes, to illustrate the contrasting nature of Meursault and how his friendship with Raymond leads to his downfall.
To Kill A Mockingbird is a courageous tale of leadership and bravery to others. From Atticus helping Tom, to Boo trying to communicate with the kids. Harper Lee used real-life events as inspirations for her novel To Kill A Mockingbird. There are connections to Jim Crow Laws, mob mentality, and issues of racism in that time period.
Jill McCorkle's Ferris Beach, a contemporary novel, shares numerous characteristics with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel written in the 1960's. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, McCorkle's novel documents the life of a young girl in a small southern town. The two narrators, Kate Burns and Scout Finch, endure difficult encounters. A study of these main characters reveals the parallels and differences of the two novels. Jill McCorkle duplicates character similarities and rape from Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird to show the reader how young girls think and develop.
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
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.
As most everyone knows, there are differences between a book and it’s movie adaptation. This is applicable to the book and it’s movie counterpart To Kill a Mockingbird, as well. But aside from the differences, there are also similarities between these two.
One of the ways existentialism is created in The Stranger is through the use of the philosophical idea of nihilism that the main character, Mersault, holds true to. Nihilism is the dismissal of all religious beliefs and essentially is the belief that life is meaningless. Mersault is of nihilist thought in that he puts no meaning to life through the total concentration of the physical and virtually believes in nothing. Rejecting any consideration of being thoughtful towards any potential meaning is an obvious point being made in Camus' attempt to convey this perspective of existentialism throughout the novel. During the scene of the priest's visit to Mersault at the end of the last chapter, the priest tries desperately to reach Mersault and Camus uses his character's strong beliefs even further to develop the idea of existentialism: “'Every man I have known in your position has turned to Him.' I acknowledged that that was their right. It also meant that they must have had the time for it. As for me, I didn't want anybody's help, and I just didn't have the time to interest myself in what didn't interest me” (Camus 117). Camus creates Mersault to concentrate predominantly on his own needs and desires in order to truly represent his existential philosophy, and therefore blatantly denies any consideration to the meaning of life. In this way he detaches himself from the world and causes himself to find more importance in the physical. Furthermore, the extent that Mersault goes to avoid confronting potential religious beliefs allows him to hold strong in existentialist thought by determining his own purpose, through his physical and impulsive desires singularly.
Albert Camus has his own toolbox of literary devices when it comes to accentuating the theme of The Stranger, one of them being his unique sense and use of secondary characters. Whether major or minor, every character in the book serves a purpose, and corroborates the theme in some form of fashion. Camus describes his secondary characters as foiling Meursault in one aspect or another, and thus, shining light on Meursault’s characteristics. Whether through close connections like familial relationships (Maman) and friendships (Salamano, Raymond, and Marie), or through bonds as distant as people he briefly converses with (Chaplain), or even so much as complete strangers (Perez and unidentified lady at the restaurant), characters that Meursault encounters foil and therefore, emphasize many aspects of his nature. Furthermore, because Meursault aptly embodies Camus’s ideology of Absurdism, emphasizing Meursault through secondary characteristics simply highlights Camus’ doctrine and theme of the book.
When French Noble Prize winning author, journalist, and philosopher, Albert Camus, died in 1960 at the age of 46 his literary works that incorporated ideas of existentialism and absurdism were still studied and interpreted by scholars and his colleagues. Existentialism was one of the two philosophies Camus believed in and used in his works; existentialism is philosophical movement that focuses on the importance of the individual experience and self responsibility. The individual is seen as a free part of a deterministic and meaningless universe. The second philosophy Camus used and believed in was absurdism; a philosophy based on the idea that life and work are meaningless and looking for order causes inner and outer chaos. Camus had a dual culture as he was born in Algeria and lived most of his life in France, his cultural duality also is expressed in his works.
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee is a remarkable novel following the childhood of Jem and Scout, the son and daughter of Atticus Finch. Living in a small and drama filled town of Maycomb County they encounter a great deal of people who do not stand by their word. Hypocrisy occurs throughout this novel first by a man named Dolphus Raymond, then by two women Mrs. Merriweather and Miss Gates.
In this scene, a Mad Rabid dog, named Tim Johnson, comes through the streets of a the town of Maycomb.
“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.
The novel The Stranger was written by Albert Camus in 1942. The story is an example of how Camus perceives the world with his views. Camus’s views are that moral actions do not have any justification. Camus is considered an existentialist, which means that he didn’t believe life had a specific meaning. Many of his beliefs are seen in this novel, as well as his other works.
An existentialist represents their choices throughs their actions, opposed to with their words (Corbett). Therefore, someone who expresses the ideals of existentialism may be a threat to society because of their differences in morality compared to others. In The Stranger, by Albert Camus, Meursault was always looking to find meaning in his life because of everything that was happening to him at the time; and that is a key characteristic of someone embracing the ideals of existentialism. Sadly, through Meursault’s search for his inner meaning, he ended up taking the life of another man with very little realization of what he had done. Throughout The Stranger, by Albert Camus, Camus portrays
Camus writes in a simple, direct, and uncomplicated style. The choice of language serves well to convey the thoughts of Meursault. The story is told in the first person and traces the development of the narrator's attitude toward himself and the rest of the world. Through this sort of simple grammatical structure, Camus gives the reader the opportunity to become part of the awareness of Meursault. In Part I, what Meursault decides to mention are just concrete facts. He describes objects and people, but makes no attempt to analyze them. Since he makes no effort to analyze things around him, that job is given to the reader. The reader therefore creates his own meaning for Meursault's actions. When he is forced to confront his past and reflect on his experiences, he attempts to understand the reasons for existence. At first, Meursault makes references to his inability to understand what's happening around him, but often what he tells us seems the result of his own indifference or detachment. He is frequently inattentive to his surroundings. His mind wanders in the middle of conversations. Rarely does he make judgments or express opinions about what he or other characters are doing. Meursault walks through life largely unaware of the effect of his actions on others.