Albert Camus is one of the most renowned authors in the twentieth century. With works such as Caligula, The Stranger, Nuptials, and The Plague, he has impacted the world of literature to a great extent. This great success was not just "given" to him "on a silver platter" however. He endured many hardships and was plagued with great illness in his short life. Camus is a great role model and idol for us all. 	Camus was born into poverty on November 2, 1913 in Mondovi, Algeria (a former French colony
Albert Camus' The Stranger What if the past has no meaning and the only point in time of our life that really matters is that point which is happening at present. To make matters worse, when life is over, the existence is also over; the hope of some sort of salvation from a God is pointless. Albert Camus illustrates this exact view in The Stranger. Camus feels that one exists only in the world physically and therefore the presence or absence of meaning in one's life is alone revealed through
Albert Camus was a French-Algerian novelist, essayist, dramatist, and journalist and a Nobel laureate. He was born in Algeria to a French father and Spanish mother. After his father was killed in WWI, he was raised in poverty by his grandmother and mother. He was forced to end his studies and limit his life in theatre as a playwright, director, and actor due to tuberculosis. He then turned his interest to politics and, after briefly being a member of the Communist party, he began a career in journalism
The Contemporary Relevance of Albert Camus ABSTRACT: After 350 years of continual social transformations under the push of industrialization, capitalism, world-wide social revolutions, and the development of modern science, what reasonably remains of the traditional faith in divine transcendence and providential design except a deep-felt, almost 'ontological' yearning for transcendence? Torn between outmoded religious traditions and an ascendant secular world, the contemporary celebration of
Albert Camus was born on November 7th, 1913 in Mondovi, Algeria, a town fifteen and a half miles south of Annaba, the second child of Lucien Auguste and Catherine Helene Sintes. They were a French family settling in French Algeria, referred to as Pied Noir. His father worked as a foreman at a vineyard earning a minimal salary and also served in the military. Catherine was a Spanish woman. She was also partially deaf because of a stroke that damaged her speech for good. Albert Camus only had one brother
Albert The Absurd Camus “Albert Camus is one of the most likeable and approachable of the mid-twentieth-century French authors” (Brosman 10).This is quite a compliment for Camus, but most would agree. In France, Albert is known for his many books, two which have made the French best-sellers list. His works are often read and studied in French secondary-school class rooms, introducing a countless number of students to his pieces each year. Camus also holds the high honor of receiving the Nobel
Albert Camus' Philosophy in The Plague To know ourselves diseased is half our cure. - Alexander Pope As the title clearly suggests, the novel The Plague is, indeed, a story of disease. On the surface, the novel The Plague, may be an accounting of facts detailing the outbreak of bubonic plague in the town of Oran. But on a deeper level, it is a novel that reveals awareness and acceptance of the limits of human existence. And it is also a reminder of our absurd freedom and the choices we make
Albert Camus': "Summer in Algiers" This early essay by Albert Camus presents an eloquent picture of his understanding of what it means to know. But in order for us to assimilate it, we must recognize that Camus is not celebrating a hedonic naturalism, nor engaging in an existential anti-intellectualism. Rather, his articulation of lucidity and the exemplification of it in the artistry of the essay itself presents us with a challenging concept of knowledge. I attempt to explicate this concept with
My first impression of Albert Camus’ “The Guest” was that the guests were the two men coming up the hill. As Daru watches them come up the hill, one on horseback and one walking, is that he was describing them broadly because he didn’t know who they were. He could only assume things he got from observations, such as that one man knew the region because he knew where the path was supposed to be under all of the snow. However, as the men grow closer, he recognizes one of them as a gendarme (an armed
“I don’t like it either. You don’t get used to putting a rope on a man even after years of it, and you’re even ashamed—yes, ashamed. But you can’t let them have their way” (1516). Hence, Camus seems to suggest that either the settlers and the Algerians are actually prisoners of the colonial regime by being forced to execute orders and behave contrary to their will—underlining the absurdity of colonialism. Furthermore, Daru, feelings a sense
these definitions are hard to interpret and for the most part are not how Camus viewed the word absurd. Camus gives his interpretation of absurd in his book The Myth of Sisyphus, which is the point at which man realizes that all the struggles that we put forth in a repeated daily cycle are in all actuality completely meaningless (Woelfel 44). In James W. Woelfel’s book, Camus: A Theological Perspective, he gives us Camus point of absurdity in detail, I have said that the world is not absurd
emotion, and love deeply, was torn away from him at the hands of the "merciless plague". Through these two characters we see an exception to the general rule. As aside from a small few, majority felt their potential to love was as strong as ever. In Camus' The Plague we recognize that the plague took away peoples health on both a physical and mental level. Yet despite this, it generally left ones capacity to love, in an excellent condition. Although not everyone remained able to love like they did prior
The Anti-Christ in The Outsider “Meursault is punished, not for his crime of killing another human being but for refusing to play the game.” This statement is of great relevance to the novel The Outsider, by Albert Camus. Society as a whole enforces its ideas and values, upon all individuals, but particularly on those who differ from the “norm”. Through Meursault’s view of the world, contrasted with that of both the religious and judicial system this notion is foregrounded. Meursault’s outlook
Albert Camus, a philosopher and writer, creates the character of Meursault in The Stranger to embody the journey towards absurdism. In the novel, the reader observes as Meursault attends his mother’s funeral, meets a woman, shoots a man, and receives the death sentence. Camus characterizes Meursault by his reactions to the construction of the plot. In understanding the mentality of Meursault, the reader comes to understand the mentality of an absurdist. Because the characterization of Meursault
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
point when Albert Camus' novel, The Stranger, was first distributed in 1942, numerous readers did not comprehend what to consider Meursault, the morally separated character of Camus' novel. His absurdist confused the people around him and made them question his meaningless actions throughout the book. It was not just the characters who did not comprehend Meursault very well, it was the readers also. The characters in Camus' novel didn’t seem to understand Meursault’s reasoning. Camus titled this novel
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. His beliefs began to form during his experience of World War II and after the terrors of the war; many other people believed that
Indifference in Albert Camus' The Stranger In Albert Camus novel, The Stranger (The Outsider), the main character Meursault displays a unique indifference to his surroundings and the world around him. It takes him a degree of time to come to terms with his indifference, but when he does he feels truly free from society's constricting bonds. He leads an apathetic lifestyle that is characterized by his constant lack of a definitive personality. Meursault wanders through life as if in a drunken
Camus: The Life and Writings of Absurdity Camus was born in a small town in eastern Algiers on November 7, 1913. His father (Lucien August Camus) died in 1914 after being shot in the Battle of Marne in W.W.I. Camus was raised by his mother (Catherine Helene Sintes Camus) until he was seventeen, in a working-class section of town. "Sintes," his mother's maiden name was also Raymond Sintes' last name in the novel The Stranger. She was illiterate and became partially deaf after she was widowed
Albert Camus, a know existentialist and world renowned author used his gift of writing to express his ideas. Resulting in a culmination of his beliefs into one book called The Plague. Within the book, there is one chapter that supersedes all of the other chapters in sharing Camus beliefs. Chapter fifteen is filled with Camus worldview woven in perfectly with his artistic style and techniques. Through this chapter, Camus obliterates religion, gives man a purpose, redefines wisdom resulting in a transvaluation