L’Étranger by Albert Camus.
“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.”
So several years ago, I stumbled across Albert Camus’s philosophical novella, L’Etranger, a work regarded as the quintessential text of French post-war Existentialism. Since then, it has became one of my all-time favorites. In short, the story is about this emotionless man who commits an unpremeditated crime in a moment of aberration, is methodically condemned to death. Not for the crime itself, but more so for the fact that he did not weep at his mother’s funeral.
Several friends of mine who have read the book didn’t quite grasp how people can relate to Mersault-- a person who kills people without any remorse. They find it difficult to comprehend how Meursault can be so nonchalant, oblivious, aimless and thoroughly detached from the society.
Well, Mersault may be “the stranger” to conventional readers, but the character is not contrived. Meursault is a typical product of this society: Empty, purposeless, pummeled by social conditions, bereft of any capacity for contemplation or aspiration. Yet, he is not cruel or mean per say-- just indifferent.
This is not the first time we encounter Mersault. We’ve met his literary counterparts: Bartleby (Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville), Underground men (Notes From Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky), and Soares (The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa).
Just like his existentialist comrades, Mersault is buffeted like wreckage in the indifferent waves of the ocean, eking out a bare life with a few connections. He is neither cynical nor optimistic. He demands nothing from life or people, and cultivates nothing. His indifference is not stoicism, for he buys into to no larger sense of nature. Nor is he a recalcitrant Diogenes, sneering at convention with derision. He just has his psychological solitude in social and cultural alienation.
So one might question his motives of killing the Arab. Yet in fact, there was no premeditation in Meursault’s action. The impression I got was more in the spirit of he did not consciously shoot. He was just trying to avoid the sun. It just happened (La gâchette a cédé), the trigger went off. Just as if you had tried to avoid the sun, and accidentally stepped on an insect. He drifted into crime, just like how he drifted into life.
“The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and the sun. I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we can all go men-slaughtering as long as we have no cruel intentions, though one might argue that the act of killing itself is cruel. Meursault killed the Arab. I still think there should be this abstract concept of justice enforced. Justice and morality are the concepts that most people adhere to. Certainly it is conventional to adhere to them. What to believe if not the supposedly objective and moral laws which is used in order to keep order in human societies. However, this is where it gets interesting. The author, Albert Camus, skillfully brings us around to the point we actually see through Meursault’s lenses.
Justice and morality changes in shapes and forms. There is no inherent morality in this universe.
When we enter part two of the novel, as a reader we see the human application of justice is corrupted. The trial is rested on very flawed grounds. The prosecution case relies more on Meursault’s lack of grief at his mother’s funeral than the actual murder itself. The conviction relies more on the fact that Meursault is Anti-Christ, and he went on a date the day after his mother’s funeral. He was sentenced to death because of his abnormal personality and unwillingness to adhere to social customs, rather than the crime itself.
This indicates just how culpable justice and morality are, to be completely manipulated for the sake of attaining certain ends--to maintain the status quo of that society. Throughout history, justice and morality have always been utilized in order to oppressed those who oppose the structures of powers that exist, whether it is political or religious. As the customs of society changes, justice and morality transform into completely different forms and shapes.
Camus uses the corrupted system to demonstrate how justice, morality, and meanings are not inherent in the universe. They are man-made, that’s why they changed drastically throughout history. From there, Camus presented the whole philosophical concept of Absurdism:
“Human are innately driven to look for meaning in an ultimately meaningless universe. People believe that there are inherent right and wrong in things, and cast out those who disagrees. Yet, there is no inherent morality, meaning and justice in this universe. At least human won’t be able to find them while being alive. The universe is indifferent, and life might be nothing more than the process of mere existence.”
Camus explained that not being able to find evidence in the meaning of life frustrates human. That explains why people easily go after religions that have essentially no solid evidence whatsoever. However, just like Meursault, once a man realized the absurdity, there is no way to unsee it.
Meursault’s feeling of incongruity, his feeling of detachment, and his apprehensiveness with the way the world works, are prompted by the vapidity of this circumscribed and ridiculous world, the personal solitude he experiences, and the fact that there is no escape from the hypocrisy of this society.
Within the bars, closer to his death, for the very first time, he felt free. Ironically, this series of fatal events hurled him to consciousness. Meursault realized that he has always been a stranger to this world, but he has no regrets, he has been happy, he is still happy.
