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Novel
Fourth year

By Albert Camus

Absurdism
Meursault’s story is an example of that opposition between man and
we external universe that Camus terms “The absurd”
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The novel revolves around three deaths: Meursault’s
mother, an Arab, and Meursault himself, each separated by five chapters
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Prior to the murder,
Meursault refuses to acknowledge the absurdity of existence, by allowing
external elements to take charge of his life
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Meursault evolves from holding an absent philosophy or belief
system to revolting against the acknowledgment of external beliefs
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Camus uses the destructive force of the sun in The Stranger as the
dictating symbol in the first part of the novel to symbolize Meursault’s
alienation
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Camus expresses the negativity that dominating symbols have on
Meursault by the immorality this alienation brings about in Meursault
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Also, we never discover Meursault’s real name, his
appearance, or when the narrative takes place
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In turn, the protagonist undergoes a loss of his personal will,
submitting exclusively to the contextual experiences dominated by the
confines of symbolism
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During his encounter with the Arab, prior to his imprisonment, Meursault
states, “The light shot off the steel and it was like a long flashing blade

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cutting at my forehead…The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and
stabbed at my stinging eyes…The trigger gave”
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However, this attitude
dominates Meursault only in the first part of the novel
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Although he never explicitly reveals a certain emotion, his attitude to
the strength of the sun reveals the inner turmoil of his physicality
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It was this burning, which I
couldn’t stand anymore, that made me move forward
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His prescribed symbol
defeats him
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Here, the sun acts as an symbol for Meursault’s lack of satisfaction, a
symbol that results in the turmoil of his incapacity
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If he lets the power of hope
dominate his thoughts, the effects of the sun manage to seep into and
damage his consciousness
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He refuses his
prior search for the sun, his primary symbol, and calms himself through the
consciousness of the present moment, which works to show a critique of the
symbol’s power over any character in literature and their emotions
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During his time in prison in Part II of the novel, the prison Chaplain
visits him and attempts to seduce Meursault into turning to God for help
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From this point on in the novel, the facticity of his own death and the
actuality of his present life dictate his awareness
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“The wondrous peace of that
sleeping summer flowed through me like a tide”
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Rather than giving him comfort and
pleasure when he was near the ocean in the first half of the novel, now he
feels the tides inside him, living there, until he dies
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For the character of Meursault, the religious origins of external images
verify the abandonment his attachment to symbolic earthly images and
conditions after his horrific frustration with the Chaplain
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Here, Meursault, the absurd hero, acknowledges that the wind has
passed, or that the external effect of the world is no longer consequential for
his life, which proves his conscious retreat away from the external world
and his character’s symbolism
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He characterizes the night as “alive with signs” or, in other words, alive
with images that he is meant to derive meaning from, but he also admits his
apathy of external reality
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By concluding in a state of happiness while living in exile in a prison
cell, Meursault proves that the outside world that previously governed his
level of contentment actually holds a limited power over the authority of his
own mind
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‫وما توفيقي إال باهلل‬

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