Stranger Of Camus Essay, Research Paper
In The Stranger, as in all Camus? plants, Camus? positions on freedom and decease
? one dependant on the other? are major subjects. For Camus, freedom arises
in consciousness of one? s life, the every-moment life, an intense glorious life
that needs no redeeming, no declinations, no cryings. Death is indefensible, absurd ;
it is but a reintegration into the universe for a? free? adult male. Until a individual
ranges this consciousness, life, like decease, is absurd, and so, generically,
life remains absurd, though each person? s life can be valuable and
meaningful to him. In a sense, The Stranger is a parable of Camus? doctrine,
with accent on that which is required for freedom. Meursault, hero of The
Stranger, is non a individual one would be disposed to run into in world in this regard ;
Meursault does non accomplish the waking up of consciousness, so indispensable to
freedom and to populating Camus? doctrine until the really terminal of the book, yet he
has lived his full life in harmonizing with the morality of Camus? doctrine.
His equivalent in the Christian doctrine would be an irreligious individual whose
fatherland has ne’er encountered Christianity who, upon holding it explained by a
missional, realizes he has ne’er sinned. What is the morality, the qualities
necessary for freedom, which Meursault manifested? First, the governing trait of
his character is his passion for the absolute truth. While in Meursault this
takes the signifier of a truth of being and feeling, it is still the truth necessary
to the conquering of the ego or of the universe. This passion is so profound that it
obtains even when denying it might salvage his life. Second, and non unrelated to
the first, is Meursault? s credence of nature as what it is and nil more,
his rejection of the supernatural, including any God. Actually, ? rejection?
of God is non accurate until subsequently when he is challenged to accept the construct ;
Meursault merely has ne’er considered God and faith worthwhile prosecuting. The
natural makes sense ; the supernatural doesn? T. It follows that decease to
Meursault besides is what it is of course ; the terminal of life, surcease, and that is
all. Third, and logically following, Meursault lives wholly in the present.
The yesteryear is past and brooding upon it in any temper is merely a waste of the
present. As to the hereafter, the ultimate hereafter is decease ; to give the
nowadays to the hereafter is tantamount to giving life to decease. Finally and
evidently, since the nowadays is his exclusive surroundings, Meursault takes note of each
minute of life ; since there is no outside value system, no complex hereafter program,
to mensurate against, and as a consequence of his passion for truth and accordingly
justness, he grants every minute equal importance. One minute may be more
enjoyable than another, one drilling, one mundane, each receives? equal
clip? in his narrative of his life. Meursault has one weakness trait, a direct
and logical consequence of his unconsciousness of his ain position of life and doctrine
of life, indifference. Possibly because his manner of life and thinkin
g seem so
natural to him, he has ne’er considered their roots, has ne’er confronted the
absurdness of decease, with the attendant acknowledgment of the value of his life.
Out of indifference he fails to inquiry and thereby mistake out of indifference he
links forces with force and decease, instead than with love and life. As a
consequence of indifference, he kills a adult male. Meursault kills a adult male and is brought to
test. But in truth he is non tried for slaying, nor for his mistake, he is tested
for his virtuousness. Here Camus shows how many work forces fear the absurd, decline? non to
accept it? to face it at all. Alternatively they make via medias with it,
grant it importance and supernatural significance, and live for it. The consequence is
lives built on fake, lip service, paper staging. The natural adult male, the adult male of
truth and world, can merely endanger their authorization, the really delicate web of
their lives, that is, his really being may coerce them to see through
themselves. It is for this that they condemn Meursault to decease. Faced with the
closure by compartment, Meursault is forced to face decease, his ain decease. Through the
horror and despair, he discovers absurdness, the inevitableness and unfairness
of decease, the nonsense of it, the humbleness. All this has been
implicit in Meursault. Now it is witting. Now Meursault is on the brink of
true freedom. The invasion into his cell of the prison chaplain precipitates
Meursault? s accomplishment of entire freedom. By the clip the chaplain enters,
Meursault has confronted decease, and is cognizant of its cosmopolitan inevitableness and
of its nonsense. In the face of the chaplain? s ceaseless effort to
push on Meursault, his God, his guilt, his lip service, Meursault eventually rebellions
? against the chaplain, against lip service, against decease. In an blink of an eye,
? all ideas that had been simmering in my encephalon? explode into
consciousness and Meursault is eventually cognizant. At last to the full witting of
himself, of decease, and of his life, Meursault can mensurate to the full the values
nowadays at every minute of life. Time, ever the present to him, now in
consciousness becomes a marvelous nowadays, rich in beauty, friendly relationship, and love. He
feels the? absurd? and at the same time his artlessness. Knowing now the
indifference of the existence, confronting decease full of love of life, full of the joy
of cognizing that he had been happy and is happy still. Meursault understands that
the closure by compartment provides his ultimate justification ; for in decease entirely adult male
accomplishes his human fate. If we consider The Stranger as a parable, its
lesson is apparent, Clinging passionately to life as the merely positive value
bing in a signifier we can acknowledge. Equally shortly as we rebel and protest against the
absurd, we become in full ownership of the life here and now that is ours, that
is the lone one we have. It is a? Gospel of happiness. ? For the rebellion
against the absurd so cardinal to Camus? constructs of freedom and life is no
hopeless battle, no flailing at windmills. Camus? rebellion seeks no hope, no
wages, but to turn out human luster.