Essay on The Outsider by Albert Camus - 1536 Words

The Outsider by Albert Camus BACKGROUND: ‘In our society,’ wrote Albert Camus, ‘any man who doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral is liable to be condemned to death.’ This may seem a bewilderingly dramatic, almost self-indulgent sort of assertion, but it is one which Camus brought to life in The Outsider, and to frankly devastating effect. The Outsider has become something of a cult classic over the years, especially in undergraduate circles. It inspired The Cure’s ‘Killing an Arab’, a song which attracted a degree of controversy when it was (wrongly) assumed to advocate racial violence. The Outsider itself has also been subject to an array of assumptions and misconceptions, particularly with regards to its philosophical project. In my†¦show more content†¦In practical terms, this amounted to the avoidance of what Sartre was to term ‘Mauvaise foi’, or Bad Faith. Over-simplifications are unavoidable here, so to summarise; to live in B ad Faith is to exist in a state of intellectual sloth and emotional dishonesty. It is to define oneself, not according to one’s own humanity, autonomy and free will, but according to a role (doctor, waiter, parent, husband) or a collection of roles, or as an object with a prescribed role in the collective, societal machine. CAMUS’ philosophical position amounts to very much the same thing, but he places particular emphasis upon the notion of the ‘absurd’. He found his ultimate metaphor for the absurdity of the human condition in the myth of Sisyphus, who, according to Greek mythology, was punished by having to roll a stone up a mountain for all eternity, only to have it roll down to the bottom again. Once God is escorted from the equation, human life is revealed in its full absurdity. The only appropriate response to this is to recognise life for what it is, and to live accordingly, with knowledge, passion and above all, freedom. The essence of this philosophical project is discernible within the second part of The Outsider, but is presented with a simplicity and literary restraint that renders its premise all the more forceful. It is a philosophical novel, butShow MoreRelatedAlbert Camus-the Outsider1194 Words   |  5 PagesO’Brien. First published in French as L’Etranger in 1942, Albert Camus’ The Outsider addresses the constrictive nature of society and what happens when an individual tries to break free from the conformity forced upon him by staying true to himself, and following his own ideal of absolute truth and sincerity in every action. Propelled more by the philosophy of existentialism and the notion of the absurd than plot and characters, Camus’ novel raises many questions about life, and answers themRead MoreThe Outsider By Albert Camus1139 Words   |  5 PagesAlbert Camus’ novel The Outsider follows a young French Algerian, Meursault, who lives his day to day life detached from the rest of the world. Along with his indifference towards others, Meursault has alienated himself from society with his absurdist ideas and blatant honesty. Camus has structured the novel into two parts. In Part I we see Meursault’s routines, habits and general reactions to daily events around him. At the end of Part I Meursault kills an Arab man whi ch eventually leads to hisRead MoreThe Outsider by Albert Camus Analysis of Themes672 Words   |  3 Pagesresonance of Camus’s philosophical notion of absurdity. In his essays, Camus asserts that individual lives and human existence in general have no rational meaning or order. However, because people have difficulty accepting this notion, they constantly attempt to identify or create rational structure and meaning in their lives. The term â€Å"absurdity† describes humanity’s futile attempt to find rational order where none exists. Though Camus does not explicitly refer to the notion of absurdity in The StrangerRead MoreA Outsider Of The Stranger By Andre Gide And Albert Camus1850 Words   |  8 Pages Andre Gide and Albert Camus seemingly had much in common. Both were French-speaking Nobel Prize winning writers with deep ties to France’s African territories and strong anti-establishment tendencies who sought to cast off the burdens society foisted upon them. Yet their as best evidenced by their respective best-known texts, Gide’s L Immoraliste (The Immoralist) and Camus’ L’Étranger (The Stranger). While both novels center around aloof young men hostile to the norms that society foists upon themRead MoreThe Outsider, by Albert Camus and The Assault, by Harry Mulisch1380 Words   |  6 PagesCamus and Mulisch present that the past and present are interrelated. The authors do this through the two characters, Meursault and Anton. Through Meursault, we see that his past actions affect the outcome of his trial. Through Anton, we see that his present situation constantly brings him back to his past despite him trying to escape it. Thus the authors stylist ically link the past and present to demonstrate that they are inevitably related, where certain events are unavoidable or the past is undeniableRead More Comparing Story Openings of Bleak House by Charles Dickens to The Outsider by Albert Camus954 Words   |  4 PagesAt the opening of the story The Outsider, the writer Albert Camus places time in the wrong order. This creates the impression that we are seeing into the characters thoughts rather than a story being told to us. It works very effectively as the paragraphs are spontaneous and not in any form of order, thus creating a mental picture in our heads of one or two day?s worth of events, as if we were remembering them ourselves. This, however, does not apply to Bleak house. Dickens does not use any formRead More Comparing Albert Camus The Stranger (The Outsider) and Jean-Paul Sartres Nausea2131 Words   |  9 PagesLack of Order in Albert Camus The Stranger (The Outsider) and Jean-Paul Sartres Nausea  Ã‚   Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre, and The Stranger, by Albert Camus, refuse to impose order on their events by not using psychology, hierarchies, coherent narratives, or cause and effect. Nausea refuses to order its events by not inscribing them with psychology or a cause for existence, and it contrasts itself with a text by Balzac that explains its events. Nausea resists the traditional strategy of includingRead MoreComparison of How Shusaku Endo in Wonderful Fool and Albert Camus in the Outsider Have Used Moral Issues to Develop Their Works1599 Words   |  7 PagesComparison of how Shusaku Endo in Wonderful Fool and Albert Camus in The Outsider have used moral issues to develop their works It is debatable whether morality is a code of conduct that is considered right by society or whether it is a code unilaterally decided upon by an individual. When we consider morality as a tool used by both Shusaku Endo in Wonderful Fool and Albert Camus in The Outsider, this debate holds immense relevance. Wonderful Fool, heavily influenced by Christian doctrine, addressesRead MoreComparison of How Shusaku Endo in Wonderful Fool and Albert Camus in the Outsider Have Used Moral Issues to Develop Their Works1612 Words   |  7 PagesComparison of how Shusaku Endo in Wonderful Fool and Albert Camus in The Outsider have used moral issues to develop their works It is debatable whether morality is a code of conduct that is considered right by society or whether it is a code unilaterally decided upon by an individual. When we consider morality as a tool used by both Shusaku Endo in Wonderful Fool and Albert Camus in The Outsider, this debate holds immense relevance. Wonderful Fool, heavily influenced by Christian doctrine, addressesRead MoreThe Outsider1524 Words   |  7 Pagesof an extract from pages 14 to 15 from The Outsider by Albert Camus Word Count: 1,378 I have decided to focus on an extract from chapter 1 of Albert Camus’ The Outsider as I feel this extract is highly significant as it serves as a device of exposition to develop Meursault’s, continuously judged, character and provides foregrounding for the rest of the novel. The prose style throughout this extract allows Camus to convey his philosophy of the absurd and portray