Verified Document

Stranger By Albert Camus The Main Character, Essay

Stranger by Albert Camus The main character, Meursault, mother dies in the book, and he travels to her funeral. As he sit by the coffin, he displayed virtually no emotion or offers any indication of grief. The next day, he meets an old coworker has is named Marie. They go out on a date to a diner and then a movie and shortly after a relationship forms. Later these two individuals take the relationship to the next stage and announce their engagement. Meursault's neighbor, Raymond, who is a notorious pimp and portrayed as immoral man, asks for help to lure his mistress back as well as to help him get acquitted at the police station on charges of beating her up. Meursault indifferently agrees to help Raymond as a neighborly thing to do.

As the plot develops, the author starts to portray Meursault's escalating indifference to life. Meursault then kills an Arab because of hot weather and a fight with Raymond. He is arrested, thrown in jail, and brought to court. When the character is in jail he really starts to wrestle with the philosophy of life. He takes something of an existential approach and decides that there really is no ultimate meaning to life. He is later sentenced to death and though he dreams...

This seems to make him even number however.
. Meursault's personal philosophy is told to a chaplain, who him in the jail cell to perform the last rights. Meursault rejects them on the grounds that atheist and doesn't believe God. He is then labeled a monster. However, a strange thing happens. After Meursault finally gets the concept that there is no meaning to life and no rationality or external meaning, he is able to enjoy his last days. He is portrayed as somehow enlightened by his revelation.

I can understand Meursault's logic and I have also felt like life is meaningless at times. However, I have also heard it framed in another way somewhere. Someone said that atheists have nothing to live for and it is actually quite the opposite. Atheists technically have nothing to die for. That is, they do not believe in any external being or supernatural world that supersedes this one. As such, the only thing left is this life. All an atheist gets is one life and since they don't believe there is anything else, they should make the best of the one that they have.

Therefore, for me personally, I don't think that an atheist has to ultimately decide that the world is meaningless just because they don't accept any supernatural forces. In fact, I think that there can be optimism in an atheist's life just…

Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Kierkegaard on Camus Albert Camus's
Words: 930 Length: 3 Document Type: Essay

The implications of this concept are enormous and profound. Just as Kierkegaard reverses the Hegelian construct of the universal being over the individual, the inner is placed by Kierkegaard in a position of supremacy over the outer. It has already been shown that faith can make acts moral to the individual performing them even when universal ethics would condemn the same act. Universal ethics are an element of the outer,

Plague Albert Camus
Words: 837 Length: 3 Document Type: Term Paper

Plague: Albert Camus Camu's Philosophy Albert Camus' philosophy is often defined as the "philosophy of the absurd" the idea that life has no rational or real meaning (Ward, 2005). This philosophy is defined through the actions and life of his six characters in his novel The Plague. It is here that Camus attempt o imply that while there is no rational basis for moral order that does not suggest that one

Camus -- the Plague an
Words: 1970 Length: 6 Document Type: Research Paper

Yet, even Tarrou must fall to the plague inevitably. Camus as much as says that while Tarrou's ideals may be beautiful, they are not ultimately the truth: there is no moksha for Tarrou -- only death. Does absurdism expect that one's best course of action is to interact with life at a slight remove -- as Rieux does? No definite answer can be given. Cottard, however, is definitely not the

Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, and the Stranger
Words: 1420 Length: 4 Document Type: Term Paper

Lucy" by Jamaica Kincaid, and "The Stranger" by Albert Camus. Specifically, it contains a comparative analysis of the main characters in the two books on the concept of self, proposed by Robert C. Solomon in his book, "The Big Questions." These two characters are controversial and mean different things to different readers. Some see them as cold and unemotional, while others see them as figuratively standing for truth and the

State of Nature General Will
Words: 2320 Length: 5 Document Type: Term Paper

Nature.... General Will The ideas to create just and liberal society go all the way back to ancient times. The first examples of civil society were proposed by Plato and Aristotle, who saw the ideal state to be a republic ruled by the wise men and aristocrats as "first among equal." They didn't go in depth to explain its structure, functions of government in details, etc. These were the first

Free Will and Deviant Behavior:
Words: 2246 Length: 7 Document Type: Term Paper

The novel vividly illustrates this event, stated as follows: The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes. That's when everything began to reel. The sea carried up a thick, fiery breath. It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire. My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. The trigger

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now