The Victory of Man When Faced With the Absurd
“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.” This famous first line of The Stranger introduces the curious character Meursault. He appears to have no reaction, negative or positive, to his mother dying beyond wondering what day she died on. This strange detachment from any emotion continues throughout the novel, presenting the reader with a curious insight into the workings of Meursault’s mind. The worldview presented from Meursault’s point of view is pure nihilism, taken from its infancy of thought in the beginning of the book to its inevitable conclusion at the end of the book. To him, nothing really mattered because everyone dies in the end no matter what they do. To this attitude, society has no way to react because society is full of meaning and purpose, while Meursault sees everything as meaningless and purposeless, himself included. This kind of existence is remarkably similar to Sisyphus described in Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus”, in which Sisyphus is condemned to roll a large stone up a hill only to have it roll back down for all of eternity.
Both The Stranger and “The Myth of Sisyphus” deal directly with a nihilistic situation, a situation in which the entire existence of people and effort is meaningless. In the beginning of The Stranger, Meursault is oblivious to the deeper meaning of his worldview and drifts along with a detached ease. Only later in the novel, when he has had time to think and analyze his situation, does he come to the full realization that existence and life is absurd. It is at this point that Meursault’s life begins to resemble Sisyphus in “The Myth of Sisyphus” in a few different respects.
Both Meursault’s and Sisyphus’s existence are meaningless. Sisyphus’s meaningless existence is found in the same task that he is set to do over and over again with no result. Meursault realizes the purposeless of life when Raymond gives him the gun. As he holds the gun, he realizes that “you could either shoot or not shoot.”(Stranger, 56), making no distinction between the option of living or dying. To him either option could happen with equal chance; no preference is given to one or the other. A little while later, while in prison, Meursault realizes that the same sentiment could be applied to him as well, that “life isn’t worth living”(Stranger, 114), that it doesn’t matter whether he dies now at thirty or if he were to die at seventy. It is in this realization that Meursault brings the worldview of nihilism to its ultimate conclusion – a seeming depressing and despair-stricken existence.
This type of existence, Camus writes in “The Myth of Sisyphus”, is only tragic because of the complete self-knowledge the character possesses of his completely useless existence. This absurd existence is only absurd to those who know of its absurdity. In the beginning of The Stranger Meursault led a relatively blissful life of ignorance. He wasn’t happy, precisely – such emotion seemed beyond him at that point –, but he was content with his life. He was so content with his life, thinking that “one life [is] as good as another”(Stranger, 41), that his boss complained that his lack of ambition “was disastrous in business”(Stranger, 41). It isn’t until Meursault comes to realize this tragedy of self-knowledge when he concludes, “Nothing, nothing matters.”(Stranger, 121). Not his life, not his friends’ lives, not any life at all. Nothing matters.
From this ultimate conclusion there are only two possibilities – to sink into utter despair or to rise above that and to claim victory in the knowledge of the uselessness of life. When the nihilistic man contemplates his own absurd condition, a condition that is pure torment to any man, Camus writes in “They Myth of Sisyphus”, he “silences all idols”, with the “universe suddenly restored to its silence”. In this silencing of outwardly desires the man comes to find a peace within himself and the universe. Meursault chooses the latter of the two afore-mentioned possibilities, and contemplates his existence, opening himself up to “the gentle indifference of the world.”(Stranger, 122). He realizes that his life is meaningless, but that living life in itself is enough for satisfaction, even though it is not purposeful. With his execution on the way, all that is left for him to feel satisfaction for is for a “large crowd of spectators”(Stranger, 123) to “greet [him] with cries of hate.”(Stranger, 123). He finds satisfaction in the end of his life, Camus writes, the same way the “struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill [Sisyphus’] heart.” For the first time in a long time, Meursault “was happy again”(Stranger, 123).
Meursault came to realize, over the course of his life, the meaningless of life, and eventually found his fulfillment in the simple fact that it was his life he was living, and he was living it his way. He finds a final joy at the end of his life in the fact that he is living his own life, just as Camus remarks that Sisyphus must feel happy because he also is living his own life, living his own fate. This, Camus writes, is the ultimate realization of nihilism, a realization that is consummated at the end of Meursault’s life, a realization that is all of Sisyphus’s existence. It is ultimately a realization of peace.
[Published by ToughBasics, September 12, 2009]
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