Albert Camus
Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913, in the French colonial Algeria. His father was killed in 1914 at the battle of the Marne in World War I. Although his family was impoverished, Camus attended the university in Algiers. He paid for his education with odd jobs until a severe attack of tuberculosis forced him to drop out. His writing is greatly influenced by the poverty and illness of his youth. After dropping out, he eventually entered the world of political journalism. He wrote extensively about poverty in Algeria while working as a journalist for an anti-colonialist newspaper. During World War II, he went to Paris and joined the anti-German resistance movement. It was in wartime Paris that Camus developed his philosophy of the absurd--the assertion that life ultimately has no rational meaning. The Stranger, his first novel, deals with the hysteria provoked by Meursault's challenge to the accepted moral order. He does not cry at his mother's funeral, and he does not believe in God. He also kills a man he barely knows, "the Arab," without any real motive. He is tried and sentenced to death. "While the philosophy of Camus's fiction often tends to imply that no moral order actually has a rational basis, Camus himself did
Meursault is indifferent to the society around him, including its social oppression of the colonized. He sees Camus as rigorous in presenting the psychology of Meursault and lax in his presentation of the society which condemned him, thus denying the colonial reality in French Algeria. He sees Meursault as scrupulously honest, but that is all. To him it is not enough to make Meursault admirable, and, in fact, it encourages the readers' sympathies veering toward the other characters who are frightened by his moral emptiness (Bree 93). Even prison is not a terrible punishment for Meursault. He learns to do without the experiences he loves, even women and cigarettes. He sleeps a great deal. He remembers the past. "However, he suffers a great deal contemplating the executioner's blade. For the first time in his life he becomes introspective. The final encounter with the chaplain forces him to articulate his philosophy of life and death. Just as he refused the temptation for legal
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1966
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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