The Philosophy of the Absurd

A man who wasn't grieving at his mother's funeral. The summer heat prompting him to commit murder. His detached attitude helping him tolerate life at prison. "The Stranger" (French: L’Étranger) would baffled anyone, even offend those who chose the high road. But Albert Camus, whose birthday is on November 7, had something to tell. He was a French writer of Algerian descent. He considered himself a rebel and was proud of that label. He died from a car accident at a young age of 46, which some wondered if it was deliberate.

Catherine Camus, his only daughter, chose not to think about it.

"For 53 years I have dealt with the pain of his death, and I have thought of him every single day. I don't know what he would think of the world now, with its race for money, and consumerism and disregard for the suffering of individuals," she said.

"I cannot speak for him, but I know that what he wrote is still relevant and still speaks to people today."

Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 for "his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times". "The Stranger" could be considered a semi-autobiographical book.

Eternal sunshine

A flood of emotion could have overwhelmed Meursault after learning of his mother's death. But he was smoking in front of her coffin, often commenting about the people who came to pay their respect. Then he met Marie, an ex-colleague, whom he reacquainted and had a sexual relationship. Raymond Sintès was next, who had a problem with his Moorish girlfriend. After hearing his side of the story, he thought of helping him exacting revenge on her. Her brother and Arab friends went to his place to settle a score. He found Raymond's pistol. The heatstroke made him disoriented.

Meursault was sentenced to die by decapitation. He could've shown remorse, which might have swayed the jurors' opinion to his favor. But he was indifferent. He have been detached ever since.

His story

To understand Meursault, one must know Camus's story. He grew up in poverty. He was barely a year old when his father was killed in the Battle of Marne. It was his mother, illiterate and partially deaf, who brought him up. One teacher noticed his intellectual promise, which led to his stint at the University of Algiers. He played for the university football team, but it was cut short by tuberculosis. He took odd jobs, until he was making a living on writing. He joined the French Communist Party, only to become associated with the French anarchist movement later.

Camus once claimed that everything he knew about morality came from football and theater. If it seemed absurd, which some would attribute to Mediterranean fatalism. But there was no denying of what he went through.

"He touched the readers as human beings, maybe because the man is in the books; he asked the same questions everyone asks and addressed the same suffering and pain and concerns everyone has," his daughter said.