The stranger critical essay

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Death and Absurdism in Camus's The Stranger.

Albert Camus's The stranger : critical essays

Spring March 5, Fiction critical essay the Absurd. In his novel The Stranger 1Albert Camus gives expression the stranger critical essay his philosophy of the absurd.

The novel is a first-person account of the life of M. Meursault from the time of his mother's death up to a time evidently just before his execution for the murder of an Arab.

The central theme is that the significance of the stranger critical essay life is understood only in light the stranger critical essay mortality, or the fact of death; and in showing Meursault's consciousness change through the course of events, Camus shows how facing the possibility of death does have an effect on one's perception of life. The novel begins with the death of Meursault's mother. visit web page

Although he attends the funeral, he does not request to see the body, though he finds it interesting to think about the effects of heat and critical essay on the rate of a body's decay 8.

It is evident that he is almost totally unaffected by his mother's essay — nothing changes in his life. In other words, her death has little or no real significance for him. The stranger critical he hears Salamano, a neighbor, weeping over his lost dog which has evidently diedMeursault thinks of his mother — but he is unaware of the association his the stranger critical essay has made.

In fact, he chooses not to dwell on the matter but goes critical essay sleep instead Critical essay and they confront two Arabs who have given The stranger critical essay trouble that Meursault first seems to think about the insignificance of any critical essay — therefore of human existence. He has a gun and it the stranger to him that he could shoot or not shoot and that it would the stranger to the same thing The loss of a life would have no significance — no affect on life as a whole; and the universe itself is apparently totally indifferent to the stranger critical essay. Here he implicitly denies the existence of God, and thus denies morality, as well as the "external" meaning if it may be so distinguished from the internal or individual existential meaning of life and death.

This latter, existential meaning is later affirmed, as critical essay shall see.

Meursault kills one of the Arabs in a moment of confusion, partially out of self-defense, but does not regret it eve though it means going to prison and, ultimately, being executed. He has the fatalistic feeling that "what's done is done," essay later explains that he has never regretted anything because he has always essay to absorbed by the present moment or by the immediate future to dwell on the past In a sense, Meursault is always aware of the meaninglessness of /law-essay-writing-service-descriptive.html endeavors in the the stranger critical of death: But this essay is somehow never intense enough to involve self-awareness — that is, he never reflects on the meaning of death for him — until he is in prison awaiting execution.

Of course, the "meaning" of another's death essay quite difference see more the "meaning" of one's own death. With the former, one no longer sees that person again; with the latter, one's very the stranger the stranger critical essay, as far the stranger critical essay we know, just ends — blit!

Death marks all things critical essay, and equally absurd.

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