Chapter II

Meursault as Sisyphus

Honesty

Meursault is apparently honest in the lines of what he feels and what he says. He never lies

about his own feeling. When Marie, his girlfriend, asks him whether he loves her or not,

Meursault tells her that he thinks that he does not love her.

“A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her that it didn’t mean anything but that I

didn’t think so. She looked sad.” (Camus, The Outsider38)

In this case, Meursault tells the truth about his feeling. He feels that he could not feel love

toward Marie. Then again, he is unable to pretend about being in love just to not break

Marie’s heart. He does not want to tell a lie about his true feeling.

When Meursault feels this way about love, probably it is no wonder what he feels about

marriage. A widely popular institution in the society, marriage is seen as a not-so-serious

matter for the protagonist. When Marie asks him about the idea of getting married,

Meursault’s reaction is quite the same as before in the case of love.

“That evening, Marie came round for me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said I

didn’t mind and we could do if she wanted to. She then wanted to know if I loved her. I

replied as I had done once already, that it didn’t mean anything but that I probably didn’t.

‘Why marry me then?’ she said. I explained to her that it really didn’t matter and that if she

wanted to, we could get married. Anyway, she was the one who was asking me and I was

simply saying yes. She then remarked that marriage was a serious matter. I said, ‘No.’ She

didn’t say anything for a moment and looked at me in silence. Then she spoke. She just

wanted to know if I’d have accepted the same proposal if it had come from another woman,

with whom I had a similar relationship. I said, ‘Naturally.’” (Camus, The Outsider 45)

According to Meursault, getting married is not a matter to think over or jump in excitement.

Almost like a minor formality and to give Marie’s interest some sort of recognition, he is

willing to take vows with her. He does not have any for or against case on marriage.

Meursault is not ambitious – this is not a judgment but what he thinks of life and work.

When his employer in the Algiers office offers him a new office in Paris, Meursault is not

receptive towards the promotion.

“He (boss) intended to set up an office in Paris to handle that side of the business on the

spot by dealing directly with the big companies and he wanted to know if I was prepared to

go over there… I said yes but really I didn’t mind. He then asked me if I wasn’t interested in

changing my life. I replied that you could never change your life, that in any case one life

was as good as another and that I wasn’t at all dissatisfied with mine here.” (Camus, The

Outsider44) As expected, his boss is irrigated at his lack of ambition. But Meursault is in

control of himself that he states how he feels about his place in his life and his job. He could

have flattered his boss with showers of admiration but he holds on to his true feelings.

His honesty also appears in his mother’s death through his reaction. Meursault does not

want to pretend that he is in mourning because of his mother’s death since he does not feel

the sadness. He does not shed fake tears at his mother’s funeral. Moreover, he also does

not want to see his mother for the last time before the funeral.

“He was just going up to the coffin when I stopped him. He said, ‘Don’t you want to?’ I

answered, ‘No.’” (Camus, The Outsider 12)

The question appears then, why Meursault does not show any grief at the funeral. This
happens because he loses his ability to recognize his own feeling. He says this fact in jail

when the lawyer asks him about his feeling when his mother died.

“He asked me if I’d felt any grief on that day…I replied though that I’d rather got out of the

habit of analysing myself and that I found it difficult to answer his question” (Camus, The

Outsider pp.64-65)

In this sense, Meursault is honest because he does not want to show the feeling he does not

feel. If he cannot feel the sadness upon his mother’s demise, he is not willing to act as if he

was sad and depressed. Telling what he really feels to his lawyer also becomes another

evidence of his honesty.

“Then he (lawyer) asked me if he could say that I’d controlled my natural feelings that day. I

said, ‘No, because it’s not true.’” (Camus, The Outsider65)

Meursault is true to how he fees. Because of that he does not want his lawyer to sugar-coat

his true feelings with falsehood. That is how Meursault is to himself and he would not hide

in any guise.

Another evidence of Meursault’s honesty can be seen in the trial. When he is asked about
the reason of his killing the Arab man, he says that he never planned to kill the Arab, the

reason of his action, killing the Arab, is because of the sun.

“Mixing up my words a bit and realizing that I sounded ridiculous, I said quickly that it was

because of the sun.” (Camus, The Outsider99)

He realizes how ludicrous does he sound when he blames the sun for firing five shots at a

human being. But how bizarre it may be to the ears, he sticks to his truth. At that moment

the sun was so hot. The glare of the sun burned Meursault’s eyes and forehead. Meursault

could not stand to stay still in the hot sun. Then he put his revolver and shot the Arab as his

reaction toward the wrath of the summer sun. He tends to be honest to say what really

happens that there is no certain motive of his action rather than telling a lie. Even though he

has the chance to defend himself by stating that his action as a form of self-defense since

the Arab brings a knife.

God

Meursault is a man who does not believe in God’s existence. His disbelief towards God’s

existence is seen when he was persuaded to depend his life on God since God is considered
as The One who owns the ability to help him out from his problem. He was also forced to ask

for God’s forgiveness for what he had done, killing a person. When talking about God,

Meursault responds it indubitably; he strongly said that he does not believe in God.

“…and asking me if I believed in God. I said no. He sat down indignantly. He told me that it

was impossible,that all men believed in God, even those who wouldn’t face up to Him.”

(Camus, The Outsider68)

He also states his atheism when the chaplain visits him in jail. He has refused the chaplain’s

visit for three times. In the fourth time he also refused the visit, but the chaplain insists on

seeing him without his permission. The chaplain asks him the reason why he does not want to

see him. He says that it is because he does not believe in God (Camus, The Outsider111).

He refuses to discuss about God and asks the chaplain to leave him since he does not want to

waste his time talking about God.

“He (Chaplain) started talking to me about God again, but I went up to him and made on last

attempt to explain to him that I didn’t have much time left. I didn’t want to waste it on God.”

(Camus, The Outsider114)

Then, he criticizes the chaplain about his belief. He thinks that the chaplain seems so certain

about everything but indeed he was not sure at all.

“He seemed so certain about everything, didn’t he? …he couldn’t even be sure he was alive

because he was living like a dead man…but I was sure of myself, sure of everything, surer

than he was, sure of my life, and sure of the death that was coming to me” (Camus, The

Outsider115)

In this quotation, Meursault criticizes the chaplain that a man who depends his life on God is

a man who is not sure about himself so that he has to depend his life on.

Social Rebel

Meursault is a man who breaks social values. He refuses the social determination. He often

acts differently from other people. His point of view and attitudes are often contradictory

from other people normally have.

His being different is seen in his attitudes at his mother’s funeral. He refuses to see his

mother’s dead body. Although he knows that it breaks the social tradition, he insists on doing

it. The thing that people commonly want to do when the one they love departed is seeing the
dead body for the last time, but Meursault refuses to do it.

“He was just going up to the coffin when I stopped him. He said, ‘Don’t you want to?’ I

answered, ‘No.’” (Camus, The Outsider12)

This quotation shows that actually Meursault knows that his refusal to see his mother dead

body is unusual and it breaks society’s tradition. His reaction in front of his deceased mother

should have been like his mother’s fiancé from the home, Thomas Pérez.

“Well, you see, I was really very upset. So I didn’t notice anything. I was too upset to notice

things. Because it was extremely upsetting for me…” (Camus, The Outsider88)

Through this, Pérez establishes how someone reacts towards a loved one’s death in societal

standards, of course. He is too overwhelmed by sadness at the funeral to notice much of how

Meursault reacts. He even weeps all the way there as opposed to Meursault who is slammed

by the Prosecutor for his lack of emotions. Moreover, during the vigil Meursault even smokes

and offers the caretaker a cigarette.

“I then wanted a cigarette. But I hesitated because I didn’t know if I could smoke in front of

mother. I thought it over, it really didn’t matter.” (Camus, The Outsider14)

Sisyphus and Meursault

While reading The Outsider, it is hard not to imagine in what strange ways Meursault views

the world. An absurd man is someone who solely acts in a way that is inexplicable or

incomprehensible to others. In Meursault's case, this means repeated apathetic reactions to

what would generally be considered emotional events. Over the course of the story, his

actions are strange and so distant from what one accustoms to experiencing in life.

Meursault, who is the main character in The Outsider, personifies Sisyphus in The Myth of

Sisyphus. The Myth of Sisyphus describes in detail the idea of Absurdism and The Outsider

features a character, Meursault, who personified the essence of an absurd man. The Outsider

follows the story of Meursault, who is condemned to the death penalty for a mindless murder.

Meursault, whose rationality is disconnected from traditional society, is forced to come to

terms with the constraints of a religiously assertive French colonial Algeria. Comparatively,

according to The Myth of Sisyphus, Sisyphus is condemned to a life in which he endlessly

rolls a stone up a mountain, only for it to return to the bottom each time he reaches the top.

Like Meursault, Sisyphus is damned to a futile existence because he must work to no avail.
After being sentenced to a lifetime of re-rolling a boulder uphill, Sisyphus realizes that "he

knows himself to be the master of his days." (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus 110) This is

probably the first time where he has ever felt that his life is in his own control. He already

knows that his actions will not have consequence since his fate is sealed. So the emergence of

his freedom comes from abandoning the need to invest his actions with meaning. If his

actions are futile, then he is free from responsibility, and that sense of freedom and sureness

is the one feeling that gives him happiness. Meursault acts the same way, stating that he “laid

myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world” (Camus, The Outsider

117) during his final days in the prison cell. Meursault has always acted with indifference, so

he accepts his punishment with ease. It can be stated that his sentencing is a form of

reciprocation from the rest of the world–a punishing of indifference with indifference, due to

the fact that the jury cared little about his motivations in the murder. This is the first time that

Meursault is treated the same way as he has always treated others, and he finds some peace

with that idea, the belief that the absurd man can only find happiness when he realizes and

accepts the true absurdity of the world in which he lives.

Upon further reading of the two writings, a remarkable similarity between Sisyphus and

Meursaultis found in the form of their relationship with nature. Sisyphus' only real

relationship with the world can be seen through his interactions with nature. The only

pleasure he feels prior to his period of punishment revolves around the beauty of the "curve

of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of earth." (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus 108)

When he is ordered to roll the boulder for the rest of his life, he is able to find some

happiness and meaning in life through his connection with nature once again, for the first

time seeing that "each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in

itself forms a world." (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus 111) This new, repetitive world he is

placed in is one which could be understood. He is finally able to accept the hopelessness of

his situation–this world creates only as a punishment for him–and spend his last days at ease.

Meursault's life, similarly, revolves primarily around his relationship with the sun.

Throughout the novel, many of his negatively perceived actions happen on Sunday or when

the sun is shining brightly. For instance, when Meursault is on the beach with the Arab, all he

had to do to prevent the murder was turn around, "but the whole beach was reverberating in
the sun and pressing against [him] from behind"(Camus, The Outsider 59) and therefore he

was under the control of nature and could not move. Even during the trial, he states that the

murder happened “because of the sun” (Camus, The Outsider 99) that he had killed the man

that day, but that the idea was too nonsensical, or "absurd", for them to comprehend. Then,

like Sisyphus, when Meursault was condemned to a prison cell before his execution, he

described the beauty of nature, saying that he “woke up with stars on [his] face. Sounds of the

countryside were wafting in. The night air was cooing [his] temples with the smell of earth

and salt.” (Camus, The Outsider 116) The sun somehow manages to make Meursault feel

contradicting emotions–sometimes he feels comfort and sometimes rage–and therefore, to

me, is the strongest symbol of absurdism in the story.

Sisyphus is a man who is forced to face the absurdity of life, of the universe, of the grand

meaninglessness of it all. There is no point to his struggles with the boulder he rolls up this

hill, because truthfully, there is no goal. So upon laying eyes on Sisyphus, not with pity but

with an understanding of absurdity, if Sisyphus can be seen as a man who is not struggling

against the absurd, but who reconciles his struggle and accepts that he has no hope of success,
then it is possible to see the tragic figure in a new light. Once he accepts his struggles in life

as futile and understand that all his life has to offer is this absurd struggle, there is happiness,

then, for Sisyphus to find in his own struggles. One of the points to Absurdism is the

acceptance of the death of hope. Hope is just a way to force meaning upon chaos, and to do

so is to be dishonest.

Towards the end of the novel, Meursault achieves this strange peace about himself and his

predicament. He shouts down faith, shouts down hope, and becomes angry that any would go

so far as to believe that he can be “saved”, much less be so insulting as to assume he wants to

be “saved.” Meursault finds happiness in the absurd - he accepts the circumstances that

surround him, the sweeping chaos that surrounds him, the imminent arrival of death itself.

Generally speaking, as an absurdist one shouldn’t be really looking to die, but one should be

fully accepting of death as a reality that can sweep itself into one’s life at any moment, and

Meursault has made his peace with that fact.

His trials and appeals can be seen as the struggle to push that Sisyphean boulder on up the

hill, to get it to the top, to overcome his conviction. But he doesn’t get the boulder up the hill,
he doesn’t overcome, he is condemned to die and ultimately, he is perfectly happy to do so.

“For the first time in a very long time I thought of Mother. I felt that I understood why at the

end of her life she’d taken a ‘fiancé’ and why she’d pretended to start again. There at the

home, where lives fade away, there too the evenings were a kind of melancholy truce. So

close to death, Mother must have felt liberated and ready to live her life again. No one, no

one had any right to cry over her. And I too felt ready to live my life again. As if this great

outburst of anger purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and

stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the

world. And finding it so much like myself, in fact so fraternal, I realized that I’d been happy,

and that I was still happy. For the final consummation and for me to feel less lonely, my last

wish was that there should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should

greet me with cries of hatred.” (Camus, The Outsider pp.116-17)

This part from the end of The Outsider completely sums up Meursault’s case as he embraces

the Absurd and finds the happiness he lost quite some time ago.