DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

ASSIGNMENT

COURSE TITLE: COMMUNICATION SKILLS

COUSRE CODE: ENG-421

TOPIC: THE STRANGER WRITTEN BY ALBERT CAMUS

SUBMITTED BY: BISMA WASEEM

ROLLNO: 3026
CLASS: BS IR MORNING
SEMESTER: 3RD

SUBMITTED TO: SIR AMIR SHAHEEN

 Introduction
Albert Camus was born in 20th century, in French colonial Algeria. His father was killed in
World War 1. Camus’s family experienced extreme poverty, despite of that he attended the
university of Algiers. However, he had to drop out due to illness the poverty and illness Camus
experienced as a youth greatly influenced his writing. He took part in political journalism and
also worked for an anti-colonialist newspaper. The Stranger is Camus’s first novel was published
in 1942 and is an illustration of his absurdist world view. The novel tells the story of an
emotionally detached young guy named Meursault. He does not show any sentiments at his
mother’s funeral, does not believe in God, kills an Arab he barely knows, gets sentenced to death
and still believes that life is not worth living anyways. The novel is divided into two parts,
presenting Meursault’s first-person narrative view before and after the murder, respectively.

Camus’s philosophy of absurd

During the wartime in Paris Camus developed his philosophy of the absurd. A major component
of this philosophy was that life has no rational meaning. After World War 2 many other came to
believe that human existence had any purpose or definite meaning. Existence seemed simply, to
use Camus’s term, absurd.
Camus’s absurdist philosophy implies that moral orders have no rational or natural basis. He
believed that life’s lack of a higher meaning should not lead one to despair. Camus also
published his other philosophical essay named ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ in the same year The
Stranger was published and was also based on the absurd.

The Stranger and “the absurd”

The Stranger is often referred as and ‘existential” novel, but this this is not essentially correct.
The term “existentialism” has a far range of meanings. Existentialism refers to the idea that there
is no “higher” meaning to the universe or to man’s existence, and no rational order to the events
of the world. Existentialism also refers that there is nothing beyond man’s physical existence.
Some ideas in the stranger clearly resembles the philosophy of existentialism but Camus himself
rejected the existential label to The Stranger rather he coined the term absurd. Camus’s ideas
highly resonate within the text but The Stranger is a novel not a philosophical essay.
 Summary
In the beginning of the novel, Meursault receives a telegram which says that his mother has died
and the funeral is due tomorrow. Meursault’s mother was living at an old persons’ home at
Marengo. Marengo is some fifty miles away from marengo so Meursault had to take a bus there.
Meursault dozes off the entire trip and at his arrival he asks the door keeper to let him see mother
at once. When the director allowed him to see his mother’s dead body which was already in
coffin, he refused the caretaker’s offer to open the coffin to let him see his mother.
Meursault stays the night keeping vigil over his mother’s body and he was accompanied by his
mother’s friends and the caretaker. The caretaker was rather talkative which bothered Meursault.
He smokes a cigarette, drinks café au lait and sleeps. The next morning the director informed
him about his mother’s special friend Thomas Perez; who will be attending the funeral while
others won’t. After the funeral Meursault returns back to Algiers.
The next morning, he goes to beach where he meets Marie Cardona. Later that they go on a date
and spend the night together. When he wakes up, he sees that Marie had gone and he spends the
day alone in his apartment on his balcony watching the people pass the street.
Meursault goes to work the other day and spends a busy day at the office. On his way back to his
apartment he met Salamano, his neighbor with a dog. Walking upstairs he runs into Raymond,
his other neighbor who claims to be a warehouseman but is popularly rumored to be a pimp.
Meursault goes over to Raymond’s for dinner. Over the dinner table Raymond talks about his
mistress who was cheating on him and how Raymond fought with his mistress’s brother. Now
Raymond wants a revenge on his mistress and for that he asks Meursault to write a letter to her.
Marie visits Meursault and ask him if he has any feelings for her. He replies that didn’t mean
anything but no. in the mean time they hear noises for Raymond’s apartment and when they
reach there to inquire, they see a policeman inquiring Raymond and there stands his mistress
crying. Meursault agrees on testifying on Raymond’s behalf. Later that night Meursault sees
Salamano and he complains that his dog ran away.
Marie asks Meursault if he would marry her and he replies that he would marry her if that’s what
she wants. On the following Sunday, Marie, Meursault, and Raymond go to a house by the beach
which was owned by Masson. Masson was Raymond’s friend. There they met Masson’s wife
too. They had a good lunch and a good swim. Later that day in the afternoon, Masson, Raymond,
and Meursault goes for a walk across the beach and there they run into two Arabs, one of them
was Raymond’s mistress’s brother. The Arabs started a fight and that left Raymond injured as he
was stabbed in his arm. This compelled them to go back to the house. Later, Meursault goes to
the shore with a revolver. There he run into one of the Arab again and shoots him without any
apparent reason.
 Meursault gets arrested and his lawyer and investigator are rather disgusted due to his lack of
regret and grief, specifically at his mother’s funeral. Meursault is put into investigation before
the magistrate who is surprised of his disbelief in God and eventually names him Mr. Antichrist.
Marie visits him in the jail, she looked pretty in her stripped dress and kept smiling throughout
their meeting. The room was filled by noises of the spectators talking indistinctively.
Meursault felt the absence of women but not necessarily Marie. But mostly he missed cigarettes,
but eventually got used to it and learned that was jail all about, to take one’s liberty. Meursault
slept almost sixteen to eighteen hours a day which made jail bearable.
Meursault was taken to the courtroom for his trail. There he saw jury, several journalists, robot
like women, and some policemen. The trail continued for two days in a row and several
witnesses were called to testify. Among the witnesses there was Celeste, Marie, Raymond, the
caretaker at the home and some other people. The prosecutor called Raymond a monster and said
that he has no soul and lacks any type of feelings as he didn’t cry on his mother’s funeral and
killed a man in cold blood. Meursault’s lawyer tried to back him up but failed to do so and
Meursault was proven guilty and was sentenced to death by beheading at a public place.
When Meursault returns to prison he waits for his execution and wonders if there is a chance to
escape all this and plans that if he somehow, manages to escape, he will visit every public
execution. Meursault repeatedly refused to meet the prison chaplain but he still comes to meet
him against his will. He insisted Meursault to give up atheism and start believing in God.
Meursault found his conversation uninteresting and asked him to leave but he persisted which
made Meursault shout at him. Meursault shouted that he is correct in believing the absurdness of
this physical world. The chaplain leaves in the presence of jailers who came there on hearing
Meursault shout.
Meursault abandoned all hope for his future and accepted the execution his fate and also accepts
the “gentle indifference of the world”. This brought him at peace.