Albert Camus - The Stranger - Episode 2 - The Consequences Of Meaninglessness!
Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.
And I am Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. This is episode 2 in our three part series in the first work of Albert Camus’ great cycle of Absurdity- the novella, l”etranger or the Stranger also called The Outsider. Last week we began discussing Camus’ life, his homeland Algeria, and the events- both political and personal that made him in many ways his own outsider. We also introduced the idea that is forever associated with Camus in literary as well as philosophical circles and that is concept of the absurd. We tried to flesh out a little bit of what that feels like, the world the way Camus would have us understand it. We tried to introduce it as a feeling more than an idea- although obviously it is both. We started with famous first line, “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.”
It’s absurd!! Today..maybe yesterday!!! It’s absurd!
And the even more important idea…”I don’t know”. This itself launches us into a world from which some of us may never return- the world of the absurd, the world of Meursault, our absurd hero.
Ha! Hopefully we will fare slightly better than Meursault who I’ll tell you right now, is not famous because of the awesomeness of his outcome. He is NOT Forrest Gump who by no design of his own winds up in the White House or making millions in the shrimp industry- although, I will say, there is something absurd about Forrest Gump.
Christy, this is an absurd tangent
I KNOW!! Absurd is a thread I could keeping pulling, but I won’t. Instead we will pull back into the rational world because today we want to start by giving a shout out to a friend of the podcast, a man who lives far from the world of the absurd (most days, anyway), Mr. Matt Francev. Matt teaches AP Lit and Honors English at Whittier High School in Whittier California. His brother Dr. Peter Francev is editor of the Albert Camus Society, and a true scholar whose body of academic work focuses on the entirety of Camus’ writings- of which the cycle of the absurd is just the beginning. Anyway, Matt reached out to us a couple of months ago, gosh I guess it was right before Christmas and asked us to feature Camus and the familiar classic The Stranger, and so we have. Matt, this series is for you. We hope we do right by an old friend of the Francev family as we do what Camus himself might not like for us to do- paradoxically- and that is attempt to break down into manageable bite-sized pieces this overwhelming experience of living the absurd.
Christy, before we do that, I do want to point out something cool about where Matt is investing his life and career. Whittier, California, is only about fifteen miles south of LA. That area itself is an incredibly diverse working class community- but what is unusual about the high school there is that it has - an eclectic yet notable list of alumni. Two names on that list many recognize is Former President Richard Nixon, but also, totally outside the world of politics, John Lasseter, the creator of Pixar. And if that wasn’t interesting enough for your average high school, perhaps even more notably is that the school itself was the setting for Hill Valley High School – that would be the high school Michael J Fox’s parents attended in his breakout movie, Back to the Future. How fun is that?
So fun, I wonder how many times they’ve played Johnny B Good on the stage in the auditorium!!!
HA! I wonder what the real auditorium even looks like. Anyway, Thanks Matt, for reaching out and sharing a little of your world with us. Today, our goal is to finish out our discussion of part 1 of this novel. Christy, last week you told us we should very wait in anxious expectation for an episode filled with boredom and meaninglessness- and especially there at the beginning we meet that expectation. Chapter 2 is not filled with action that could be described as riveting.
No, not a whole lot happens in chapter 2, if you’re looking for plot, and not a whole lot happens if you’re looking for deep character or thematic development. Basically…Not a whole lot happens.
NO, it starts with the day after Maman’s funeral, and We meet Marie- who will become something of a girlfriend to Meursault. Camus descriptions draw particular attention to Marie’s breasts, but these descriptions are vulgar not suggestive really. This is not your typical romantic description from a harlequin romance, not that I’ve ever read any of those. It clearly ends with sex but not with passion. Sex, of course, at its minimum is an expression of excitement- even crude sit-coms go that far. Many times, when stories feature sex, authors are expressing deep emotions. Relationship sex is the ultimate expression of intimacy and something, we, as humans, attach deep meaning to- but not for our absurd hero, Meursault. For Meursault, he meets a woman, has sex with her, she goes home before he wakes, up, he smokes cigarettes in bed until 11am, he gets up to eat eggs out of a pan, and then expresses boredom with zero reflection on all that has happened over the last 48 hours to him. Instead of reflection, his thoughts turn to the size of his apartment where he concludes it’s too big for just one person. Again, is this guy a psychopath or a nut job?
And yet, by now, we most likely have decided that he is not. He’s apathetic for sure, but in a way we somehow understand. Meursault has understood a few truths in this world and now he’s stuck- he’s gotten far enough into exploring the meaning of existence to arrive at this point of lostness. Very intuitively, he’s hit upon this notion that human reasoning is insufficient in fulfilling the very human but fundamental desire to find unity in our world. We want things to connect, to make sense. The universe should mean something- there should be a plan. And yet, there are needs in our hearts that aren’t reasonable. Logic- the things we know for sure about the world- these things are not enough to satisfy us. Meursault keeps voicing this with the refrain, it doesn’t matter. When he puts things in his cosmic order- he understands His mother’s death doesn’t matter- not in the grand scheme of things. This relationship he has with this woman- it doesn’t matter. His job-it doesn’t matter- and so his response is to detach himself from all of it. Why should he attach himself to things that don’t matter? What’s the point? And yet, pointlessness is leaving him bored. It’s also leaving him inert. He doesn’t go anywhere or make decisions. Why should he, nothing matters. Camus writes, “I said the world is absurd but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational world and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as it does on the world.” In other words, it’s not that nothing matters that’s the problem. The fact, that we keep looking for things TO matter- that’s where the craziness happens.
In the preface of the English edition, Camus describes Meursault. Really, he’s not describing him as much as he’s defending him. Let me read what Camus has told us about his protagonist:
The hero of the book is condemned because he doesn’t play the game. In this sense he is a stranger to the society in which he lives; he drifts in the margin, in the suburb of private, solitary, sensual life. This is why some readers are tempted to consider him as a waif. You will have a more precise idea of this character, or one at all events in closer conformity with the intentions of the author, if you ask yourself in what way Meursault doesn’t play the game. The answer is simple: He refuses to lie. Lying is not only saying what is not true, and as far as the human heart is concerned, saying more than one feels. This is what we all do every day to simplify life. Meursault, despite appearances does not wish to simplify life. He says what is true. He refuses to disguise his feelings, and immediately society feels threatened….” There’s more and we don’t have time to read it all, but Camus goes on to say that Meursault is a man who and again I quote, “is poor and naked, in love with the sun which leaves no shadows. Far from its being true that he lacks all sensibility, a deep, tenacious passion animates him, a passion for the absolute and for truth. It is still negative truth, that truth of being and of feeling, but one without which no victory over oneself and over the world will ever be possible”.
Again, and this is still recapping the general idea of last week. Meursault refuses to do what Camus calls “philosophical suicide” in his companion piece, “the myth of Sisyphus”. He won’t buy into an easy answer that will keep him from facing reality. Meurseualt wants to really see life with clarity- this is what Camus is calling honest- not because he doesn’t tell lies. He will lie for Raymond, as we see and likely find despicable. But he won’t lie to Marie about loving her or to the nursing home people about wanting to see his mother. Camus said this, and I know we’re quoting Camus’ other writings a lot, but I think they help tell his story. He says this, “I understand then why the doctrines that explain everything to me also debilitate me at the same time. They relieve me of the weight of my own life, and yet I must carry it alone.” So, in other words, when explain or simplify the world to ourselves through religious terms, economic terms, political terms, whatever terms we want to, maybe we numb the burden of suffering to some degree, but the cost of that is personal honesty. And that might not be something we should do. The best way for me to understand this is to think in terms of The Matrix, as in the movie. In that movie, some people didn’t know they were basically vegtables in a machine’s concoction. But there were others that did know, but then just decided they didn’t care- they plugged themselves back in. For Camus, that is a no-go. You must face your own reality- knowing that it is absurd. You just have to.
The Matrix is a great example. When Camus says Meursault doesn’t lie, he means it. Meusault won’t live in the Matrix, and just like in the movie, this is a threat. It makes everyone uncomfortable. Having said that in his defense, it is not possible to read this and not be uncomfortable with Meursault, with his choices, with his inertia, with his inability to exercise any agency of any kind- especially when he witnesses and even participates in some pretty horrific things culminating in an actual death.
Yes- and now we have finally reached the theme for this episode. Last week, we laid down the premise of the absurdity of life, which we’ve just revisited, we laid down the premise that we’re all just specks in the universe which creates this absurdity of life- life goes on with or without us and we eventually disappear completely- another big point- but what bothers Camus the most, and we see it bothering Meursault- is not just those two things- it’s this third idea- if all this is true then why the heck, can I not shake this burden of guilt that the universe has laid upon me? That is the piece that doesn’t make sense. It’s the question that threads the narrative from beginning to end, and although it’s subtle, as guilt often is, it bears down mercilessly like the cruel and penetrating sun.
We pointed it out last week when it showed up on page 1 when Mersault asks off work and immediately feels compelled to justify his absence with the line, “it’s not my fault.”. Although we didn’t point it out in the podcast, as you read chapter 1, we saw Mersault feeling the need to defend his choice of putting his mother in the home, as if someone were judging him for that- and indeed, this week he finds out from Salomanno that people were actually judging him behind his back for that. He feels judged for his decision not to see her dead body. He feels guilty for drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette with the caretaker. When his mother’s friends come in he actually says this, “For a second I had the ridiculous feeling that they were there to judge me.” He doesn’t know his mother’s exact age. That is highlighted- something to feel guilty about. I point these things out because they all come back as reasons to judge him when he actually in a literal trial. At the funeral procession, with the sun glaring down, he is confronted with a woman who says this, to him, “if you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church.” To which Meursault thinks this thought.. “she was right. There is no way out.”
One of those statements that true on various levels- an epiphany in a way.
Yeah, I think it’s something like that. Now we’re in chapter two, Meursault tells Marie that his mom has died. She looks at him, as if to judge him, and he wants to again justify himself with the same line he told his boss- that it wasn’t his fault, but he decides not to. Because now, he’s acknowledging something a little deeper- there’s been a progression here that we should follow through the story. He says this, “you always feel a little guilty.”
What do you think that means? Of course, it’s true and extremely normal to feel guilt when someone dies, especially when someone you love dies, and Meursault did love his mother. I think that’s absolutely true, so in this case you just can’t help but feel responsible and guilty.
Why do you say with such assurance that Meaursault loved his mother? He claims that they were bored with each other, and lots of people later on are going to accuse him for exactly the opposite.
Because I’m a big believer in ignoring what people say and paying attention to what people do. We can see from Meursault’s behaviors that he did love his mother. And not just because he calls her maman. But he provided for her. The reason he sent her to the home was because he didn’t want her sitting in that house by herself. His concern was that she was bored- he wanted what was best. He’s clearly a man with a modest income, and yet he is her sole provider. He provides faithfully- and there is no expression of resentment in him towards her. He seems happy to do it. His guilt originates in love- and I think we are going to see that there is evidence he loves Marie too, to some degree. Meursault’s problem is not that he can’t feel. Meursault definitely can feel. He just can’t get his mind to wrap around what his feelings mean. Feelings obviously aren’t rational. That don’t have a point, and for Meursault, that’s a huge problem.
Honestly, Camus expressing here this idea of not conforming to society’s expectations of how you express yourself is again something that resonates with so many teenagers- all of us really- but especially teenagers. This idea of appearing apathetic when in reality, it’s not apathy but numbness that you’re experiencing gets people in all kinds of problems. In my world, it manifests itself with flunking grades. How many boys, and they usually are boys- are made to sit in a chair with their teachers, their guidance counselors, and their parents- sometimes all in the same room at the same time- and the general theme of the meeting is that they are there to tell the student he simply don’t care about his learning. They are there because they care, and they want him to understand how bad it is that he doesn’t care about his education; his family, his life- all of which can be seen through a general apathy towards school, skipping, perhaps drugs, trouble-making of one sort or another. The student sits in agreement with the behaviors, but often the point that is incorrect is the diagnosis of apathy as the culprint- it’s simple to say that the student just doesn’t care. But more often than not, the problem- paradoxically, is the opposite. It’s the caring that causes the jam with failing grades and the other self-sabotaging behaviors.
I’ve been in hundreds of those meetings myself. And the irony is in the pointlessness of it all. The student feels guilty. That’s never the problem. We can see that they feel guilty. Sometimes they may even cry. Often they feel badly for making their mothers come up to school at 6:30 in the morning (in Memphis that’s when these meetings are always held). They feel badly for not being able to make themselves do the work. They feel badly for the bad grades, the school skipping, the vaping in the bathroom, whatever it is. They feel badly for the shame of the confrontation. The feeling of guilt is definitely overwhelming, but what does that do? When has guilt ever been a good motivator for success? As with Meursault, guilt, especially generalized guilt, usually escalates into other things.
Camus makes our absurd hero wrestle with this absurd problem. And if I were a character in the story, I’d be fussing at Meursault non-stop, although, I already know it would be futile. I can already hear myself, “Treat that girl better. Take that promotion. Stop hanging out with that garbage of a human.” But, in my estimation, Meursault runs hard in the wrong direction- or at least not the direction, I would want him to go if I were his mother. He runs straight into his feelings of guilt and pushes them to their most extreme point. Let’s watch how this happens with each engagement.
Well, the next engagement of note for me is Meursault running into his old neighbor Salamano and his dog. The relationship Salamano has with his dog is one Camus is strangely interested in>. He describes the man and his dog almost like a miserable old married couple.
Page 26-27
Christy, what are we supposed to make of this?
Well, that’s always the question with Camus, isn’t it? What are we supposed to make of it. I find myself judging this man because he’s cruel to his dog. But Meursault won’t do that. He doesn’t want to be judged, so he doesn’t judge Salamano- just like he won’t judge Raymond- and Raymond is absolutely one of the most terrible people in all of literature. I would stack him up against Katherine Earnshaw, or Napoleon the Pig, or Jack from Lord of the flies.
OH my, that is a lovely cast of characters. Yes, he’s a terrible person. He’s a pimp, or at least seems to be. He beats the woman he lives with to the point that she bleeds- and yet Meursault won’t judge him. In fact, later on he helps him.
Yes, that irks me. He writes a letter for him. He lies for him. At one point Raymond asks Meursault what he thinks about all the horrible things he’s done and plans on doing to the Moorish girl he’s abusing, and Meursault flat out refuses to make any moral judgements. He has no empathy for the girl, either. He said he didn’t think anything but thought it was interesting. Talk about what comes across to the reader as absurd- his reaction to me is absurd. But after all of this, Camus only observes- at the end of chapter 3, we read only this, “All I could hear was the pounding in my ears. I stood there, motionless. And in old Salamano’s room, the dog whimpering softly.”
As Meursault absorbs what I would consider to be two very obvious expressions of evil in the world- Camus creates what he calls a “divorce between the world as it is and man’s conception of the world as it ought to be”. What he’s describing here is the world as it is, and not the world as I want it to be where pets and women are held in places of tenderness- where respect for life itself is highly regarded and where raw power isn’t exercised so mercilessly.
And yet, if life doesn’t matter, as Meursault understands that it doesn’t, if speckness is a reality, as it clearly is, if we feel guilt for things we aren’t really guilty for because of some irrational force from the universe, then what difference does it make if a man abuses his dog and beats a woman he’s had sex with mercilessly and violently? It just doesn’t matter. Moral distinctives don’t matter.
Yikes- this is deeply negative stuff.
Oh yes, and the offense doesn’t end there. In chapter 4, we circle back to Marie. The romance between these two is every bit as absurd as the violence we saw in chapter 3. Meursault, wants Marie, as in the sexual sense, when he see her in a red and white dress (make of those colors what you will); he notes her breasts again, btw- and I’m not sure how to understand all of that. But anyway, They spend the day and night together; it’s all very sensual. The next morning, instead of cutting out before Meursault wakes up, Marie sticks around. Meursault goes out to get some meat for them and then we have an odd juxtaposition of observations. Let’s read these:
Page 35-36
I agree with Marie. It IS terrible. But Meursault doesn’t make judgements. He doesn’t say anything. He is an outsider. He is a stranger. For Meursault, he couldn’t see that any of it mattered to him. Why should it?
I think he believes that is the rational thing to believe, but I think there is something about this absurdity that refuses to let him find peace. In chapter 6 his boss basically offers him a big promotion. He is offered an opportunity to work in Paris, to travel, to do all the things, we would ascribe as being important. Meursault’s reaction to this offer is as apathetic as his reaction to Raymond beating the pulp out of his mistress. He says to his boss that he isn’t interested in a change of life. He says One life is as good as another. He’s not dissatisfied with his life there in Algiers. But here’s the crux of it. It just doesn’t matter. None of it mattered. For the absurd hero, that’s where you get to with everything. He says this same thing when Marie revisits their relationship.
Page 41-42
It’s turning into a refrain- nothing matters- nothing matters- nothing matters. Meursault dwells in a lot of silence- for the very reason that nothing matters. He explains nothing because there’s nothing to explain. He expresses almost no feelings to us, his readers, but ironically, as we will see during his trial, everyone that he knows defends him as being a pretty decent human being. Fpr the most part, he does right by the people in his life: his mother, Marie, Raymond, Salomano, even Celeste the lady from the diner. That is not the problem. For Meaursalt, the problem is not that whether he loved or didn’t love his mother- the problem is that it doesn’t matter if he did or didn.t. He doesn’t matter if he loves Marie. He’s happy to marry her if she wants, but really the fact they they love or don’t love, marry or don’t marry- it just doesn’t matter. And on and on he goes with everything in the world. For Camus, this reality, that can make you dizzy if you go around and around about it – has to be where you start if you want to break out of the cycle of the absurd. You have to start at this point of being rationally honest. The problem is, once you find yourself at this basic existential understanding that life doesn’t care about you- now you have the problems Meurault is facing? At that point, How do you prevent total boredom? How do you even make decisions? The outcomes don’t matter. And these are tje two constant realities we see in Meursault’s life and which I find incredibly annoying. He can’t care, and he can’t decide anything for himself. He lets everyone else in the world make the decisions seemingly because he doesn’t see any difference between one course of action versus another. He feels just as guilty at every point. He figures if I don’t care, and you do, we’ll just do what you want. Why not? His goal is to escape that guilty feeling, but the universe won’t let him.
This is the Meursault of part 1, and this is the Meursault that arrives on a beach, shoots a man, and then allows us to walk away from the passage, wondering if it was his fault that he just killed a man who he likely didn’t know his name or hold anything againt.
Ironically, for me, the day of the murder is really the happiest day in the entire story, so much so that out of no where we see Meursault having the thought and I quote, “for the first time, maybe, I really thought I was going to get married.” He’s thinking in the future and not in the exact present moment only.
If we think about it in terms of guilt, which I think we should do, we can see this book being about three deaths for which Meursault considers in regard to his own guilt. In the first instance, Meursault is connected to and held responsible for the death of a woman he did not kill, a woman he loved. That is sentence one. The second death is the death of a person that Maursault is 100% responsible for killing but for whose death he did not wish nor even intend. In this case, we are made to question the degree to which he is responsible for what he did. There’s no question, he pulled the trigger. There is no question he was not provoked. Meursault is at fault. The final death will be his own in part two, and it is in facing this final death that Meursault finds some semblance of happiness, peace- and incredibly absolution of guilty.. and it’s not because he has a secret death wish- he absolutely does not commit suicide- but he’d rather face the guillotine than live dishonestly- and it is in facing hopelessness that he finds some sort of higher calling- although, again, if I’d been his mother, I’d say, I’m glad for your higher calling, son, but play the game a little bit. Because honestly, it seems obvious, if he had just played the game a little bit, he could have gotten out of the string events that lead to the guillotine.
For sure, as we know from history, in the context of colonialism, the murder of an Arab by a Frenchman would not have been considered a serious crime. Again, if you read Things Fall Apart with us, we saw that play out in that book as well. In most cases, something like this, with just a little cooperation from the defendant, would have been handled to ensure minimal penalty….but Camus won’t let Meursault play the game. He seems to want us to look at the culpability of this crime in a strange way. We are not meant to feel sympathy for the Arab and his family- that is for sure- they don’t even play into our understanding of events at all. We are interested in only the forces at play in Meursault. This is not a story about a man versus man conflict. We are dealing with forces that are greater than just a man. So why do we have a baseless and senseless murder?
Yeah, this is where I feel like I’m wading into the philosophical weeds that could get me in trouble with scholars who have so many different opinions on how to answer that question. Dang Camus, with his description style leaves so much ambiguity. He plays around with symbols and forces us to draw some very personal conclusions. There is room to argue, but I will have a go at it this murder scene- because it is here that we are arrive at the fullness of absurdity. Nothing is more absurd than death- in fact that is what defines absurdity- we yearn for life but we eventually get death. So, let’s look at this one. For, the murderer- the name Meursaultis interesting as to how it breaks down when we translate it into English. It literally could be translated two ways mer- means sea- salt is salt- so this name could mean sea-salt- or it could mean it could mean mer- as in the present tesne of I die. And salt if it doesn’t meant salt as in what we put on fries could mean salt- as in I leap. This name coule be translated “die leap”- let me just throw that at you- is the absurd hero Meursault a man who is taking a leap towards the ultimate absurdity itself- death.
Okay- let’s say he is. But why? Why do that? One thing you can say about Meursault is that he’s not really an unhappy person. He’s not dissatisfied. He’s not greedy. He actually expresses a great deal of satisfaction and even happiness.
True- all of that is true- but think of the first sentence of the myth of sysyphys- what does Camus think is the only question really worth asking. Should I commit suicide? Meursault is all those things, but at the same time, he can’t escape are guilt, boredom and inertia. That’s the trifecta. He probably could handle a lot of suffering, people do- but they have a hard time handling guilt, boredome and inertia. If we want to put it in terms that a Christian might understand, you might say that Camus is trying to understand, explain and overcome what Christians call “original sin”- I am guilty by my nature- not by my behavior. This is irrational and for for Meursault it’s an impasse. He wants out of that conundrum. It makes him extremely uncomfortable. The scenes on the beach are full of sun and are incredible uncomfortable from the moment Raymond pulls out the gun – the sun stops the world- there is the sea, the sand, the sun, silence. There is intense heat.
Let’s read it
Page 58/59
The sun made him do it. What does that mean?
Isn’t that the million dollar question? Camus makes Meursault innocent here. He doesn’t hold him responsible. The sun’s responsible. And yet, he’s not innocent, obviously. He’s guilty by choice. He shoots the Arab once, then he pauses then he shoots him four more times. Camus carefully creates a separation between the arguable involuntary shot and then the four that were absolutely on purpose. Meursault actually stopped after the first shot and then starts up again. This is about assuming guilt. Meursault wants something with this. He wants to be guilty- to understand himself as being guilty. Where before nothing meant anything- as he said over and over again- he has now committed a specific offense for which there is a concrete association with guilt. Meursault had not wanted to look at his mother’s dead body- he didn’t understand why he felt that generalized guilt, but here Meursault understands. He looks and to use his words, He knows he has broken the equilibrium of the day. He has come to feel responsible.
And I know I’m getting ahead, but my mind goes here, to Camus’ later writing, in The Rebel, he says “Conscience comes to light with revolt.” This feels like revolt against the universe. Against, God, if you will.
Definitely. It is, and it is rebellion and revolt. These will be the themed for episode 3 as we try to break down part 2 of the book- which IS the optimistic side- and we will find one. At the end of part one, Meursault will not say anything. He reacts in silence. Shooting the Arab four more times was like “knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.”
Well, I guess he’s not happy about killing the Arab. There was no vengeance; no thrill or blood thirst. Just the door of unhappiness on a day that had been actually pretty happy.
Yeah, I think so. Some say there will always have to wade through unhappiness to get to consciousness and the peace on the other side. I think Camus leans this way. The sun, if we cannot figure out or agree on what it symbolizes- if nothing else expresses something that is subjugating our hero and from which he finally feels an overwhelming compulsion to revolt. He knows it won’t help. He knows he can’t escape the sun, but this metaphysical need to fight back is the sentiment.
And so we see, for the first time our apathetic character that can never do anything on his own accord- finally act upon the world. It’s a negative act to be sure.
A terrible act…and one which will come at a cost…but for Camus…that’s the beauty of art. Meursault’s act is necessary- and not just for him, but for us as well. We cannot confront the absurdity of our lives without assistance. In some ways, Meursault’s murder of the Arab is the act of conscious for us too, and if we can arrive at it with the aid of art, perhaps we can also push through the door into consciousness without the four condemning knocks of unhappiness-or at least without their stinging consequences.
Goodness, Christy, that is really living vicariously…I think I just heard you say, if we feel the need to murder the universe, read this book and let Camus do it for us, to avoid all the messy clean up of an Agatha Christie style detective story.
Yes, I think maybe it’s something like that.
Well, there you go. Next week, we will walk with Meursault through the long and claustrophobic trial scene and watch his world play out in yet another set of strange metaphysical contradictions.
The absurd conclusion to the absurd!!!
So, thanks for listening….yadayayada
We cannot confront the absurd without assistance. This is what art is designed to do.”In this universe the work of art is then the sole change of keeping this consciousness and of fixing its adventures.” Art succeeds where reason fails. Art succeeds because it does not explain or sovle. It just experiences and describes.” It is inductive.
“the novel creates destintiy to suit any eventuality. In this way it competes with creation and p, provisionally, conquers death… “It expresses a metaphysical need.” Art provides a sense of unity. That’s why symbols are important. They are ambigiuous. Camus believes we can only think in images.
In the human condition “there is a basic absurdity as well as an implacable nobility.” Symbols oscillate between the natural and the extraordinary- the individual and the universal. The image as a parable: the attempt to express the undefineable nature of feeling by what is obvius and undefinable in concrete things.”
What characterizies our century is not so much the need to rebuild the world as to rethink it.”
Camus was concerned that language had become estranged from reality- like Orwell. He quoted Isaiah from the Bible and said this, “the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence- through a curious transposition peculiar to our times- it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself”. He wanted authentic social and political communities to have the lucity to call good and evil by their right names. Revolt is a reaction against human suffering and injustice. It begins in solitude but progresses into an act of solidarity in the name of all men and women. Rebellion is constitutive of human nature. “In order to exist, man must rebel,”. “When rebellion, in rage or intoxication, adopts the attitude of ‘all or nothing’ and the negation of all existence and all human nature, it is at this point that it denies itself…rebellion’s demand is unity.”
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