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Albert Camus

Peter Gallagher

Camus’ The Stranger & Its Philosophical Background

Albert Camus’ novel, The Stranger, appealed to a younger European generation that was trying to find its view of life after the tragedies of WWII and Nazism. Though he eventually came to more mature notions of how a human being should act before his tragic death from a accident in 1960, Camus always believed in the ideas expressed in The Stranger that man must find his own meaning in life, separate from religious or political doctrine. While he was brought up a Catholic, he largely rejected religious authority and he opposed any rigid political authority because of his experiences with totalitarianism. Marxism and Communism were popular political ideas in France at the time, but Camus came to reject any kind of systematic philosophy, whether it was in politics or in the church. The Stranger well illustrates these philosophical ideas of his.
In many ways The Stranger comes across as a very odd book. The novel reflects a philosophy that to many people would appear irrational and even absurd. The main character, Mersault, feels that life has no meaning and at the beginning of the novel is confused and possibly distressed about that. By the end of the novel, however, in his recognition of life’s meaninglessness, he comes to a kind of happiness. This book obviously reflects Camus’ own view of life at the time.
Albert Camus was a famous French philosopher and writer whose influence went far beyond that of a usual novelist. He was most comfortable, however, in expressing his ideas in fiction. His way of thinking along with that of a few other Frenchmen became known as existentialism. Existentialism is a movement of thought which arose in Europe in the middle of the last century. Though Camus was never comfortable with describing himself as an existentialist, this philosophic viewpoint became fashionable in France and he was identified with it by the public.
Existentialism emphasized the...