Is this all Camus has to offer? I finished reading The Stranger and I can't understand why people hold it in such high regard. Yeah, existence is meaningless and absurd, but thats it? WOW, SOO PROFOUND!
Pretty much every single philosopher has an idea (like this), but then offers something of a solution to deal with the ideas presented.
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You really can't discuss a work of literature without spouting buzzwords and the use of infantile capitals? I think you need to work on yourself first, and not blame a book.
Camus's solution is better outlined in his essays included in the Myth of Sisyphus - it's not a revolutionary concept at all, simply an analysis of the conflict between subjective meaning and objective meaninglessness, with a celebration of the sensual pleasures and confusion of life. It hinges on the idea of rebellion and freedom, that humans find meaning in spite, and even, to spite an uncaring world. It's emotional, not logical.
However, The Stranger is a lot more subtle than most anons give credit here. For Camus, his primary focus in a lot of his works is on the apathetic nature of suffering and death. So, for The Plague, it's a sickness that seems to destroy and affect people's lives at random and comes and goes with no human influence. I think, in The Stranger, Meursault is the embodiment of that absurd reaper. Never does he preform anything for a particularly human reason. He acts almost on impulse and chance, with no real meditation. When he fucks, he does it without love. When he kills, he does it from the heat. He makes friends because they are there, with no regard for even their own internal lives. Meursault sees a world so lacking in meaning that he finds no meaning in himself, and behaves like an automaton, like the world itself. And if it was just this, the book would be bad.
But there's a great character development in his interactions with the priest and the judge. They make him aware of society's fear of apathy and destruction (which are his only two real character traits) and he begins to see both the hypocrisy and value of humanity in the meaningless world he is similar to. When the Priest talks about saving his soul, he reaches his only point of actual fury -- how could anyone be saved in an unsaved world? What does any of it matter in death? He calls him a corpse. This is the only piece of character development Merusault ever reaches, but its his evolution from nihilism to absurdism. Up until then, his attitude had always been like the world's: unmoving and constant as the sun that blinded him at the beach. But he realizes, and I think this is why the idea of the metaphorical reaper comes in, that he is uniquely of the world. He looks up at the benign indifference of the stars and he sees a brother and knows his life was happiness because he lived honestly. I think, by the title, which could be read as "The Alien" he finds comradeship there. Meursault is like a different species of man. And he realises, finally, that the anger and fear that people feel towards him will never be fully shared by him, but his taste of it awakens how he sees others must live. He hopes people are furious at his death, because he sees that their emotional outbursts to him are the same emotional outbursts at the brotherly stars and suns that kill us all at random. Merusault, in his prison cell, realizes the value of a race he will never be - and it is the absurd: meaning found in the meaningless.
Effectively, user, you could read Meursualt as a Christ figure, who acknowledges his superior moral knowledge of the world and accepts that men like him must die as a catalyst for those who are incapable of living without any meaning.
"It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope,
75
Albert Camus THE STRANGER
and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the
first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like
myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was
happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to
hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators
and that they should greet me with howls of execration."
-------------------------------------------------------------
Also, I think Camus gets a hard rap with a lot of philosophy students. As a philosopher he's nothing novel, but honest and simple. But as a writer, I think, he is fantastic.
Its honestly because OP is a woman. If you go on good reads and look up any 1 star review of a classic it's usually written by a woman, and has a similar structure(All caps, sarcastic writing, unable to appreciate a work in it's time).
Thumbs up
Also, multiple references to the fact that it was written by a white male, and proudly admitting that it changed their opinion of the novel. They also seem to completely misunderstand the point of literature, thinking that if the author writes a racist character, they must themselves be racist. It's sad.
>Also, I think Camus gets a hard rap with a lot of philosophy students. As a philosopher he's nothing novel, but honest and simple. But as a writer, I think, he is fantastic.
He was the Fonz of philosophy. Riding a motorcycle and banging models. I can understand the hatred of him but think he's cool.
I have a real man-crush for Camus.
>thinking that if the author writes a racist character, they must themselves be racist
This honestly triggers me every time. The thought that every character is a self-insert of the author is beyond ridiculous and shows someone is not a mature reader.
It's like chad giving you advice on how to get girls.
>just be yourself and ask her out bro
>olution is better outlined in his essays included in the Myth of Sisyphus
which is ?
Read it. Not everything needs to be spoonfed in a few words for your comfort.
It is acknowledging and then accepting the absurd, living by virtue of it. Honestly, those 24 pages convinced me to break up with my girlfriend.
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OP did it..
ohhh
Oh yes!
If you really want a laugh look at the one stars for the book we're discussing and someone said "if this happened today Mersault would get off Scott free because he was a white man in Florida (I know, I know), blah blah" I'm surprised that people on good reads are so dense. Like even more so than someone who hasn't read.
Whats wrong with being racist?
It's shoddy thinking, and easily proven as such. If you're comfortable with being a poor thinker, well, power to you, but don't expect others to put up with it.
No one in this world is guilty, but few may be responsible.
myth of suck this
am i right?
Would it be gay to fuck camus?
>It's shoddy thinking, and easily proven as such.
I'd like to see you prove it then
Camus isn't a nihilist, he's an absurdist. Just read The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays.
Camus' essential argument is that, while the prominent Nihilists are correct that there is no intrinsic purpose to existence, their fixation on suicide is just a hypocritical contrivance. He contends that if all is subjective, it is inevitable and only reasonable that we should come to accept our natural state (which the nihilists deemed through logic to be insufferable) as perfectly suited to our lives, powerless as we are to change it and loathe we are to end it.
Basically, if Sisyphus' entire existence consists of pushing a boulder uphill, he has no reason to feel discomfort. He has no experience which would tell him that things can be better, and only neurotic assumptions of (to the Nihilists) nonexistent logic backing such claims.
Meursault's decision to face his execution with apathy is not a statement on meaninglessness, but rather on accepting the meaningless because the belief that there could have been something else is ignorance.