Albert Camus was an Algerian-French absurdist author, who wrote novels like The Outsider and The Plague. In The Outsider he tells the story of an emotionless and immoral character, Meursault, and how he deals with the norms of the society and the...

When one questions the existence of God, one often reverts to a specific, troubling question: “if God exists, why are there moral tragedies that cause such great suffering?” In other words, humans find it very difficult when there is an event or...

Many philosophers have believed for centuries that no intrinsic meaning exists in the universe. From this belief emerged many responses, including absurdism and existentialism. Although all are heavily influenced by the beliefs of Søren...

There is a Latin phrase “Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur,” which translates to “The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived” (Sebastian). These words resonate particularly well when applied to Albert Camus’ The Stranger. To conform...

Choice is inescapable and inevitable to all who exist or have ever existed. When meeting a fork in the road, a decision is always made, even if no action is taken. Utterly paradoxical, even the act of no decision at all is stepping in one...

Meursault, the main character in Albert Camus’s The Stranger, is an intriguing individual with a complicated relationship to the world around him. He is curious by nature, and often wonders about the reality and purpose of the situations he finds...

During the twentieth century, life in Europe changed drastically, due to the multitude of events and changes that crowded this century. From the wars to the effects of the Industrial revolution, the lives of Europeans were constantly changing,...

Throughout the duration of Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger, the narrator, Meursault, evolves in terms of his self-awareness and world-view, a change which Camus uses to aid the reader in understanding both his protagonist and the existentialist...

In absurdist fiction, authors and writers focus on characters who investigate the meaning of human existence in order to call into question existential notions. Some writers may utilize character’s confrontation with absurdism to either reject or...

The French novel The Stranger, written by Albert Camus and translated by Matthew Ward, describes a French-colonized Algeria in the 1940’s. Throughout the novel, central arguments and themes are being linked together by different scenes. In the...

In Albert Camus’ novel The Stranger, different women can be seen as having achieved various levels of enlightenment when compared to the final, ‘complete’ enlightenment Meursault achieves at the end of the novel. In the end, Meursault embraces...

The search for purpose has been an infamous struggle for people throughout history. When traveling on the journey of self-enlightenment, many people face obstacles that hinder their ability to determine who they really are. People may ostensibly...

Inasmuch as the human psyche has a prospect for advancement and evolution, the human mind must contrive a plane of imagination upon which certain concepts and taboos can be explored and grappled with, for most of life comes from fiction, not fact....

In "The Stranger" by Albert Camus, the main character, Meursault, is seen to be a very passive and reserved individual. He appears to show indifference in situations where others would have shown emotion. These characteristics of Meursault, and...

Thinking about the sun will likely produce similar thoughts in any person: heat, energy, light, life. Albert Camus though, in his novel The Stranger, utilizes the sun to serve a much more abstract purpose. Meursault, the narrator, naturally finds...

Albert Camus’s L’Étranger or The Stranger is a psychological study of a character Meursault, the novel’s first-person narrator who has recently lost his mother, or his Maman. Originally written in French, it has been translated into in English by...

The Significance of Institutions: Nadja, The Stranger, and Waiting for Godot Our human society is ruled by institutions. We cannot even fathom a life without them. We might think we have freedom, but there is only a certain amount of freedom we...

The philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Camus confront the meaninglessness of existence in unique fashions. Nietzsche’s The Gay Science utilizes short paragraphs discussing particular existentialist themes such as the death of god and...

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” This is the explanation of...

"He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool" (Wyatt). As this quote by Albert Camus suggests, he was not a very optimistic writer. His gloomy look on life itself can be seen all too clearly in "The...

The backbone of existentialism states that individuals are just that-individual, unique, independently conscious beings; rather than the varied labels, stereotypes, or any arbitrary preconceived notions that the individuals may fit into, the...

The Myth of Sisyphus is one of the profound philosophical texts written in the 20th century. The book was originally published in French as Le Mythe de Sisyphe in 1942. Albert Camus’ philosophy of absurdity is most apparent in Le Etranger (The...

“We can always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?”[1] Samuel Beckett’s character Estragon asks his friend Vladimir in Beckett’s tragicomedy, Waiting for Godot. This postmodernist play has provoked an enormous amount of...

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were two students at Wittenberg in the 16th century.[1] Students of the same school and of the same names are also minor characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the main characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are...