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Plot

Part One begins with Meursault being notified of his mother's death. He attends her funeral, yet expresses none of the emotions which are expected in such a circumstance. At her wake, when asked if he wishes to view the body, he declines, and, instead, smokes a cigarette and drinks white coffee before the unseen body. Rather than expressing his own feelings (either secretly to the reader or openly to the others characters) he only comments to the reader about the others at the funeral. He later encounters, by chance, Marie, a former employee of his firm, and the two become re-acquainted and begin to have a sexual relationship. In the next few days, he helps his friend and neighbor, Raymond Sintès, take revenge on a Moorish girlfriend suspected of infidelity. For Raymond, Meursault agrees to write a break-up letter, because, he claims, there is no reason not to help him. Meursault simply cannot see any reason not to if it pleases Raymond. One must understand that Meursault lives completely in the present. As an existentialist, he has no reason to regret what he does because it is done; regret is redundant. In this state of mind, Meursault is also living fully in the present: he feels joy and anger and frustration like every other human; he has a soul. The difference is that his feelings are sensual, they are experienced and explained through his senses: feeling the heat of the sun, etc. Mersault's chronicle is bereft of emotions and empathy. This is not necessarily to say that he lacks these; however, they are conspicuously absent from the narrative.

The events are narrated by the main character, Meursault, a clerk in what seems to be an export-import firm located in Algiers. We are given no positive information about his age; he is a young man, and like most of Camus’ heroes, he is probably around thirty. In Part I, the events are narrated day by day, as if Meursault were keeping a journal. The shooting takes place on the eighteenth day, a Sunday. Part Two covers a period a little over eleven months, and the whole period is narrated retrospectively. No time preferences are given in Part III: the narrator talks of his meditations and one of the event, his interview with the chaplain. This is a personal chronicle… Meursault is writing a chronicle of death (Viggiani 866).^[1]

Subsequently, on a beach, they encounter the spurned girlfriend's brother and an Arab friend; these two confront Raymond and wound him with a knife during a fist fight. Later, walking back along the beach alone and now armed with a pistol he took from Raymond so that Raymond would not do anything rash, Meursault encounters the Arab and fires at him. Despite killing the Arab man with the first gun shot, he shoots the cadaver four more times. He does not divulge to the reader any specific reason for his crime or emotions he experiences at the time.

Part Two begins with Meursault incarcerated, explaining his arrest, time in prison, and upcoming trial.

At the trial, Meursault's quietness and passivity is seen as demonstrative of his seeming lack of remorse or guilt by the prosecuting attorney, and so the attorney concentrates more upon Meursault's inability or unwillingness to cry at his mother's funeral than on the actual murder. Meursault explains to the reader that he simply was never really able to feel any remorse or personal emotions for any of his actions in life, due to his philosophical world view. The dramatic prosecutor theatrically denounces Meursault to the point that he claims Mersault must be a soulless monster, incapable of remorse and that he thus deserves only to die for his crime. Although Meursault's attorney defends him and later tells Mersault that he expects the sentence to be light, Meursault is alarmed when the judge informs him of the final decision: that he will be decapitated publicly.

In prison, whilst awaiting the execution of his death sentence by the guillotine, Meursault meets with a chaplain, but rejects his proffered opportunity of turning to God, explaining that God is a waste of his time. Although the chaplain persists in attempting to lead Meursault from his atheism, Meursault finally attacks him in a rage, nearly injuring him. Meursault ultimately grasps the universe's indifference towards humankind (coming to terms with his execution based on the fact that he would die sooner or later):

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself — so like a brother, really — I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hatred.^[2]