A strange look into an apathetic man’s life. Or at least, that is what we are led to believe. Meursault’s lack of empathy for his dead mother, the nonchalance in his agreement to marry a girlfriend – all this mutters of sociopathy. Indeed when he kills a man, it seems to follow this careless, ambivalent wandering through life. It’s just ‘an unfortunate thing that happened’. It doesn’t seem to make sense. The subsequent trial goes to lengths to gaslight and forget about how Meursault first stopped Raymond from trying to kill the man. It’s true that Meursault’s murder makes no sense, but I think Camus’ point is that none of this does. Meursault fits perfectly into the absurd world where even freedom loses its value when one becomes accustomed to prison life.
In an unexpected way, this novel turns into a kind of bildungsroman where we see our protagonist develop from pure apathy at the meaninglessness of the world, into an understanding of its meaninglessness, yet with an appreciation of its beauty – just before his life is taken away.
This is a powerful whirl not only about the absurdity of the world, and our needing to come to terms with it, but a cry against the horror of the death penalty in the joy of life, and the meaning in appreciating the small relationships such as that between an old man and the dog he loves and hates.
Eventually, just like Meursault and Marie, we are all forgotten – but I don’t think this novel will be.