Meursalt as a Nihilist in Albert Camus’s the Stranger Essay Example

maintains an absolute silence even on the news of his mother’s death. He does not show the least sign of mourning. Meursalt then visits an acquaintance, Raymond, who is busy drinking and beating his girlfriend all day long. Strolling the beach on a weekend, Meursalt and Raymond are followed by a group of young Arabs, whose leader is the girl’s brother. The Arab is all set to kill Raymond and thus stabs Raymond in a fight.

Hours later, Meursalt returns to the beach and with Raymond’s pistol murders the brother in cold blood- a murder that brings no remorse in Meursalt. Meursalt is arrested for the crime and during the trial, he makes no effort o defend himself or explain his action he is at a zero emotionally – he does not plead for clemency and does not even try a hand at saying a lie. At he end , he is sentenced to death, not for killing an Arab in colonial Algeria , but to honour Camus,s thesis that as he wrote in 1955, “in our society, any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs te risk of being sentenced to death”.

In The Stranger, the protagonist Meursault is not a conventional hero. Instead in his character we find a man who lost all ambition when he had to give up his studies and also one who has lost the habit of analyzing his feelings. Quintessentially he appears to be a nihilist- a man mentally at odds with the entire universe. He lives simply from day to day without ever probing into the pattern of happenings. He fails to,rather he deliberately prevents himself

from reacting to events and finds absolutely no reasons in thoughts and emotions.

The very first hint of Meursault’s nihilistic tendencies is the denial of any objective basis for truth. This can be established through his attitude towards his own life. He is strangely divorced from the society and even from himself. So strong is his detachment that matters of significance are treated with seemingly great level of indifference. He appears or is rather a character utterly disinterested in the nuances of anything- in particular life. His attitude is more of “why bother about anything.

The news of the death of his mother is spoken in a matter of fact tone. He tries to be precise. During the funeral procession he says that the hearsay makes him think of “pen-trays in the office” which is yet another unemotional detached reaction. Early in the book, when his mistress Marie asked him about marriage he said he would marry her but that he didn’t love her, and more significantly, that ……… “it didn’t make any difference to me”. There is a lack of emotional attachment of Meursault to Marie.

He seems to be associated with her because of his physical needs but the existence in real hardly matters to him. Meursault somehow is a kind of moral nihilist. Moral nihilism also known as ethical nihilism says that no action is necessarily preferable to any other. A moral nihilist would say that killing someone for whatever reason is not inherently wrong or right and Meursault is a hero among these lines only. He senselessly murders his friend’s enemy and when asked if he regretted the action, he merely replies, “I felt

kind of annoyed. He doesn’t find his action to be wrong instead shows a kind of attitude that people don’t matter dead or alive and that even a cold blooded murder is free from the shackles of wrong or right. Naturally he takes a similar attitude towards his own life when it is endangered. “nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew , why: so did he. Throughout the whole absurd life, I’d lived a dark wind has been rising towards me from somewhere deep in my future across years that was still to come, and as it passed this wind level whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the real ones I was living.

What did other people’s death or a mother’s love mattered to me; what did his god or the life people choose or the fate that they think elect mattered to me when we are all elected by the same fate, me and billion of privileged people like him who also call themselves my brother. ” His words completely acknowledge his nihilism or for that matter nihilistic ideas. Most nihilists tend to refer specifically to two institutions- the church and the state and advocate the complete inhibition of the two. Meursault comes out as a loyal nihilist when viewed from this point of view.

He totally rejects established laws and institutions and shows contempt for both. In the last part of the novel while Meursault waits for execution, he visited against his wishes by the prison chaplain. He recognizes the worthlessness of the chaplain’s so called certainties and the social and religious ideals he stands for. A nihilist

goes against religion and is completely against the legal without any reason this exactly what Meursault does in the novel. He emerges as a nihilist and the domain in which he lives is dominated by nihilism only.