The Stranger of Everyday Life: A Perspective
on Albert Camus’ The Outsider
Dr. Debabrata Adhikary
Assistant Professor of English
Hooghly Women’s College
Hooghly, West Bengal, India
Abstract:
The objective of the present paper is to
investigate whether we are/have already turned into modern day strangers like
Monsieur Mersault in the novel The Outsider by Albert Camus. If Mersault is
projected as an emotionless, heartless, cold robotic self who showed no concern
for his mother, or, for Marie’s marriage proposal, and, probably for other
human relations, and, was eventually put to death for possessing that
essentially emotionless criminal heart; then are we also somewhere not becoming
like him; whether due to the necessity of surviving in a complex modern day
world, or for some other reasons? And, of course, there is the omnipresence of
the absurd lurking somewhere and waiting for us. How does one deal with the
Absurd? How can one prepare oneself in a better way to meet the Absurd?
Keywords: strangers, emotionless, robotic,
complex, Absurd, modern day, prepare
The objective of the present paper is to trace whether we, the modern
day individuals are turning/have turned into ‘strangers’, or, ‘strange
outsiders’ in/through our everyday existence, like the stranger mentioned in
Albert Camus’ novel The Outsider.
Monsieur Meursault, who is presented in the novel as the strange outsider and
portrayed as an emotionally autistic, or, emotionally cathexized, mechanical,
robotic self, devoid of any feeling, passion and warmth; did not feel attached
to anything or any living being in particular in his everyday existence;
neither his dead mother (even when she was alive presumably, because he sent
her to old people’s home), nor Marie Cardona (the typist, to whom he only felt
physically and sexually attracted but not emotionally probably because he
remained ‘casual’ to her love proposal), nor his job/profession (he turned down
his boss’s lucrative offer of going to Paris and ‘travel part of the year’ as a
job assignment), nor his neighbours like Raymond Sintes or old Salamano (with
whom he talked because he had no reason ‘not to talk to’, or, probably because
they expected an ‘emotional assistance’ from him whenever they needed; almost
as an act of ‘unavoidable compulsion’). Indeed the protagonist of the story,
Monsieur Mersault is strangely different from other conventional human
characters. Does his difference stem from his awareness and hence possessing an
indifferent attitude about surviving in an essentially meaningless, pointless
world? Or, does his cold indifference stem from the fact that, unlike other
characters in the novel probably (especially the jury and the presiding judge)
it is Mersault who could ‘understand life’ actually; that in this world nothing
is permanent and that this present day modern existence is actually about being
self-aware, self-conscious, almost acutely, amid the thickness/crowd of ‘other’
things, without unnecessary being emotional, or getting attached to anything as
such, because all are ‘fleeting’, ‘transitional’ episodes, chapters in the book
of ‘life’:
Then I thought I should have some supper. My neck hurt a little from
leaning over the back of the chair for such a long time. I went out to buy some
bread and pasta, prepared my meal and ate it standing up. I wanted to smoke
another cigarette at the window but it was chilly now and I felt a little cold.
I closed the windows. As I stepped back into the room, I saw, reflected in the
mirror, the edge of the table where some bits of bread lay next to my oil lamp.
I thought that it was one more Sunday nearly over and done with, that Mama was
now dead and buried, that I would go back to work, and that when all was said
and done, nothing had really changed. (Camus, The Outsider, 22)
And, indeed nothing actually changes. Only one scene gradually replaces
the other in this ever-changing, ever-moving scenario. So, is Mersault’s
nonchalance in The Outsider arising
from the fact that he it is who could grapple with the fact that nothing in
this world is more certain, meaningful and logical than ‘I’ who just have to
continue his ‘existence’ in the spectrum/panorama of life? Is his emotional
indifference, or, emotional castration arising from the fact that irrespective
of whatever happens in the outside world, or, whatever show going on in the
vast picture of life, one just needs to keep on focusing how to maintain
‘self-possession’ while drinking tea; before falling to the ultimate grip of
the ‘Absurd’ lurking somewhere:
Particularly I remark
An English countess goes upon the stage
A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,
Another bank defaulter has confessed.
I keep my countenance,
I remain self-possessed
Except when a street-piano, mechanical and
tired
Reiterates some worn-out common song (Jain, T. S. Eliot: Selected Poems, pgs 11-12)
Is his impassivity arising from the fact that one can only measure out
one’s life with coffee spoon here, in this world, amid series of loose,
fragmented, disjointed, and fleeting pictures/images from the morning to night,
with no scope and time of getting ‘emotionally’ attached to anything; as Eliot
has noticed in his another poem ‘Preludes’? :
The winter evening settles down
The smell of steak in passage-ways.
Six o’clock,
The burnt-out ends of smoky days,
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
The broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab horse steams and stamps. (Green,
The Winged Word, 189)
Is Mersault’s casual approach to Marie’s love proposal in The Outsider due to the fact that even
love can be bought and sold in today’s world, and there is no point in getting
attached to such things, as has been observed by Eliot in the same poem
‘Preludes’:
You tossed a blanket on the bed,
You lay upon your back and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted; (Green, The Winged Word, 189)
Or, is Mersault’s casual approach to Marie’s love proposal due to the
very reason that deep attachment to a beloved ultimately brings surfeiting and
saturation in love, leading to bitterness and the parting of paths, as Grand
felt in The Plague by Albert Camus? :
The rest of the story, to Grand’s thinking, was very simple. The common
lot of married couples. You get married, you go on loving a bit longer, you
work. And you work so hard that it makes you forget to love. As the head of the
office where Grand was employed hadn’t kept his promise, Jeanne, too, had to
work outside. At this point a little imagination was needed to grasp what Grand
was trying to convey. Owing largely to fatigue, he gradually lost grip of
himself, had less and less to say, and failed to keep alive the feeling in his
wife that she was loved. An overworked husband, poverty, the gradual loss of
hope in a better future, silent evenings at home, what chance had any passion
of surviving such conditions? Probably Jeanne had suffered. And yet she’d
stayed; of course one may often suffer a long time without knowing it. Thus
years went by. Then, one day, she left him. (Camus, The Plague, 81-82)
Because Mersault accepted the naturally absurd, it was not difficult for
him to show lack of warmth and passion for Marie whom he liked to spend time
with, or, perhaps to have a causal relationship with, but not to love and live
together; for the aims, concern for the future and having a better, happy and satisfactory
life is but an illusion to bypass, hoodwink the inevitable:
That evening, Marie came to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry
her. I said that it was all the same to me and that we could get married if she
wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I replied as I had once
before that that didn’t mean anything, but said I was pretty sure I didn’t love
her. ‘Why marry me, then?’ she asked. (Camus, The Outsider, 38)
So, love, in this overwhelming predominance of absurdity and
meaninglessness can and should get reduced to eating together, swimming
together, and sleeping together without having any unnecessary hangover of
emotion and feeling, without having any unnecessary attachment to each other.
And, probably in present times we should understand love like this, as Mersault
did.
Is Mersault’s impassivity stemming from the fact that one has to sustain
his/her ‘existence’ through the picture of void, desolation and emptiness all
around, with nothing to call one’s own, or, nobody emotionally to bank upon,
thereby making us face to face with the essential fact that man is alone in
this meaningless and unintelligible universe:
After they’d gone, the street gradually became deserted. The shows had
all started, I suppose. Only the shopkeepers and a few cats were left in the
street. The sky was clear but not very bright above the ficus trees that lined
the road. On the pavement opposite, the tobacconist brought out a chair, put it
in front of his door and straddled it, resting both arms on its back. The trams
that had been jam-packed just a short while ago were now almost empty. In the
little café called ‘Chez Pierrot’, next to tobacco shop, the waiter was
sweeping up sawdust in the empty room. (Camus, The Outsider, 20)
Probably that is the reason of Monsieur Mersault’s emotionlessness on
the day of his mother’s funeral, as he knew that it was but natural that people
sometimes would wish their loving persons to die, and there was nothing wrong
in it:
The prosecution had learned that ‘I’d shown no emotion on the day of
Mama’s funeral. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask you about this,’ my lawyer said, ‘but
it’s very important. And it will be a key argument for the prosecution if I
have nothing to counter it.’ He wanted me to help him. He asked me if I’d been
upset that day. I found the question quite surprising and thought how
embarrassed I would have been if I’d had to ask it. Nevertheless, I replied
that I’d rather lost the habit of analysing my emotions and so it was difficult
to explain. I undoubtedly loved Mama very much, but that didn’t mean anything.
Every normal person sometimes wishes the people they love would die. (Camus, The Outsider, pg. 58-59)
After all, all the human relations that we know and gradually get
acquainted with, after coming into the world, one after another, get faded and
die away like the fall of music from a farther room, as noted by T. S. Eliot,
and, there is nothing to be emotional about them:
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So, how should I presume? (Green, The
Winged Word, 185)
So, is Mersault to be blamed for accepting the essential irrationality,
meaninglessness, and pointlessness of our everyday existence? Is he to be
blamed for accepting the inevitable and natural ‘absurd’? At the end of the
novel, does his execution by guillotine justify that he is a criminal? Or, does
his death-penalty suggest what may the consequences be of being misfit in a
so-called ‘logical’, ‘reasonable’, and ‘meaningful’ world? Did the
‘meaningful’, intelligible world suppress him in the story for his normal act
of non-conformity, discarding of ‘value judgements’ (for ‘factual judgements’),
and, drawing of conclusions from what he saw (rather than from some
hypothetical rules and statements)? Did the emotionless seeing the present type
life-vision of Mersault enable and better prepare him for encountering the
absurd in the story? Did his emotional liberty better equip him to handle the
absurd, encountered in the form of being enmeshed in a tricky situation when,
from nowhere, he had to commit the murder of the Arab as a means of
self-defence/self-survival, and had also to get convicted and executed by
guillotine for the same; as has also been suggested by Albert Camus in his Lyrical and critical Essays? :
For in this universe man is free of the
shackles of his prejudices, sometimes from his own nature, and, reduced to
self-contemplation, becomes aware of his profound indifference to everything
that is not himself. He is alone, enclosed in this liberty. It is a liberty
that exists only in time, for death inflicts on it a swift and dizzying denial.
His condition is absurd. He will go no further, and the miracles of those
mornings when life begins anew have lost all meanings for him. (Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, 205)
Also, if the ‘Absurd’ is the inevitable destiny of the human beings,
then how can one better prepare and adapt himself/herself for meeting that?
Where does one meet the essential Absurd? Does that happen only in ‘death’s
dream kingdom’ and not anywhere else? So, does that mean that one has to
necessarily make the most of what is available today, as tomorrow or day after
tomorrow we might be engulfed by the omnipotent absurd (in the form of death),
as the famous song ‘Kal Ho Na Ho’ from the 2003 movie Kal Ho Na Ho, starring Shahrukh Khan suggest? Does Mersault’s
indifferent attitude stem from an indifference to the future in general, and
making the ‘most living’ instead of the ‘best living’, as has been pointed out
by Albert Camus in his another book The
Myth of Sisyphus? :
But what does life mean in such a universe?
Nothing else for the moment but indifference to the future and a desire to use
up everything that is given. Belief in the meaning of life always implies a
scale of values, a choice, our preferences. Belief in the absurd, according to
our definitions, teaches the contrary. (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 59)
So, how could Camus be mistaken to precipitate a person like Monsieur
Mersault towards his ‘absurd’ death by having his head cut off at the end of
the story? After all, there is no place for such a person in the logical,
reasonable world. The normal reasonable world of order and justice comprising
such respected persons like the juries, presiding judge, prosecutors and
lawyers naturally found and deemed such unusual impudence in a person quite
shocking and strange that someone could never regret anything in life, could
send one’s aged mother to old people’s home, remain unconcerned about his
mother’s age, and, did not want to see her for the final time after her death,
lack soul and a single moral principle; among other numerous anomalies; to
eventually term him as ‘misfit’, unusual, aberrational, threatening and hence
compulsorily punishable and suppressible without having any sort of remorse.
So, did Mersault ultimately feel ‘released’ in his death, as has been pointed
out by Albert Camus, in his book, The
Myth of Sisyphus? :
Likewise, completely turned towards death (taken here as the most
obvious absurdity), the absurd man feels released from everything outside that
passionate attention crystallizing in him. He enjoys a freedom with regard to
common rules. (Camus, The Myth of
Sisyphus, 58)
So, death is the most obvious absurdity which Mersault met with at the
end;that ‘inevitable’ absurd which is God, and, on whom we must rely upon; but
certainly not through the leap of ‘suicide’:
This is where it is seen to what a degree absurd experience is remote
from suicide. It may be thought that suicide follows revolt—but wrongly. For it
does not represent the logical outcome of revolt. It is just the contrary by
the consent it presupposes. Suicide, like the leap, is acceptance at its
extreme. Everything is over and man returns to his essential history. His
future, his unique and dreadful future—he sees and rushes towards it. In its
way, suicide settles the absurd. It engulfs the absurd in the same death. But I
know that in order to keep alive, the absurd cannot be settled. It escapes
suicide to the extent that it is simultaneously awareness and rejection of
death. (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus,
54)
But the fact is, if Mersault is strange, bizarre and inherently
possesses an absurd vision and outlook then is he such an uncommon character in
our everyday life? Is he a stranger to get paranoid of? Or, is he just like us,
for, after all, aren’t we all turning into/have turned into de-emotional
strangers like him, not attached to anything or anyone, and, rather getting
used to our selfish everyday mechanical living somehow? Isn’t our ‘ceremony of
innocence’ getting drowned day by day? Or, is his absurdity stemming from an
inherent sense of cowardice, a sense of insecurity and indecisiveness, a
shrugging off social duties and responsibilities, a lack of spirit and courage
to stand up on one’s own, and ultimately from an indefinable ‘Prufrock like’
lethargy, dilemma and inertness; which should justifiably end in death? :
And indeed there will be time.
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
Time to turn back and descend the stair
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair-
……………………………………………
…………………………………………….
Do I dare
Disturb the universe? (Green, The
Winged Word, 186)
Did Mersault, like Mr J. Alfred
Prufrock, feel afraid to ‘dare’? Did Mersault, like Prufrock, use to feel that
he was no ‘Prince Hamlet’ and, had already seen the moments of his greatness
flicker with ‘the eternal Footman’ holding his coat? :
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness
flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my
coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid. (Green, The Winged Word, 187)
Is it the same fear that grasped Mersault when faced with the death-sentence?
:
I made another effort to think about something else. I listened to my
heart beating. I simply couldn’t believe that this sound that had been with me
for so long would never end. I’ve never had any real imagination. But I did try
to imagine the very moment when I would no longer hear the beating of my
heart. (Camus, The Outsider, 102)
But, even in spite of the fear of the inevitable, one really has to
mentally prepare himself/herself to face with the absurdity that it brings, and
should get adjusted to it; as Mersault did in ‘The Outsider’:
I always assumed the worst: my appeal would
be denied. ‘Well then, I’ll die.’ Sooner than other people, that much was
obvious. But everyone knows that life isn’t really worth living. In the end, I
knew that it didn’t matter much whether you died at thirty or at seventy,
because in either case other men and women would of course go on living, and it
would be like that for thousands of years. Nothing was more obvious, in fact.
But I was still the one who would be dying, whether it was now or in twenty
years. When I thought about that, though, what truly upset me was the horrible
lurch I felt inside at the thought of twenty years of life yet to live. But all
I had to do to banish that feeling was to imagine what my thoughts would be
like twenty years from now when I would have to face the same situation. If you
are going to die, it didn’t actually matter how or when, that much was obvious.
(Camus, The Outsider, 103)
Is it the very demand of our modern day existence? Is it really
difficult, if not impossible, to live a meaningful, purposeful, logical,
coherent and rational life, as the illogical, irrational and hence absurd must
step in and intrude at any time to make us remind of its perennial existence;
just as it does in Eugene Ionesco’s play ‘Rhinoceros’ where the humans suddenly
started to get transformed into rhinoceroses? Is the transformation of the
serious, orderly, disciplined, rational, practical, non-alcoholic, will-power
exercising Jean in the play ‘Rhinoceros’ into the ‘fantastic’, irrational,
illogical and imaginative rhinoceros, a potential indication of the uncertain
absurd taking over our life? :
Berenger: I mean the human individual,
humanism…
Jean: Humanism is all washed up! You’re a
ridiculous old sentimentalist. [He goes into the bathroom.]
Berenger: But you must admit that the mind…
Jean: [from the bathroom] Just Cliches!
You’re talking rubbish!
Berenger: Rubbish!
Jean: [from the bathroom in a very hoarse
voice, difficult to understand.] Utter rubbish!
Berenger: I’m amazed to hear you say that,
Jean, really! You must be out of your mind. You wouldn’t like to be a
rhinoceros yourself, now would you?
Jean: Why not? I’m not a victim of prejudice
like you.
………..
Jean: Keep your ears open. I said what’s wrong
with being a rhinoceros? I’m all for change. (Ionesco, Rhinoceros, pgs 66-67)
Is the incomprehensible transformation of other human characters in
‘Rhinoceros’ into rhinoceroses a clear beckoning of the absurd? Is it but
natural that in our so-called normal, the abnormal can and must step in to
shock us, as there is no straight-cut demarcation line between the two? :
Berenger: And you consider all this natural?
Dudard: What could be more natural than a
rhinoceros?
Berenger: Yes, but for a man to turn into a
rhinoceros is abnormal beyond question.
Dudard: Well, of course, that’s a matter of
opinion…
Berenger: It is beyond question, absolutely
beyond question!
Dudard: You seem very sure of yourself. Who
can say where the normal stops and the abnormal begins? Can you personally
define these conceptions of normality and abnormality? Nobody has solved this
problem yet, either medically or philosophically. You ought to know that.
(Ionesco, Rhinoceros, 82)
Do we need to ‘get used to’ the unimaginable, and inconceivable in our
everyday life to make us enable to reach up to the final, or, ultimate; which
is the absurd? Is that the reason that even old Salamano also inculcated this
very meaningful practice in the novel alongside Mersault, the chief
protagonist? :
He hadn’t been happy with his wife but in the
end he’d got used to being with her. (Camus, The Outsider, 41)
And, of course, Mersault was there as the leading person to germinate
this train of thought:
But that just lasted a few months.
Afterwards, I had only the thoughts of a prisoner. I looked forward to the
daily walk I took around the courtyard or the visit from my lawyer. As for the
rest of the time, I got used to it. I often thought that if I’d been forced to
live inside the hollow trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do except look up
at the sky flowering above my head, I would have eventually got used to that as
well…It was an idea of Mama’s that people could eventually get used to
anything, and she often talked about it. (Camus, The Outsider, 69)
Is God our only hope to cope with this absurdity? Is God our only answer
to this vast ocean of irrationality and illogicality that surround us? Can the
figure of the ‘infinitely gentle’, ‘infinitely suffering’ Jesus Christ make us hold
onto some rational center somehow amid all these fragmentations, disjointedness
around? :
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing. (Green, The Winged Word, 190)
Is only God capable of providing meaning to our life amid the
uncertainties, amid all the disorderliness, as the Judge firmly believes in The Outsider? :
But he cut me off, drew himself up to his
full height and demanded I tell him one last time if I believed in God. I said
no. He sat down, looking indignant. He said that was impossible, that everyone
believed in God, even those who turned away from Him. This was his firm belief,
and if he ever had cause to doubt it, his life would no longer have any meaning.
‘Do you want my life to have no meaning?’ he shouted. (Camus, The Outsider, 62)
Can Jesus’s suffering for our sins make us believe that there is always
the presence of the Saviour to provide us succour amid the general
hopelessness? :
But from across the table, he was already
thrusting the Christ figure in my face and screaming like a madman: ‘I am a
Christian! I ask Christ to forgive your sins! How can you not believe that He
suffered for you?’ (Camus, The Outsider,
62)
Or, is God even clueless to the mystery of the irrational absurd? :
He looked away and, staying very still, asked
me if I was talking this way because I was in terrible despair. I explained
that I wasn’t in despair. I was just afraid, which was completely natural. ‘God
could help you, then,’ he said. ‘Everyone I have known in your position has
come back to Him.’ I agreed that was their right. It also proved they had time
on their side. As far as I was concerned, though, I didn’t want anyone’s help
and, more to the point, I didn’t have time to waste thinking about things that
didn’t interest me. (Camus, The Outsider,
pgs 105-106)
So, ultimately one can say that Monsieur Mersault is not a lone
stranger; he is rather a far-sighted everyday commoner, a dispassionate,
practical, mechanical modern day individual who was probably aware of (and
hence perfectly accepted) the absurd throughout. We are all emotionless,
robotic selves moving about and performing our daily ritualistic activities in
a programmatic way like Mersault. One has to live out one’s existence in order
to understand Mersault’s life-vision. And, one has to live out his adventure/s
within the due course of his lifetime because, after all there is the
all-encompassing absurd awaiting us and our freedom is limited/truncated due to
our mortality.
Works Cited
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