Thursday, March 22, 2012

Journal #4: The Stranger

Meursault comes to the conclusion that even though death is inevitable, life is still worth living.  He himself has no religious beliefs, and states that he thinks when people die, that is it.  One with a view on life like that might seem like they think that life is pointless, but Meursault comes to a different conclusion.  He reflects this when he thinks about Maman.  "For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman.  I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a "fiance," why she had played at the beginning again.  Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite.  So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again" (Camus 122).  Meursault understood why these old people enjoyed life so much even though they knew they were close to death.  He understood that although he didn't know the meaning of life, he did know that life was given to us.  You can make life living without knowing its purpose.

Camus wants the reader to reach the same conclusion as Meursault because his conclusion represented the philosophy of absurdism.  Absurdism states that humans are unable to figure out if there is a meaning of life, or know what it is.  Camus, through his writing, wants the reader to accept this philosphy, but also understand that although we don't know the meaning of life, it doesn't mean there is no point to living.

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