The Stranger, By Albert Camus

A home can be defined in many different ways, the roof in which you live under, the town you are from, or even the country that you were born in. Overall, a home is a place where you should feel accepted. French author, Albert Camus was born in Algeria and could not feel anymore left out from the society of which he lived in. Albert Camus wrote a book called, The Stranger, which takes place during the early 1940’s in Algeria. Although Albert was born in El Taref, Algeria, he was of French descent. Ever since 1848, Algeria was not only considered to be owned by the French, but also a part of France. Camus’s book was published in 1942, which was right in the midst of World War II at the time. The book mirrored the Algerian society during the
There were a lot of riots and murders going on which left the country’s power at stake. With all of the chaos going on in the World, Camus brought about the idea of Existentialism, which is, “A philosophical theory that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will”(Dictionary.com). Camus tries to instill to his readers what a World without God or meaning is like, almost as if human beings lived in a purposeless life in a chaotic universe. In the book, The Stranger, by Albert Camus, depicts how the citizens of Algeria during the 1940’s began to adopt a pessimistic mood towards life, which lead Algerians including the main character from the book, Meursault, to believe that life itself is meaningless and
Later on in the novel, The Stranger, Meursault murders an Arab. The reaction at first seems to be that as if no one cared about Meursault killing an Arab, almost as if it was a normal crime to do so. Meursault said, “At the police station, nobody seemed very interested in my case” (Camus, 63). During the 1940’s in Algeria people’s actions were heavily relied on the person’s character whether they were a morally good person or not. This is important because in the opening line of the novel Meursault says, “Maman died today. Or yesterday may, I don’t know” (Camus, 3). When Meursault went to trial for the murder of an Arab the focus of the trial started to lean entirely towards his emotions on his mothers death. Almost completely forgetting about the real reason why he was at trial the prosecutor started bashing him saying that Meursault was out swimming and seeing movies the day after his mothers death. The jury seemed to have no interest in the murder anymore, but rather Meursault’s personal life and how he seems to go through life without any overarching morality or meaning. These actions appear to be quite rascist towards Meursault as they saw a man in front of them severely lacking any type of religion especially one without God in his life and are judging him on not being a