The Stranger, By Albert Camus

When Albert Camus wrote The Stranger in 1942, his intention was to present absurdism and existentialism to the world. The absurdity of life from Camus's eyes come to life through the main character, Meursault. Throughout the novel, Meursault doesn't wish he could live another life nor does he attempt to change his final judgement. Meursault's inability to feel emotions and express them to others is a primary example of existentialism throughout the novel. From Meursault's physical descriptions of his daily experiences to his lack of emotion, and his view on life and death, that life isn't worth living all portray characteristics of an existentialist. Absurdism and existentialism are present through the entire novel and drive the novel as well. Camus portrays Meursault as a true existentialist, who believes life is not only meaningless but trying to find meaning is pointless as well.
In the novel,
Meursault has an odd way of describing situations in the sense that there is little to no emotional attachment to it; only the physical aspects of every situation are listed or thought by Meursault.
The way he describes situations or his experiences show his existentialist view. For instance, after Meursault's mom died and he went to the home, rather than focusing on the fact that his mom has died, he was focused on what the older people looked like: “Almost all the women were wearing aprons, and the strings, which were tied tight around their waists, made their bulging stomachs stick out even more. I’d never noticed what huge stomachs old women can have” (9). The way Meursault seems to completely disregard his mother's death and focus on unimportant aspects, reveals even more about his existentialist view; that human emotions cannot be explained and are therefore not expressed at all. Camus once said “the curious feeling the son has for his mother constitutes all his sensibility” (vii). He took what seemed
to be a traumatic event in his life, the passing of his mother, and diminished it into a great ordeal that caused him to miss valuable work days. During the moments of his mother's burial, he even goes as far as to say: "the blood-red earth spilling over Maman's casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it" (18). Another time, when Meursault is being questioned regarding the murder of the Arab, he notes the examining magistrate's "deep-set blue eyes", even though the severity of the situation was much more than Meursault acknowledged, and also showing that Meursault truly didn't care that he was being tried in court as a murderer (64). He also describes the tie his lawyer was wearing one day as "odd-looking" and "with broad black and white stripes" (64). This shows that he truly doesn't care about his predicament at all and that it's just another meaningless event in his life.