The Outsider - Albert Camus
Author: Albert Camus
Books Name: The Outsider
A French Algerian office worker in his 20’s, Mersualt, learns his mother has passed away. He goes out to the retirement home where she spent her last days and attends the funeral. Later, he makes friends with a petty white criminal, Raymond, who lives in the same apartment block as himself. This man beats his Arab girlfriend up and the girlfriend’s brother seeks revenge. There is a fight on the beach. The brother has a knife, and cuts Raymond, who seeks to retaliate with a gun. Things cool down. Mersault is walking alone along the beach some time after the initial confrontation when he spots the brother, lying in the sand. Mersault remembers he still has the gun, given to him by Raymond for safekeeping. He shoots and kills the brother. Mersault is arrested, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death.
The novel has two parts: events leading up to the shooting; and events subsequent to Mersault’s arrest.
I’ve been reading A Dying Colonialism by Frantz Fanon at the same time as The Outsider. The two authors have much in common. Camus was born in Algeria in 1913 and spent his formative years there. Fanon was born in 1925 in Martinique and spent time in Algeria as a doctor. Camus was active in the French Resistance to the German Occupation. Fanon was active in the Algerian Resistance to the French Occupation.
Some of the riddles of The Outsider: Why did Mersualt kill the Arab? Why is he so calm about the consequences afterwards? Why does he not better his defence by pretending the death of his mother affected him profoundly – boost his chances of avoiding the death penalty by being more emotional about it?
The Outsider is a short book, only 120 pages, written in a plain, easy to read language. The world of the book is seen through the consciousness of the main character, Mersault. The text is written in the first person ‘I’. Its innovation at the time was to set down on paper aspects of human consciousness and feeling that were would not at the time of publication have been conventional. The character Mersault displays an emotional honesty that can shock: examples range from Mersault not dwelling particularly on his mother’s death to being relatively unperturbed by the thought of his impending execution, to killing the man and not dwelling particularly on the act nor feeling particularly guilty about it. In thinking in this manner Mersault moves ‘beyond the pale’ of conventional society around him – he makes himself a stranger to these conventions.
Some of the riddles of The Outsider: Why did Mersualt kill the Arab? Why is he so calm about the consequences afterwards? Why does he not better his defence by pretending the death of his mother affected him profoundly – boost his chances of avoiding the death penalty by being more emotional about it?
The Outsider is a short book, only 120 pages, written in a plain, easy to read language. The world of the book is seen through the consciousness of the main character, Mersault. The text is written in the first person ‘I’. Its innovation at the time was to set down on paper aspects of human consciousness and feeling that were would not at the time of publication have been conventional. The character Mersault displays an emotional honesty that can shock: examples range from Mersault not dwelling particularly on his mother’s death to being relatively unperturbed by the thought of his impending execution, to killing the man and not dwelling particularly on the act nor feeling particularly guilty about it. In thinking in this manner Mersault moves ‘beyond the pale’ of conventional society around him – he makes himself a stranger to these conventions.
Camus seemed to want to arrive at a point in the novel where a man faces death by execution and to suggest that, if life is an infinite ‘now’ then we are most alive who understand how precious each day, each moment, each sensation in each moment is.
ALBERT CAMUS
Resource
Prepared by: Duygu Söbe
Prepared by: Duygu Söbe
Comments
Post a Comment