The Stranger Essay Outline

Thesis: Camus uses Meursault to promote his own absurdist philosophy, or the idea that life has no meaning, through the incorporation of Maman’s funeral, Marie’s love and affection, his trial, and his overall reaction to these events.

-          Maman’s funeral:

·         “Maman died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I got a telegram from home: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday” (3).

§  Very first lines of the novel; it establishes Meursault’s detached tone, which emphasizes the absurdity of Meursault as a character. Meursault feels completely unmoved by the whole situation and can’t seem to find any emotion to fit the current scenario, thus putting forth the argument that life is meaningless.

§  Meursault begins to quickly move on with the death of his mother by indulging in sensuous pleasures at the beach and with Marie.

-          Marie love/marriage

·         “A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so” (35) and “that evening Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn’t make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to” (41).

§  Again, Meursault does not find the joy or the meaning in loving Marie or marrying her. He is simply indifferent, and in the end he wonders what the point of the whole matter really is.

§  Meursault embodies Camus’ absurdist philosophy by negating the emotional effects of love and marriage as meaningless aspects of life. This attitude eventually plays a major role in his trial.

§  Marie tries to make meaning out of Meursault’s meaningless actions.

-          Trial

·         “Fumbling a little with my words and realizing how ridiculous I sounded, I blurted out that it was because of the sun. People laughed. My lawyer threw up his hands” (103).

§  The absurdist philosophy behind the trial is more of an attack on the system of justice rather than society as a whole, and Meursault, understanding this injustice, decides to mock it.

§  Readers can interpret this section of the novel differently, but the theory that Meursault even brought up the sun was to bluntly spew force the courts to make meaning out of something inherently meaningless.