Conversation on Camus' Outsider

 Francoise:

"I like the way you address Camus directly, as asserting him recognition for his philosophy of the absurd.

There is absurdity in the"divorce" between Man and the world. Man tries to know his reason for being but the absence of answer from his environment makes him blind, like when Mersault is dazzled by the sun light and commits a murder which he cannot justify.

I like the spiritual interpretation you give of the novel, the rich dimension you see in the main character, ie, Camus's voice.

Meursault accepts his fate, he accepts this lack of exit, and, at the very end, reconciles himself with Life: "As if this great anger had purged me of evil, emptied of hope, before this night loaded with signs and of stars, I opened myself for the first time to the tender indifference of the world."

Pessimistic about the human condition, but optimistic about man, this is the way I understand Camus.

Camus's daring cruelty is to show us the world as it is, indifferent to our sorrows. Yet, through Meursault, we can hope.

And your spiritually oriented mind has given another dimension to the novel."

You may like to listen to this short talk:

Camus must be understood in the historical context of Algeria and France relationships.

I like his nuanced attitude.

https://youtu.be/AuVZ_4v3VYQ

Yesterday, France celebrated the 60th anniversary of the peace accords, the Evian accords, between Algeria

and France.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89vian_Accords

YouTube.com Albert Camus: Algerian Chronicles

"I will read this link a little later. I found Meursault weird when I read the novel for the first time, rather, I felt bewildered and fatigued. I found no spirituality in it at all in my first reading. Later, as I grew in my understanding of writers and how and why they write, I realised that it was an allegory that began to widen to take into its folds the society, man, and existence, boldly taking responsibility as individuals without the possibility of escape or exit. I saw a different version of existence. I saw the spirituality in its recognizable form in this speech he made in the most humble way to his audience. Thanks Francoise. It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity of talking to you."

"Definitely, right from the incipit, the reader is confused by the very factual presentation of the events, while the story is written in the first person. Moreover, the text is marked by the total absence of a psychological lexicon that would express the feelings or emotions of a narrator.

In that sense, right from the very first lines, Mersault appeears to be weird, as you mentioned and in fact, a total stranger or outsider to himself.

The philosophy of the absurd is there, right from the opening lines: existence has no meaning, it seems, and only fate guides our steps."

Sushama:

"That part, "Only fate guides our steps " puts him in some sort of an alignment with faith , but we have to take faith as as synonymous with the face of the absurd."

"Faith as the acceptance of a force above? It will take Meursault the whole novel to understand this and death will paradoxically make him free.

Thank you, Sushama, for this "brainstorming" that has rekindled wonderful memories of my teaching years."

Sushama:

Listening to Prof Kaplan, I understood the pathos of Camus' role as a writer facing the excitement of the turbulent society and his failure to convince them about the need for peace..

Francoise"

" Therefore, his silent, until he gathered enough intellectual strength and wrote the "Algerian chronicles""