Amorality?

I felt like The Stranger exemplifies a prevailing snobbery in academia. It is an attitude that nothing in this life matters and those that try to believe in any higher order or in the case of Camus any order at all are fools. At first I wasn't sure if Camus was being sarcastic or if he truly believed that nothing matters in life. So I looked it up on Sparknotes and he was being serious.


I think his book contradicts itself. According to Camus, to quote sparknotes, "Though The Stranger is a work of fiction, it contains a strong resonance of Camus’s philosophical notion of absurdity. In his essays, Camus asserts that individual lives and human existence in general have no rational meaning or order. However, because people have difficulty accepting this notion, they constantly attempt to identify or create rational structure and meaning in their lives. The term “absurdity” describes humanity’s futile attempt to find rational order where none exists." Meursault is irrational and amoral. The world around him however is not. As far as I can see the world around him, except for his friends, acted rationally and morally in response to his actions. Everyone is appropriately shocked at his lack of feeling. Contrary to Camus, I do not believe that their shock comes from the fact that they are less enlightened than Meursault. I believe that they are more enlightened than him. They understand the importance of connections and feelings. I related to the shock of the magistrate at his lack of an explanation for his actions. I was annoyed with Meursault for never choosing his actions. He claims to be amoral but I don't believe in amorality. I believe in choice and accountability of actions. Meursault is a wimp. He lets life happen to him and then is surprised (however briefly- he did not expect to be convicted) about the outcome. I can respect him having the belief that nothing really matters but I prefer it Hemingway style where you make up your own code of behavior because people still matter. This quote of his drove me nuts (it is Meursault reflecting on talking with his lawyer about his crime): "He left looking angry. I wished I could have made him stay, to explain that I wanted things between us to be good, not so that he could defend me better but, if I can put it this way, good in a natural way. Mostly, I could tell, I made him uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness. " To me it sums up Meursault. He just wants to feel good ("I explained to him that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings") and he is too lazy to do anything. He also thinks that he is normal and perhaps better than normal for his enlightenment. I think the book proves that he is not like everyone else as he is trying to claim. Very few people understand him. I feel sorry for him.

I first began to question Meursault as a narrator when he didn't notice that the nurse with his mother's coffin was missing her nose. That's when I thought that maybe Camus was being sarcastic. I was sad when I realized he wasn't. But I think his book still works as proof that his theories on life are unworkable in real life. Order does exist in this world. Truthfully it is much more ordered than we realize. Humans are unpredictable and volatile and often irrational but the whole universe is not such.