The Stranger by Camus Essay Writing

The Stranger by Camus Essay Writing

Introduction

This essay's aim is to critically analyze the novel 'The Stranger' by Albert Camus. When this novel first published in the year 1942, the writer Albert Camus was 29 years old. Camus was born a year before the First World War occurred and his father got killed in the earlier battles of the time. He wrote a semi-autobiographical essay which recounts that his mother had kept a piece of shell which had been taken from the body of her husband and also exhibited his numerous medals in the living room of their house. Naturally, these situations accounted for Albert Camus growing in a horror of war which also led him to oppose the re-armament of France throughout the years of 1930s. Moreover, it is much harder to explain the psychological effects that Camus had developed because of the death of his father. However, there are certain examples of friendship of some older man in his life like Pascal Pia and Jean Grenier. In his novel 'The Stranger', the father of Camus also makes one fascinating appearance. Thus, this piece of study will highlight certain aspects of the novel including the irony, nonconformity, existential martyrdom, truth drawing, and the effectiveness of violence in the novel (McCarthy, 2004).

Discussion

The semi-autobiography wrote by Camus reveals that in his younger age, he was drawn much closer to his mother, Catherine Sintes, who worked hard and brought him up in the Algiers district of Belcourt's working class where she hardly earned her living by cleaning houses of people. Moreover, Camus states that his mother had a complex influence on his life. Most of the times in his public statements, he used to insist on the attachment that he had with her mother, and declared that it was one of his greatest wishes to place the admirable silence of his mother at the center of his writing. He further explains the silence of his mother as a sign of Stoicism which is the elementary form of the indifference that is a major concept in the writings of Albert Camus, and a warning against the falsity inherent in literary discourse (Bloom, 2001).

'The Stranger' (also known as 'The Outsider') is a novel by Albert Camus, which was published in the year 1942. The basic outlook and themes of the novel are often considered as the examples of existentialism. However, Albert Camus does not consider himself as an existentialist, and as a matter of fact, the content of his novel explores numerous philosophical schools of thought including determinism, absurdism, naturalism, nihilism, as well as, stoicism. Main character of the novel is Meursault, who is basically an Algerian and a citizen of France. However, he was domiciled in North Africa, and was a man of the Mediterranean who hardly ever participated in the traditional culture of the Mediterranean. Meursault also kills an Arab unintentionally, whom he recognizes in the French Algiers. Moreover, the story is divided into two main parts including Meursault's ...