How adopting a philosophical standpoint can alter one's interpretation of the text "The Outsider" by Albert Camus: An absurdist and postcolonial reading of the text

Authors Avatar by muggsyboguesrules (student)

Student’s Name: Jackson Clarke

Year / Subject:        11 English Literature                Assessment Task: Task:  Long Essay 2/2012Long Essay – Albert Camus The Outsider                                 Word Limit: 1500-2000

TASK: 

Respond to the following essay question:

Discuss (a) the ways in which readers of Albert Camus’ The Outsider are positioned to accept a major ideological standpoint, and (b) the ways by which a reader adopting an alternative ideological position could arrive at an alternative reading of the text.

You will need to:

  • Research the ideological positions readers are invited to accept, and the major aspects of human existence that these ideologies speak to.
  • Select one ideological standpoint and closely analyse the way the text positions the reader to accept this standpoint.  
  • Ensure that you consider the conventions employed by Camus and their effects on readers.
  • Research an alternative ideology.
  • Construct a resistant reading of key aspects of the text, paying attention to how your chosen ideology affects the way a reader responds to the text.

In considering major ideologies to which we are positioned to respond, you may wish to consider Absurdism, Existentialism, Post-Colonialism, etc.

LINK TO YEAR 11 ENGLISH LITERATURE SYLLABUS

Students should be able to demonstrate:

  • Movement from affective to more analytic responses to specific literary texts through: recognising what meaning results from relationships among writer, reader, text and context; understanding the codes and conventions which are involved in this relationship; understanding the content of specific literary texts, and how these kinds of content are presented; understanding the nature, function and value of specific literary texts by studying texts in relation to their social and historical context.
  • Development of reading, writing, discussion and analysis skills through continual practice.
  • Reading closely in order to perceive textual detail.
  • Logical presentation of central ideas with supportive detail.

Students should be able to demonstrate the following understandings:

  • The moral, social and political meanings of literature.
  • The concept of convention, and the understanding of the particular conventions of figurative language, levels of meaning analysis, structure and reader positioning.
  • Text and context.

Due Monday Week 9 – Autumn Term 2012

Comment

Jackson.

A very good analysis.  You offer comprehensive treatment of the text, and write perceptively from a postcolonial perspective.  You have developed a refined case, generally argued clearly, and well-supported with evidence.  I would love to see greater consideration of structures within the text, but a good sense otherwise of how readers are positioned.

Great effort,

BDZ

Ps. Mind your word limit

Result: 33 (-2 for word limit breach; 31)

Long Essay – Albert Camus The Outsider

Part A: Discuss the ways in which readers of Albert Camus’ The Outsider are positioned to accept a major ideological standpoint

In his novel The Outsider, French author and philosopher Albert Camus seeks to defy the guiding narratives and dominant discourse of 1942 France, and present his own beliefs concerning freedom, death, and ultimately, how life should be lived. The story is told through the perspective of the protagonist Meursault, an indifferent and apathetic young Frenchman, who circumstantially murders [What?] an Arab and gets sentenced to the death, not for the crime, but for his character. To position readers to accept his philosophical stance, Camus employs generic conventions such as structure, language, tone, characterization and point of view. Camus directly confronts social constructs such as love, justice, and religion, and suggests that rather than taking a ‘leap of faith,’ or committing suicide, one should simply accept the inevitability and futility of death, and also the absurd nature of the human condition, as only then can they reach a sort of freedom and enlightenment.

The philosophy of the Absurd, as theorised by Albert Camus, is defined as “the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe.” (1. Use in-text references; 2. Google is not a reference) Prior to World War II, it was traditionally believed [By whom? It’s a very particular tradition from which such a conviction arises] that human beings were rational creatures who lived in at least a partially intelligible universe, that were part of an ordered social structure and that were capable of heroism [REF]. However, in reaction to the devastation of World War II, the forefathers of Absurdism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the author of this book, Albert Camus, theorised that humans were isolated in existence and cast into an alien universe [REF]. They conceived the human world as possessing no inherent truth, value, or meaning, and that human life, in its fruitless search for purpose and significance, is an existence that is absurd. In this knowledge, Camus, as he wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus, suggests that instead of trying to lend life meaning (committing ‘philosophical suicide,’) or committing suicide, one should accept the absurdness of life and death, as only then can they achieve an awakened enlightenment and an appreciation for life, as Meursault reaches in The Outsider. Thus in his novel, Albert Camus attempts to position readers to accept this ideological standpoint through the use of literary conventions.

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Through the point of view of Camus and his protagonist Meursault, social constructs such as love, justice and religion are futile attempts to lend meaning to aspects of life that are fundamentally absurd [The transition here does not correspond to the content following – this paragraph exclusively deals with notions of justice]. Camus directly confronts these constructs through the use of point of view, language, tone and characterization, in an attempt to position readers to accept this notion. Camus criticizes the justice system and the absurdness of it. Marie is a representation of society, and her expectation and reliance ...

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