The Absurd Morality of Death

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The Murder of the Arab

The turning point of the novel occurs, appropriately, at the middle and takes the form of another death: this time murder. The murder is committed by Meursault and is committed on the Arab, who is the brother of Meursault’s friend’s abused mistress. Meursault treats this murder with his characteristic apathy: the only hint of realisation that we get from him is, “I realized I’d destroyed the balance of the day.” However, his general attitude throughout the trial that is to follow is, “rather than true regret, I felt a kind of annoyance.” Despite Meursault believing that his case, “was very simple” – he had committed murder and he had admitted it – the law decides that it is, “very tricky.” The trickiness is caused by the court’s desire to place a motive on the death, “why was he [Meursault] armed, and why return to precisely that spot?” The question of why the murder was committed is a burning issue in the court case, and indeed in the reader, but Meursault’s answer is simple, “it was by chance.” On further investigation of Chapter Six, Part One, it can clearly be seen that this is true. Meursault has the gun, because he wants to prevent Raymond doing anything rash in the second confrontation with the Arabs, “No…take him on hand to hand and give me your gun.” The gun is given and never returned. On returning to the beach house, the heat is beginning to get to Meursault and, deciding that he “was unable to face the effort of … having to confront the women,” he decides to walk along the beach. The beach gets hotter as he sees “a dark lump of rock surrounded by a blinding halo of light and spray” around which is a “cool spring.” This temptation of coolness, by chance, brings him into a confusing standoff with the Arab. In desperation to get out of the sun, Meursault takes a step towards the shade in which the Arab is resting. The Arab draws his knife, which catches the sun and appears “like a long, flashing sword lunging”. Simultaneously, he is blinded by a downpour of sweat from his eyebrows, which distorts his vision of the knife further, “dazzling spear…red-hot blade”. This causes Meursault’s “whole being… [to go] …tense,” until “the trigger gave”.

All of these chance happenings merely show a series of unconnected events that culminates in the shooting of someone, and this is realised by the two lawyers defending and prosecuting Meursault, which is why they hardly focus on the murder itself throughout the trial. The first question Meursault is asked, beyond the formalities, is “if I’d [Meursault] felt any grief on that day,” that day not being the day of the murder, but the day of Meursault’s mother’s funeral. This is the beginning of the absurdity: that not only is motive being ‘proved’ through the analysis of reaction – two very different things as established above – but motive for the murder of the Arab is being ‘proved’ through the analysis of the reaction to Mrs Meursault’s funeral. The morality of society requires meaning for everything, as the magistrate protests in desperate reaction to Meursault’s atheism, “Do you want my life to be meaningless?” This desperation for meaningfulness leads the court on a trail of unconnected events that they tenuously stick together in an absurd evangelical tirade of accusation and damnation, “a man whose heart is so empty that it forms a chasm which threatens to engulf society.” This ‘meaning’ that is attributed the crime is not only based on Meursault’s reaction to his mother’s death, but also the case to follow, “the man who is sitting here in the dock is also guilty of the murder which this court is to judge tomorrow [parricide].” This is a truly ludicrous piece of logic, insisting, as Meursault does later on, that, “he was accused of murder and then executed for not crying at his mother’s funeral”. No doubt part of this was also deduced from Meursault’s atheism, and the connection with the killing of God, the Father. However, these have no bearing on Meursault’s case, and Meursault having anything to do with the following case is the peak of absurdity in the trial. Nevertheless, society, represented by the jury and the judge, find these connections meaningful, and Meursault is told that he “would be decapitated in a public square in the name of the French people.”

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Meursault’s Death Penalty

The third death is one that is not depicted, but is not doubt inevitable, and it is that of Meursault’s execution. The events leading up to the death are narrated above and shown to be absurd. Therefore it can quite easily be seen that the nature of this death is also absurd. This death is a punishment, but a punishment for what: the murder of an Arab, parricide or not crying at a mother’s funeral?

However, Meursault’s execution does gain meaning from its very nature of being a punishment, and for this reason Camus embarks on “trying to escape from the mechanism, trying to find if there’s any way out of the inevitable.” The ‘inevitable’ seems to signify death, but the ‘mechanism’ suggests the system imposed by society, ‘the French people’, that of punishment. The first step towards the absurdity of this death sentence – and so an escape from the mechanism – is Meursault’s realisation that, “life wasn’t worth living,” and, “ it doesn’t matter very much whether you die at thirty or at seventy…it was still me who was dying.” However, this almost noble sense of worthlessness is interrupted by the “terrifying leap at the thought of having another twenty years to live,” and soon after by the Chaplin promising “another life” after death if he “turned towards Him.”However, this second interruption fires Meursault into an exposition of his own ideals, which have possibly not been clear to himself until now. “But I was sure of myself, sure of everything, surer than he was, sure of my life and sure of the death that was coming to me. Yes that was all I had. But at least it was a truth which I had hold of just as it had hold of me.” This is the crux of the outpouring that Meursault delivers to the Chaplin. It reveals his rejection of the two interruptions to his calm rational thought, which can be reduced to one idea: that of more time. In vanquishing the Chaplin, he has “killed all… [his] …hopes” – no appeal would ever be accepted from someone who assaults a Chaplin, and in assaulting the Chaplin Meursault symbolically annihilates the after-life. With these gone, Meursault is left with the present and his death in the future, which manifest themselves as “a benign indifference to the world.” This ‘benign indifference’ is what makes his death ultimately absurd. The reason for his condemnation is spurious to begin with, but his final acceptance of the meaningless of life makes the one resonant element of this sentence – that of punishment – meaningless too. As Meursault realised in the case of the ban on cigarettes, “by that time I’d got used to not smoking, so for me it was no longer a punishment”, we now realise that Meursault has got used to not living, so killing him is no longer a punishment. With the element of punishment gone, so goes the meaning, which is replaced by the third absurd death.

Section Two: deaths incidental to Meursault

The other three deaths are incidental to the main thrust of the story, but, nevertheless, carry with them important images that relate to the Meursault’s trial and the absurd morality of society. It is probably no coincidence either that these three deaths are either parricide or related to it. The parricide case to be tried after Meursault’s case has been dealt with briefly already, and links to the story described in the article Meursault finds between his mattress, so the deaths described in the article will be analysed first.

The Czechoslovakian Traveller

In his cell, Meursault finds an article describing an incident involving a Czechoslovakian family, who club to death a man who turn out to be the son returned home after twenty-five years. This story clearly shows the absurd morality of death. When the mother and sister “clubbed him to death with a hammer to steal his money, and then threw his body in the river” it seems that, even though this was a premeditated murder, the family were not duly upset at what they had done: business seems to have gone on as normal the next day when the murdered man’s wife and child arrive. However, as soon as the mother and the sister find out they have killed their own son/brother, the whole importance of the murder changes. The murderers can no longer continue their business as normal, in fact they cannot continue at all and both commit suicide. It is shown that parricide is considered a more serious crime that the murder of a stranger. In this example, the story is particularly ironic and absurd, as the murdered stranger and the murdered relative are the same person, which poses the question; why is there a sudden importance given to the death – particularly when the relative was, to all intents and purposes, a stranger, “his mother…hadn’t recognised him”? The answer is that society imposes this importance on family, and so to go against it is to go against the very fabric of society. Meursault, in his typical cold-blooded honesty, chooses to sympathise with the murderers and not, as society would have done, with the victim. His reasoning being, “the traveller had deserved it really…you should never play around.” If the traveller had done as Meursault would have done, that is just been calm and open about it, he would still be alive today, again adding to the absurdity of the death.

The Case of Parricide

All this leads to the final death, the parricide to be tried after Meursault’s case. The fact that this case is to be tried after Meursault’s case has nothing to with Meursault or the events he has been involved in. Yet the court is packed with members of the press and public who, like the Parisian journalist, “didn’t actually come because of you [Meursault]. But since he’s got to cover the parricide trial, they asked him to send a report on your trial as well.” This inflation of the trial, “we’ve blown your case up a bit” already makes an absurdity of the procedure, which has become a media extravaganza in a period of no news – something that we in the present are more than familiar with. However, the most absurd use of this subsequent trial, it when the prosecutor asks the jury to try Meursault for parricide. It is doubly absurd because it is firstly giving greater importance to the murder of a relative, as discussed through the story of the Czechoslovakian traveller, and secondly because Meursault murdered an Arab, whom he had never met, before that day. The justification for parricide – which the court, and even Meursault’s defence, implicitly accepts, “His tactics had been not to lodge any objections” – is based on the death of Meursault’s mother happening before the murder, and a parricide case occurring after Meursault’s trial. Both these sequences are purely chance happening and could have happened at any other time, but because the do occur in this sequence, society reads meaning into it, and derive their morality from it: a morality that condemns Meursault to death. A truly absurd morality.

Conclusion

This essay has established how The Outsider presents all the morality surrounding the deaths it depicts, as absurd and meaningless. The death of Meursault’s mother was meaningless to Meursault, because nothing changed after it and he lived his life as normal. His calm acceptance of the inevitable is scorned by social morality, which would rather accept lies than what Meursault offers. It is this attitude to this event that ultimately condemns him. The Arab was murdered in a motiveless killing that occurred at the end of a series of chance events. The court launches an absurd crusade to give meaning to what has none. The absurd reasons for pronouncing the death sentence, initially make it absurd. However, when Meursault conquers his hope of more time and accepts that his life will be taken – and could have been taken at any time – he even make the element of ‘death as punishment’ absurd. In addition to the deaths immediately associated with Meursault, we are presented with three other deaths. The way the death of the Czechoslovakian traveller is dealt with is absurd. When he was a stranger murdered, everything was fine; when he was the relative murdered, it was unforgivable. The morality of the suicides also shows absurd logic: the taking of two more lives makes no difference to the life that has already gone. Finally, the parricide that is to be tried after Meursault’s case has been given much more importance than Meursault’s case. As the murder of someone is the murder of a person, regardless of relationship, this apportioning of importance is meaningless and absurd. As Meursault concludes in the final chapter, “There were only privileged people” and so from this we can deduce that to treat one death differently to any other lacks reason, so lack meaning and is ultimately absurd.

 Words: 2905

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