“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.” Meursault’s character is unable to physically express emotion regarding any situation. Even through the first person narrative that Camus employs, the reader is unable to get a grasp as to Meursault’s personal feelings regarding certain events in the novel. The event of his mother’s death seems to have no effect on Meursault. He is neither saddened nor overjoyed by the news of his mother’s death. During the funeral, he is unable to show any emotion, and gives the reader no insight as to what he is thinking or feeling. The fact that he did not cry and the fact that he did not pay his respects comes back to haunt Meursault during his trial when the jury uses his peculiar acts to make a judgment on his level of morality. Meursault’s character is the determining factor in his conviction and sentencing. His social rebellion is deemed immoral and abominable.
The reader and the novel’s characters both try to rationalize Meursault’s actions in order to give his life meaning. But according to Meursault, life is meaningless and consequently needs no justification. “The day after his mother’s death, this man was out swimming, starting up a dubious liaison, and going to the movies, a comedy, for laughs.” The prosecutor uses Meursault’s previous unusual actions as evidence that he is a threat to society. His actions are deemed monstrous by the jury and subsequently end in Meursault’s conviction. Society uses the past in order to justify the present. It is incorrect for one to assert that Meursault has no emotion or incapable of emotion; it is simply that he fails to exhibit it for he feels it is meaningless. Meursault contradicts society’s expectations. He does not indicate any signs of grief at the funeral and is therefore labeled a monster, thereby threatening the level of morality that has been instilled into the other members of society.
Meursault’s ideology concerning life has led him to deny the idea of a god or of an afterlife. Meursault’s ideas threaten the ideas passed down by the Catholic Church in the Algerian society. There is no proof of an afterlife and therefore no purpose to worship a god. Muersault lives his life with the conviction that there is no afterlife and therefore should not waste his life practicing absurd rituals that inevitably will have no effect. Meursault believes that all people share similar destinies ending in death. It will not matter how one lives their given life. Malevolence and benevolence are equivalent; life is not punished nor rewarded. All of society will inevitably suffer similar fates through death. Religion is an unnecessary tool used in order to give meaning and fulfillment to unsatisfied lives. The chaplain asserts that Meursault must declare his allegiance to God in order to save his life, but Meursault states that in his short time, he would not waste it on God. Meursault knows of only one life, and can not waste it on religion. Religion is a crutch used for people that avoid living to the fullest potential. It allows failures in life to attain hope for a next life. Society is unwilling to accept his belief and condemns him for his unconventionality. Meursault faces the absurdity of life by not focusing his life on the indefinable and unknown.
The Stranger reveals the condemnation of man who was unwilling to conform to the norm of Algerian society. His unconventional philosophy concerning life made him an outcast and used as a scapegoat for society’s failure to uphold its own moral standard. It is the fear of Meursault’s ideology that condemns him. It is the fear that his ideology would affect others from conforming to society’s standard that convicts him and sentences him to death. Society had to eradicate any threat that might hinder conformity. Meursault refuses to become another robot of society and adhere to the commonalities that occur in society. Meursault had to live his life according to his ideology not that of society. Only by realizing the absurdity of life does Meursault truly live a fulfilled existence. “I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.”