The Outsider, Albert Camus

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I had a telegram from the home: ‘Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It may have been yesterday.”

             From the start, Meursault seems surprisingly calm and detached for a man who just lost his mother. This detachment continues throughout the text; marriage, murder, not even his own death truly touches him in the heart. Although this is a first person narrative, the tone is that of an objective observer from the outside. In part one, he maintains his ‘I don’t care’ attitude, thereby isolating himself from all others. Many people try to get along with him and like him, such as Marie and Raymond do, but Meursalt feels nothing in return; he doesn’t even understand himself, just like he doesn’t know why he doesn’t want to see his mother’s body. He is thoroughly alone, and he chose to be alone. He does not wish to be understood.

             At the trial for his murder, the prosecutor condemns him not for the killing of the Arab, but for his detachment and cold-heartedness displayed at his mother’s funeral. The prosecutor even says “’I shall prove it to you, [...] by exposing the dark workings of this criminal soul.’” That is unjustifiable, and the readers know that, for two reasons. Firstly, at trials, the jury and judge ought to decide the sentence based on the crime, not on the morality of the criminal. Also, thanks to the first person narrative, the readers know that Meursault is far from ‘dark’ or ‘criminal.’ When he arrives at that nursery home, first thing he wants to do is see his mother. We know then that Meursault does care about his mother. Moreover, do the prosecutor and the jury qualify as the proper decision-makers? Are they the sacred souls bound on earth? No! They are just as selfish and uncaring, only, they are hiding that selfishness. That is why they charge Meursault execution; they are afraid that he might resemble their true minds, that he might threaten their dignity in society. They don’t care to understand why. This deliberate ignorance again shows the selfish and uncaring nature of the people. We cannot make Meursault a nihilistic lunatic; everyone else is the same.

             An interesting aspect is that Meursault refused the chaplain to come to his aid. He refused religion to be a solace in his way to death, and it can be inferred that he does not believe in afterlife. To him, death is simply an end. Because of that, probably, death does not mean much to him. “Everyone [is] privileged” to die; people will die all the same, no matter the cause, age, or circumstances. If death is an end, why does he call death a privilege? He thinks that death is liberation, as “[his] mother must have felt liberated and ready to live her life again.” The essentially solitary people are tied up in this world with all kinds of relationships, connections that don’t really matter. And upon death, all those fake relationships are over, and one is finally free. He is no longer so detached and indifferent towards the world; he is happy. And he would be even happier if “a large crowd of spectators [...] greet [him] with cries of hate” that would fail to tie him to the ground.

             Overall, the novel The Outsider by Albert Camus tells us that isolation is inescapable and that we must live with it. At the beginning, Meursault is completely isolated and detached from the world. As time goes on, however, Meursault realizes that he cannot live in such a way. He is bound to feel the pressure of other people’s emotion towards him, and he is burdened by that. But at the same time, they still cannot understand each other. The people feel towards hatred what they think is him, not what he really is. Because of such absurdity in life, Meursault is happy to leave.