Standing On A Beach... (The Outsider - Albert Camus)

Member Name: snowbunni

Product:	The Outsider - Albert Camus
Date:	03/01/06 (2224 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A Work Of Genius

Disadvantages: Disturbing At Times...

BACKGROUND: ‘In our society,’ wrote Albert Camus, ‘any man who doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral is liable to be condemned to death.’ This may seem a bewilderingly dramatic, almost self-indulgent sort of assertion, but it is one which Camus brought to life in The Outsider, and to frankly devastating effect. The Outsider has become something of a cult classic over the years, especially in undergraduate circles. It inspired The Cure’s ‘Killing an Arab’, a song which attracted a degree of controversy when it was (wrongly) assumed to advocate racial violence. The Outsider itself has also been subject to an array of assumptions and misconceptions, particularly with regards to its philosophical project. In my opinion, however, it is not only one of the great novels of the Twentieth Century, but also one that provides a useful introduction to one of that century’s most compelling philosophical movements, Existentialism.

The Outsider, first published in France as ‘L’Étranger in 1942, is commonly regarded as the greatest example of the Existentialist novel, outshining even Sartre’s La Nausée. This in itself is an extraordinary feat, for, whilst Jean-Paul Sartre was generally regarded as the founding father of Twentieth Century Existentialism, and held an almost unassailable sway over France’s academic elite for several decades, Albert Camus first emerged as a relatively obscure journalist and playwright, who had grown up in poverty in Algiers.

Sartrean Existentialism is a finely wrought thing, the agonising complexities of which were outlined in his heaviest, most earnest tome, Being & Nothingness. In 1945, he described the Existential project as ‘the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism’. If society’s rules are tacitly underpinned by an assumption of the existence of God, to deny His existence necessitates the determination of a new meaning of Life, and a new framework by which to live. In practical terms, this amounted to the avoidance of what Sartre was to term ‘Mauvaise foi’, or Bad Faith. Over-simplifications are unavoidable here, so to summarise; to live in Bad Faith is to exist in a state of intellectual sloth and emotional dishonesty. It is to define oneself, not according to one’s own humanity, autonomy and free will, but according to a role (doctor, waiter, parent, husband) or a collection of roles, or as an object with a prescribed role in the collective, societal machine.


CAMUS’ philosophical position amounts to very much the same thing, but he places particular emphasis upon the notion of the ‘absurd’. He found his ultimate metaphor for the absurdity of the human condition in the myth of Sisyphus, who, according to Greek mythology, was punished by having to roll a stone up a mountain for all eternity, only to have it roll down to the bottom again. Once God is escorted from the equation, human life is revealed in its full absurdity. The only appropriate response to this is to recognise life for what it is, and to live accordingly, with knowledge, passion and above all, freedom. The essence of this philosophical project is discernible within the second part of The Outsider, but is presented with a simplicity and literary restraint that renders its premise all the more forceful. It is a philosophical novel, but one which dramatizes its arguments, rather than proposing them in any formal sense.


THE OUTSIDER is set in Algiers, where our protagonist, Mersault, leads an unambitious and unremarkable bachelor existence. He lives in a modest apartment, has a respectable but uninteresting job, and displays little if any enthusiasm in his engagement with other people. As such, he seems something of an outsider from the outset, but it is only as the novel progresses that this apparently innocuous characteristic assumes more sinister proportions. The novel begins with Mersault receiving the news of his mother’s death:

‘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.’

This sparse, unemotional tone continues throughout the first half of the narrative, which is written in the first-person in a sort of bleak, extended monologue. Upon receiving the telegram, Mersault excuses himself from work, takes a bus and journeys for 50 miles through the desert to the home, where his mother’s corpse has been set out in its coffin. It is a hot afternoon, and he complains about the heat, the sun, and the glare of the sky. There is a sense, here as elsewhere, of a sort of colonial uneasiness, as though Mersault, as a Frenchman, does not belong in this strange and inhospitable place, a notion which is echoed in the novel’s French title, L’Etranger, which is more accurately translated as the ‘Foreigner’. But of course, Mersault, by his very nature, doesn’t really belong anywhere else, either.

Speaking briefly with the director of the home, Mersault concedes that he did not feel any guilt at having sent his mother away. He declines an invitation to view the body, but keeps vigil with it overnight, in accordance with the custom. At one point, he smokes a cigarette. There are a few exchanges in these first few pages, between Mersault and others, each of which is characterised by his unrelenting and at times infuriating honesty. He seems completely devoid of humanity, sees no need to conform to the expectations of others, is philosophical about his mother’s death, and is constitutionally incapable of feigning a grief he does not feel. Nor does he see any need to assuage the discomfort his attitude causes to those around him. When asked by the undertaker how old his mother was, he replies ‘Fairly’, for in truth he doesn’t know her exact age.

There is a funeral procession, in the heat of the day, across the parched, sun-drenched landscape, and once again, Mersault is disturbed by the light, the sun, and the heat, and feels unable to concentrate. His mother is buried and he returns home. He remarks that everything went very quickly, but he remembers a few other scenes from the day; ‘the church and the villagers in the street, the red geraniums…the blood-red earth tumbling onto mother’s coffin, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it…and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights which was Algiers and I knew I was going to bed and to sleep for a whole twelve hours.’

The following day, a Saturday, he wakes late and decides to go for a swim. He runs into a woman of his acquaintance, whom he used to work with and had ‘always fancied.’ They swim together in the sea, and go to the cinema, before returning to his apartment for the night.

In the following week, he befriends one of his immediate neighbours, Raymond Sintes. He later assists Sintes in revenging himself upon the brother of an Arab woman Sintes had been involved with. Later, on a beach, the two confront the woman's brother ("the Arab") and Sintes is wounded in the ensuing knife fight. Meursault then returns to the beach and shoots the Arab five times. Once again, he complains about the hot sun, the bright sky, and he seems to have absolutely no comprehension of what he has done.

Although it has no bearing whatsoever on subsequent events, Mersault’s behaviour at his mother’s funeral, and in the days following her death is later introduced as evidence at his trial. A man capable of this, the argument runs, of a casual, languid day spent swimming in the sea, going to the pictures, embarking upon a sexual affair, on the day after his mother’s funeral, is surely capable of anything.

Much is made of the fact that these unrelated factors form such an important part of the prosecution case. The grotesque murder of ‘the Arab’ appears to be of secondary importance; what truly appals the court is Mersault’s unrelenting atheism and his refusal to display any remorse.


FINALLY: As alluded to earlier, there are several misconceptions surrounding The Outsider, chief among these being the assumption that Mersault’s curt and disinterested demeanour prior to and immediately following the murder represents some sort of Existentialist ideal. It does not. In fact, it is only much later that Mersault begins to exhibit the evidence of his epiphany.

The Outsider is often unpleasant, but always beautifully written, and tremendously lyrical in places. It is only a short novel, in fact, it is as slender as a magazine… and one could easily read it in a single sitting. But it packs one hell of a punch. Read it. It might just change your life.

Summary: A Twentieth Century Masterpiece