vacation reading part 2

The second book I read on vacation was a book by Albert Camus entitled, "The Stranger."

The title character is Meursault, a French man (characterised by being largely emotionally detached, innately passive, and anomic) who seemingly irrationally kills an Arab man whom he recognizes in French Algiers.

At the end of the book, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to be beheaded. He accepts is all with a sense of fatalism, after all (he thinks) "I'm going to die anyway, why not now?"

Nothing is worth anything. All is lost.

One writer summarizes the book this way:

"The story's second half examines the arbitrariness of Justice: the public official compiling the details of the murder case tells him repentance and turning to Christianity will save him, but Meursault refuses to pretend he has found religion; emotional honesty overrides self-preservation, and he accepts the idea of punishment as a consequence of his actions as part of the status quo.

It should be noted that the actual death of the Arab as a human being with a family is seemingly irrelevant, as Camus tells us little to nothing about the victim beyond the fact that he is dead. Indeed, Meursault is never even asked to confront, reflect or comment upon the victim as anything other than as a consequence of his actions and the cause of his current predicament. The humanity of the victim and inhumanity of murdering another human being is seemingly beside the point.

Thematically, the Absurd overrides Responsibility; in fact, despite his physical terror, Meursault is satisfied with his death; his discrete sensory perceptions only physically affect him, and thus are relevant to his self and his being, i.e. in facing death, he finds revelation and happiness in the gentle indifference of the world. Central to that happiness is his pausing after the first, fatal gunshot when killing the Arab man.

Interviewed by the magistrate, he mentions it did not matter that he paused and then shot four more times; Meursault is objective, there was no resultant, tangible difference: the Arab man died of one gunshot, and four more gunshots did not render him 'more dead'.

The absurdity is in society's creating a justice system to give meaning to his action via capital punishment: The fact that the death sentence had been read at eight o'clock at night and not at five o'clock . . . the fact that it had been handed down in the name of some vague notion called the French (or German, or Chinese) people — all of it seemed to detract from the seriousness of the decision."

I would sincerely disagree with Camus philosophy of life.

To me life is worth the living - especially because I have a connection with Christ. Christ not only changes my life, but gives me a reason for living. And that in turn, pushes me to accept my responsibilities. I am not the center of my universe - God is.

To me, loving my fellow man, having a relationship with Christ, and believing in something beyond myself are not "absurd" but a fulfillment of the way that God has created us. To love. To commit. To serve. To cherish.

May we all strive for a closer relationship with God.