Albert Camus' The Stranger Essay Words7 Pages Albert Camus' The Stranger What if the past has no meaning and the only point in time of our life that really matters is that point which is happening at present · One novel, Albert Camus’s The Plague is frequently mentioned as an outstanding example of “plague literature,” and I recently read it for the first time to see if it had anything to say to those of us who live in Santa Barbara about how we might survive our own blogger.comted Reading Time: 5 mins · Character Analysis of Meursault in The Stranger, by Albert Camus. Info: words (6 pages) Essay Published: 12th May in Literature. Reference this Share this: Facebook. Twitter. Reddit. LinkedIn. WhatsApp The Stranger, by Albert Camus, is an existentialist novel that reveals the life of an emotionally detached and absurd man, Meursault.
Albert Camus Essays: Examples, Topics, Titles, & Outlines
The Myth of Sisyphus French: Le Mythe de Sisyphe albert camus essay a philosophical essay by Albert Camus. Influenced by philosophers such as Søren KierkegaardArthur Schopenhauerand Friedrich NietzscheCamus introduces his philosophy of the absurd. The absurd lies in the juxtaposition between the fundamental human need to attribute meaning to life and the "unreasonable silence" of the universe in response.
Camus answers, "No, albert camus essay. It requires revolt. In the final chapter, Camus compares the absurdity of man's life with the situation of Sisyphusa figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, albert camus essay, only to see it roll down again. The essay concludes, "The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy", albert camus essay.
The work can be seen in relation to other absurdist works by Camus: the novel The Strangerthe plays The Misunderstanding and Caligulaand especially the essay The Rebel Camus began the work induring the fall of Francewhen millions of refugees fled from advancing German armies. This helped him in understanding the absurd, although the essay rarely refers to this event. The English translation by Justin O'Brien was first published in Included in the translated version is a preface written by Camus while in Paris in Here Camus states that "even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate.
The essay is dedicated to Pascal Pia and is organized in four chapters and one appendix. Camus undertakes the task of answering what he considers to be the only question of philosophy albert camus essay matters: Does the realization of the meaninglessness and absurdity of life necessarily require suicide? He begins by describing the following absurd condition: we build our life on the hope for tomorrow, albert camus essay, yet tomorrow brings us closer to death and is the ultimate enemy; people live albert camus essay lives as if they were not aware of the certainty of death, albert camus essay.
Once stripped of its common romanticism, the world is a foreign, strange and inhuman place; true knowledge is impossible and rationality and science cannot explain the world: their stories ultimately end in meaningless abstractions, in metaphors.
This is the absurd condition and "from the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, albert camus essay, the most harrowing of all. It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when the "appetite for the albert camus essay and for unity" meets "the impossibility of albert camus essay this world to a rational and reasonable principle, albert camus essay.
He then characterizes several philosophies that describe and attempt to deal with this feeling of the absurd, by Martin HeideggerKarl JaspersLev ShestovSøren Kierkegaardand Edmund Husserl. All of these, he claims, commit "philosophical suicide" by reaching conclusions that contradict the original absurd position, either by abandoning reason and turning to God, as albert camus essay the case of Kierkegaard and Shestov, or albert camus essay elevating reason and ultimately arriving at ubiquitous Platonic forms and an abstract god, as in the case of Husserl.
For Camus, who sets out to take the absurd seriously and follow it to its final conclusions, these "leaps" cannot convince. Taking the absurd seriously means acknowledging the contradiction between the desire of human reason and the unreasonable world. Suicide, then, also must be rejected: without man, albert camus essay, the absurd cannot exist. The contradiction must be lived; reason and its limits must be acknowledged, without false hope. However, the absurd can never be permanently accepted: it requires constant confrontation, constant revolt.
While the question of human freedom in the metaphysical sense loses interest to the absurd man, he gains freedom in a very concrete sense: no longer bound by hope for a better future or eternity, without a need to pursue life's purpose or to create meaning, "he enjoys a freedom with regard to common rules".
To embrace the absurd implies embracing all that the unreasonable world has to offer. Albert camus essay meaning in life, there is no scale of values. Thus, Camus arrives at three consequences from fully acknowledging the absurd: revolt, freedom, and passion.
How should the absurd man live? Clearly, albert camus essay ethical rules apply, as they are all based on higher powers or on justification. integrity has no need of rules is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgement of a fact.
Camus then goes albert camus essay to present examples of the absurd life. He begins with Don Juanthe serial seducer who lives the passionate life to the fullest. The next example is the actor, who depicts ephemeral lives for ephemeral fame. In those three hours, he travels the whole course of the dead-end path that the man in the audience takes a lifetime to cover. Camus's third example of the absurd man is the conquerorthe warrior who forgoes all promises of eternity to affect and engage fully in human history.
He chooses action over contemplation, aware of the fact that nothing can last and no victory is final. Here Camus explores the absurd creator or artist. Since explanation is impossible, absurd art is restricted to a description of the myriad experiences in the world.
He then analyzes the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky in this light, especially The Diary of a WriterThe Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov. All these works start from the absurd position, and the first two explore the theme of philosophical suicide. However, both The Diary and his last novel, The Brothers Karamazovultimately find a path to hope and faith and thus fail as truly absurd creations. In the last chapter, Camus outlines the legend of Albert camus essay who defied the gods and put Death in chains so that no human needed to die.
When Death was eventually liberated and it came time for Sisyphus himself to die, he concocted a deceit which let him escape from the underworld, albert camus essay. After finally capturing Sisyphus, the gods decided that his punishment would last for all eternity.
He would have to push a rock up a mountain; upon reaching the top, the rock would roll down again, leaving Sisyphus to start over.
Camus sees Sisyphus as the absurd hero who lives life to the fullest, hates death, and is condemned to a meaningless task. Camus presents Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless toil as a metaphor for modern lives spent working at futile jobs in factories and offices, albert camus essay. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Camus is interested in Sisyphus's thoughts when marching down the mountain, to start anew.
After the stone falls back down the mountain Camus states that "It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself!
I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. He does not have hope, but "there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. Camus claims that when Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, he is freed to realize the absurdity of his situation and to reach a state of contented acceptance.
With a nod to the similarly cursed Greek hero OedipusCamus concludes that "all is well," indeed, that "one must imagine Sisyphus happy. The essay contains an appendix titled "Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka ". While Camus acknowledges that Kafka's albert camus essay represents an exquisite description of the absurd condition, he mentions that Kafka fails as an absurd writer because his work retains a glimmer of hope. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For mythology regarding the Greek character Sisyphus, see Sisyphus. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 29 November The Daily Beast.
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. New York: Alfred A, albert camus essay. ISBN Retrieved 9 December Albert Camus and the Metaphor of Absurdity. Salem Press. Albert Camus works. The Stranger The Plague The Fall A Happy Death The First Man. Exile and the Kingdom " The Adulterous Woman " " The Renegade " " The Silent Men " " The Guest " albert camus essay The Artist at Work " " The Growing Stone ".
Caligula The Misunderstanding The State of Siege The Just Assassins The Possessed Requiem for a Nun. The Myth of Sisyphus The Rebel " Reflections on the Guillotine " Resistance, Rebellion, and Death. Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism Betwixt and Between Neither Victims nor Executioners Notebooks — Notebooks — Notebooks — Nuptials Correspondance Albert camus essay Chronicles American Journals.
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How To Find Beauty In Everything? - The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus: Explained
, time: 6:36"The Stranger" a Book by Albert Camus - Words | Essay Example
· One novel, Albert Camus’s The Plague is frequently mentioned as an outstanding example of “plague literature,” and I recently read it for the first time to see if it had anything to say to those of us who live in Santa Barbara about how we might survive our own blogger.comted Reading Time: 5 mins · Character Analysis of Meursault in The Stranger, by Albert Camus. Info: words (6 pages) Essay Published: 12th May in Literature. Reference this Share this: Facebook. Twitter. Reddit. LinkedIn. WhatsApp The Stranger, by Albert Camus, is an existentialist novel that reveals the life of an emotionally detached and absurd man, Meursault. The Stranger, By Albert Camus. The Stranger is book written by Albert Camus. It is set in Algiers, in French Algeria, in the ’s. The story is about a man who murders an Arab in seemly cold blood but it is shown that it was really by chance that the man was murdered. The man who committed the murder lack morals like many of characters in
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