In this blog post, I will explore how Meursault’s honesty and indifference, as depicted in Camus’s ‘The Stranger’ and the myth of Sisyphus, lead to a “dead end,” absurdity, and ultimately, the death penalty.
The Work and Its Publication Background
Albert Camus wrote ‘The Stranger’ (l’étranger) between approximately 1939 and 1941. Of course, he had spent a long time prior to that gathering material, developing the theme, and writing drafts; going even further back, the work’s roots are intertwined with the author’s own childhood memories and autobiographical elements—poverty, his taciturn mother, his father who died young and was thus absent, the radiant nature of Algeria, and the daily life of the working class. The book was published in 1942 by Gallimard. This does not mean that Camus had not been writing prior to that time. In fact, he had already attempted or was in the midst of various creative endeavors centered on several themes—such as death, freedom, rebellion, happiness, and absurdity—that he would carry with him throughout his life and which served as the nourishment for his writing. However, up until then, he had been an unknown young essayist and columnist who had grown up in Algeria, and ‘The Stranger’ was the first work in which he wove those fundamental reflections into a novel—and the signal that made his name known in France.
André Malraux, who had deeply influenced Camus, read the finished manuscript and recognized it as a work that would endure for a long time. This novel appears transparent and simple, yet it is precisely this transparency that makes it feel like a question mark that cannot be easily erased. Camus summarized the work as follows: it is the story of a young man who, facing the risk of execution for failing to weep at his mother’s funeral, refuses to resort to subterfuge and remains true to himself until the very end, ultimately leading to his death. This very conciseness already reveals a certain ambiguity. Being sentenced to death simply for not crying at one’s mother’s funeral seems, on the one hand, absurd; yet, on the other hand, it becomes understandable—and even inevitable—when the rigidity of social norms and customs, which the author deliberately omits, is brought to light. When an issue possesses both absurdity and inevitability in this way, it becomes the very epitome of absurdity.
Honesty, Beginnings, and Absurdity
Creating yet another Korean-language edition and commentary for a classic text—one that has already been translated and read numerous times and is widely adopted as a college textbook—involves a somewhat contradictory dilemma. The translator cannot ignore what previous editions, as well as the accumulated research and analytical materials on the work, have said about it. At times, there is even an obligation to be well-versed in them. Conversely, it is also important to read the text with a fresh, unguarded gaze, as if encountering it for the first time, despite all references, prior research, or one’s own existing knowledge and first impressions. Moreover, the materials and scholarly papers related to the work are extremely abundant; when confronted with such a vast amount, one feels a sense of noise, regardless of their usefulness. Perhaps Camus, speaking through his narrator, would have said that he ultimately felt boredom in the face of all that.
Unlike happiness or a sense of fulfillment, boredom is an emotion that arises from a perceived disconnect between oneself and the world—or between oneself and countless others—and spreads from that gap. A person overcome by a sense of emptiness, a feeling of being pushed to the margins and drifting, or a sense of being left over, generally succumbs to drowsiness as a form of avoidance. Thinking in this way, we naturally approach “absurdity.” When difficult moments and relationships—which we must either accept or turn away from, yet can neither accept nor turn away from—seep into free indirect speech, a period of reprieve arises that prepares us for some ethical decision, precisely because we must endure it in that way.
In prison, Meursault thinks: “Yes. There was no way out.” So what? That “no way out” stands squarely before his consciousness. From that moment on, consciousness will strive to remain awake. If we cling to superficial definitions— “Unlike ordinary people, Meursault felt no grief on the day his mother died; he drank coffee with milk and met a woman. Is this strange behavior that society does not tolerate, or not…?” —we will never discover the task of seeking what to do, starting precisely from that very point of “no way out.” Around the same time, Camus submitted “The Myth of Sisyphus” (Le Mythe de Sisyphe) to Gallimard. This essay serves as an excellent guide to understanding ‘The Stranger’, vividly demonstrating that for Sisyphus, there is always no way out, yet a new beginning is always required.
As you read carefully, experiencing both the minor details and the seemingly significant scenes equally—without distinguishing between their relative importance—the fundamental attitude of the narrator, Meursault, will at some point sink into your heart without resistance. You can trace how “indifference” excludes discrimination and prejudice to become a window opening onto the world with an equal and “distant affection,” and how the sense of dissonance with the world leads to a level of awareness—and further, to a moment of decision—where one draws one’s own boundary in the face of eternity and accepts it with one’s whole being (“I realized that I had been happy and that I still am happy.”). What makes this journey possible is, to use the author’s own words, “honesty.” It was precisely that honesty—that fidelity to the truth—that initially led to that dead-end situation, forcing life to confront death head-on.
That honesty transforms chance into destiny, turning a common neighborhood murder stemming from a spur-of-the-moment motive into a reflection on universal human truths worthy of a Greek tragedy. In that context, it is by no means wrong to read ‘The Stranger’ as “the story of a man who accepts death for the sake of truth without adopting any heroic posture.”
Language, Taciturnity, and Influence
Taciturnity is another facet of honesty. Sartre—who, though he later drifted apart from Camus, offered apt and insightful commentary on Camus’s early works—noted the language of silence permeating the lines of the author’s prose. He observed that this silence, rather than connecting the sentences, turns them into separate “islands.” In fact, Camus once wrote in his notebook, “Always write by saying less rather than more.” While he was influenced by a series of American novels that eschew emotional outbursts and psychological realism in favor of cinematic techniques (such as the hard-boiled styles of Dos Passos and Hemingway), Camus’s prose is imbued with a classical ethos, as many have pointed out.
It is a style that shuns rhetorical effects and discards unnecessary embellishments—a form of writing that aims for what Barthes called the “transparent zero degree.” Like the litotes of classical language, these sentences achieve speed and a crisp texture precisely by not aiming for anything beyond their simple, utilitarian function. A language that seeks to translate what the senses have captured into the conscious process of observation, inference, and judgment as honestly as possible paradoxically makes us keenly aware of just how difficult it is not to lie. Yet, in the face of this insurmountable gap—this absurdity—which is both comical and tragic, remaining silent “to avoid speaking falsely” does not immediately lead to a breakdown, self-destruction, or drifting aimlessly. Camus speaks of a balance that is possible only through an affirmation devoid of illusion. This is supported by reflections such as: “A unique moment when spirituality rejects morality, happiness is born from the absence of hope, and the mind discovers its own reason within the body… If truth contains disillusionment, it is also true that every negation encompasses the blossoming of affirmation.”
Before Camus, there were already figures such as Artaud, Blanchot, and Bataille, and within just over a decade, Beckett, Robgrillet, and Sarraute also emerged, demonstrating the ways in which writers’ languages undergo adventures. Camus also, alongside figures such as Malraux, Stendhal, and Dostoevsky, remained in the “desert,” adopting an attitude that hoped metaphysical anguish and rebellion would guide reality and human behavior within it.
Therefore, Meursault’s “deserving-of-the-death-penalty” coldness and bluntness, when viewed from another angle, serve as evidence that he is living in a state of tense present—a process in which he transforms the ceaseless trajectories of phenomena, impressions, and movements that he delves into through his senses into the realm of cognition and language.
That “present” refers to a state prior to the organization of meaning and judgment as the products of inference—that is, prior to their being consigned to the past (insofar as sensation continues, it can only ever be “prior”). At the same time, it signifies the endless progression of consciousness that continues to open toward the imminent future.
For example, let us recall the words Meursault was about to say but ultimately abandoned when, in the courtroom, the prosecutor, with hostility, berated him, asking if he had ever seen the defendant show even a hint of remorse for his crime. He “wanted to explain to him, in a friendly tone—no, almost with affection—that up until then, I had never had a moment to truly regret anything. ‘Because I always had to focus my attention on what might happen today, or what might happen tomorrow…’” But in the end, he did not say it.
In this way, the consciousness of “focusing one’s attention” toward the future, toward the unknown outside, is experienced unconsciously. Deprived of personal freedom and the joy derived from immediate sensations, and driven into “judgment” as if in exile, a person has no time to adopt ceremonial expressions or gestures.
Instead, with clarity like the sun and ambiguity like a singer’s state forming the two sides of consciousness, alternating between tension and relaxation, they wait for a moment when they will finally speak for themselves—in other words, the moment when their own innocence is proven. This kind of waiting is fundamentally different from the conventional hopes for the future—such as planning one’s life in the hope of moving to a bigger city to find a better job or someday becoming wealthy.
It is also different from the desperate yearning to prolong life through an appeal or to seek religious salvation. If so, how can such waiting open up to anything other than death? It is as if the impulse of death steps out alone from beyond the clamor of life’s impulses—which urge us to live—and commands us to gaze toward the side of silence, that is, the “strange land.”
Contrary to what we commonly believe, when a slumbering consciousness awakens and struggles, it is not in response to the side of life, but rather to the side of death. Just as the sun naturally glides over Meursault at the moment he receives the gun from Raymond, the question “Shall I try to live?”—after about a year of recollection and reflection—ultimately shifts to the answer: to accept death, and its absurdity, as it is, riding on the peace of a sleeping summer night.
Thus, having reached this conclusion, his lucid consciousness—now devoid of both despair and hope—remains alone in the solitary cell, ready to greet the evening and the dawn that may follow—perhaps his final one. That time remains forever frozen as the “day before,” serving as the grand finale. That day before is a frozen moment in time, much like the day before death that Christ spent in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Meursault’s final words conclude with the sentence, “May all this come to a perfect end.” These words, spoken before the natural night, encapsulate the attitude of tranquility and acceptance he has chosen.
Listening to those final words, one is overcome by a strange sensation—as if witnessing the structure of time twisting and tearing apart, and a human face merging into the landscape and vanishing—while wondering from where that voice, which is not a voice, is echoing. Could it be that those words—and all the messages that came before them—were not the voice of a human being, but the voice of death itself, speaking from the side of death rather than that of humanity?
The senses and consciousness have already surrendered their present and fallen silent; conversely, death—which is silence itself—seems to speak as empty nature. Camus emphasizes this point by arranging two scenes in Parts 1 and 2 of the novel that form a parallel structure.
In Part 1, on the first Sunday evening after returning from his mother’s funeral, Meursault sits alone on the balcony watching the sunset and the sky until, exhausted, he goes into his room and looks at his reflection in the mirror. He can see the dining table, breadcrumbs, and the lamp, but his own face is not visible. Camus allows only the fleeting thought—“My mother is dead, Sunday has passed, and nothing has changed”—to cross his mind in that moment.
In Part 2, while in prison, Meursault gazes at his own face through the reflection of the evening sun shining on his bowl of food as it streams through the bars. Yet that face is so unfamiliar that it seems to confirm the fact that its owner is no longer there. At the same time, he realizes that he has been speaking to himself all along—words without a face; the face is gone, and only the natural landscape remains.
From the perspective of a living human, the landscape is always an object; yet death transforms a single life into a place, into a landscape or nature itself. The protagonist of Camus’s unfinished work ‘La mort heureuse’ (The Happy Death) is named Patrice, but “Meursault” in ‘The Stranger’ is not even a typical identifier of an individual (as evidenced by the fact that his neighbor Raymond refers to him by his last name as if it were a nickname). It is not a marker of an individual but merely a symbol—one that captures people’s interest, perhaps akin to a fusion of “death” and “the sun.”
Just as mythology erases the boundaries between humans and nature, transforming them into trees, rivers, and forests, the narrator’s voice sounds like an indifferent breeze or an echo drifting through the symbols and stars that fill the night sky after humanity has vanished.
That voice might be the wind brushing past a glittering speck of gold dust or a slender silver bracelet that glows momentarily in the light of an evening streetlamp; it might also be an echo that bestows an unforgettable, fleeting lyricism upon the face of a trivial and desolate everyday moment, only to vanish immediately.
