In this blog post, we’ll examine the emotions and symbolism associated with the sun—a recurring motif in Albert Camus’s works—with a particular focus on Meursault, the protagonist of ‘The Stranger’.
The sun plays a dazzlingly central role in Albert Camus’s literature. Since the Mediterranean sun epitomized the landscape of Algiers, where Camus grew up, he called Algiers the “city of summer.” For Camus, who was born into a poor family, the sun—along with the sea—was a gift of nature that he enjoyed to his heart’s content. In the preface to his essay collection ‘Betwixt and Between’, he wrote, “Above all, poverty was never a misfortune to me. Light bestowed its abundance upon my poverty.”
When you open ‘Nuptials’, a collection of essays from his youth, the vibrant scenery of Algiers in the Mediterranean summer unfolds before your eyes. Camus describes it as follows: “And as August sets in and the sun burns more fiercely, the white houses become more dazzling, and people’s skin takes on a deeper warmth. How, then, can one not be swept up in the dialogue between stone and flesh, in step with the sun and the season?”
Meursault, the protagonist of Camus’s first novel, ‘The Stranger’, reveals his true self on numerous occasions under the blazing sun. In his notes, Camus stated that ‘The Stranger’ depicts “the nakedness of man in the face of absurdity.” So what exactly is the absurdity Camus speaks of? In his philosophical essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, he explains that absurdity arises from the disconnect between humans, life, and the world. He argues that the root of absurdity lies in discovering a stranger in one’s own reflection in the mirror—the contrast between human appeals and the world’s unyielding silence.
In this context, ‘The Stranger’ depicts Meursault’s psychological journey—from feeling like a stranger to himself to being completely socially excluded and ultimately sentenced to death after committing murder. The novel illustrates the existential absurdity humans experience at the point where personal emotions clash with social judgments.
To embody the absurdity faced by Meursault, Camus repeatedly features the sun in the novel. As explained in a French dictionary entry on Albert Camus, the sun is contrasted in Camus’s literature in two ways: emotional and symbolic. Emotionally, it evokes experiences from childhood and youth, as well as an immediate sense of oneness with the Mediterranean; symbolically, it affirms nature’s eternal youth while simultaneously suffocating the desert and the city in white light and wielding a cruel self-evidence. Ultimately, Camus seeks to endure the tragedy of reality by drawing on his inner “indomitable summer” as the driving force of life.
After receiving a telegram from the nursing home informing him of his mother’s death, Meursault fell asleep, exhausted by the heat, while riding an intercity bus departing at 2:00 p.m. He experiences the sun’s heat so vividly that he feels “the sunlight reflecting intensely off the road even blinded his eyes.”
Meursault’s indifference toward the soldier sitting next to him—his refusal to engage in further conversation—stems from his usual taciturn nature, but the excessive heat accentuated his “lazy” side, making him find even polite small talk a nuisance. He frequently used expressions like “annoying,” “troublesome,” “bothersome,” and “I’m sick of it” when interacting with others. This lack of social skills was one of the factors that made him an “outsider.”
After confirming his mother’s death at the nursing home and spending the night there, Meursault once again felt the oppressive heat of the sun at the funeral, which began at 10 a.m. the next morning. “The sky was already filled with the sun. The sun was beating down on the earth, and the heat rose sharply.” Looking at that scene, he remarks, “The landscape, shuddering under the searing sun, was desolate and bleak.”
The funeral procession heading toward the cemetery battles the sweltering heat. The smell of tar from the asphalt melted by the scorching heat, his irritation and pity for the people exhausted by the heat, and the harshness of the sun hanging high in the sky all wear Meursault down. As they enter the village where the church is located, the nurse walking beside him says, “If we go too slowly, there’s a risk of heatstroke. But if we go too fast, we’ll be drenched in sweat and shiver from the cold inside the church.”
Meursault admits, “She was right. There was no way out.” It is the realization that, under not only the scorching sun but also the power of the Absolute it symbolizes, humans are in a situation from which they cannot escape, no matter what they do. This nihilism and cynicism also serve to isolate Meursault from society.
However, the sun is not always portrayed negatively in the novel. When Meursault enjoys a day at the beach with his girlfriend Marie one Saturday, the sun heralds the peak of happiness. “The sun at 4:00 p.m. wasn’t very hot, but the water was lukewarm as low waves rolled in long, languid swells. (…) Marie came over to me and pressed herself close in the water. She pressed her lips against mine. Her tongue refreshed my lips, and we rolled around in the waves for a while.”
At the moment where the sun and the sea meet, Meursault savors the ecstasy of love with Marie. This evokes the desire expressed by Camus in “Nuptials”—the longing for the embrace that the earth and the sea have yearned for since time immemorial to be realized upon one’s own skin.
The final section of Part One of the novel simultaneously reveals the dual nature of the sun. One Sunday, Meursault enjoys a swim with Marie under the brilliant sunlight and, for the first time in his life, feels as though he might get married. The happiness bestowed by the sun temporarily transforms the usually prickly Meursault.
However, it is precisely the midday sun that seals his absurd fate. The red, scorching sun; his forehead swollen from the heat; the pain as if his eyes were being gouged out by the glint of the Arab’s knife off the sunlight—all of this drives him forward in a chain reaction. After firing one shot, he fires four more, as if knocking four times on the door of misfortune. Just before the murder, he says he “shook off the sweat and the sun,” which also carries a metaphorical meaning of trying to shake off the sun itself. Symbolically speaking, he fired at the sun, and as a result, he fell existentially into the position of an “outsider.”
Part 2 continues with Meursault’s imprisonment, the preliminary hearing, the trial, and his final night before execution. The sun, which appeared frequently in Part 1, remains outside the confines of his confinement and does not make an appearance. Throughout the 11-month interrogation process, Meursault never expresses remorse for his crime. He merely states that he “feels a deep sense of boredom.” Although he admitted to the crime, he did not offer any excuses such as self-defense or diminished capacity. It was for the simple reason that “he didn’t have much to say.”
The trial took place during a sweltering summer, and as Meursault watched the jurors fanning themselves, he recalled the sight of passengers on a tram gazing with curiosity at a new rider. This scene connects to the expressions of the elderly men who silently watched him as he kept vigil at his mother’s coffin in Part One. Without realizing it, he found himself confronted with the “world of the trial,” which brings to mind the human condition of living while conscious of the gaze of others.
The owner of Meursault’s regular restaurant defends his taciturnity, saying he “simply didn’t speak to avoid saying something foolish,” but in court, Meursault was denied the opportunity to present his own case and, having been thoroughly ostracized, was forced to play the role of an “outsider.” The prosecutor exploited his silence, branding Meursault a filial traitor based on the fact that he did not shed tears at his mother’s funeral. In court, such behavior was deemed no different from that of a murderer lacking empathy, and due to the coincidental timing of another major criminal case being heard in the same courtroom, Meursault was further branded as a particularly vicious individual. The prosecutor also recharacterized the accidental killing as a crime that had been meticulously premeditated.
In his final statement, Meursault drew laughter from the courtroom by stating that his motive for the murder was “the sun.” However, if one slowly revisits the circumstances of Part One, that statement is by no means entirely false. He did not lie, nor did he fabricate emotions he did not feel. Yet he is sentenced to death. The trial itself was, in a sense, a farce.
Nevertheless, during the trial, Meursault finds solace by recalling the summer evening scenery outside the courtroom. He remembers the streets bathed in the sunset and, as he reflects on past happiness, regains his composure. Through the clash between the logical world of the second half—the courtroom—and the illogical world Meursault has maintained, set against the backdrop of a series of coincidences in the first half of the novel, Camus depicts the process by which the protagonist, sentenced to death, achieves self-discovery in prison.
Meursault dismisses language based on social conventions as “meaningless chatter” and avoids assigning meaning by adopting an attitude that “nothing really matters” or “it doesn’t matter either way.” He is an outsider who refuses to conform to the logic of customs, laws, and religion. After briefly experiencing the terror of the guillotine, he resigns himself to his fate, abandons his appeal, and resolves to accept his execution—as if in defiance of the human condition. This sentiment can be glimpsed in a prose piece Camus wrote in his youth: “In my case, I don’t want to lie when facing nature, nor do I want people to lie to me. I want to remain fully awake until the very end, and I want to gaze upon my own end amidst the overflowing jealousy and fear I possess.”
The novel concludes with Meursault’s deeply lyrical soliloquy. He says, “The wondrous peace of the sleeping summer washed over me like a wave,” and as the night draws to a close, he hears the sound of a ship’s horn. That sound signals to him “the departure into a world now forever unrelated to me.” Thinking of his mother for the first time in a long while, he recalls the nursing home director’s words—that his mother had found a new fiancé and was trying to start her life anew—and comes to understand that perhaps his mother’s evening stroll was a “serene peace tinged with regret.” Though the dying embers of her life may have burned with a sense of regret, it was the same serenity that Meursault felt in the “wonderful peace of a sleeping summer” as he faced death. Thus, he feels “ready to live again” and confesses, “As if I had emptied myself of all hope, standing there facing this night filled with all manner of signs and stars, I opened myself for the first time to the world’s affectionate indifference.”
Meursault ultimately loves and affirms his life—which he had previously regarded with ennui—declaring, “I have been happy before, and I am still happy.” To borrow Camus’s words, he was solitary at that moment, yet not lonely amid that sense of fulfillment. And the oxymoron “the world’s affectionate indifference” lingers long in the reader’s memory. To better understand its meaning, one must recall a passage from Camus’s notebooks, written between 1935 and 1942.
The following reflection is recorded in his notebooks:
“Do not separate yourself from the world. Anyone who places their life in the light will not fail in life. What I must devote all my energy to is regaining contact with the world, even amid adversity, misfortune, and disillusionment. How immense is the desire to love, even within the sorrow that dwells within me, and how ecstatically intoxicating it is just to gaze upon a hill on a summer evening.”
“Contact with what is true—first, contact with nature; next, contact with the art created by enlightened people; and, if I am capable, contact with my own art. Even if I cannot achieve that, light, water, and ecstasy are always before me, along with the damp lips of desire.”
“Smiling despair. Though there is no way out, I ceaselessly exercise a power that everyone knows to be futile. Essence—do not lose your way. And do not lose what lies dormant within this world.”
