In this blog post, we will carefully explore, within the context of his life and the novel, how Meursault in Camus’s The Stranger was misunderstood and excluded in the face of tears, sunlight, and the social institution of the trial.

Introduction

Albert Camus’s The Stranger is a work that captivates us through the dazzling Mediterranean sunlight and the man—Meursault—who greets that sunlight every day. This novel, which catapulted the then-unknown young writer Camus to literary prominence, has consistently drawn readers’ interest since its publication and is widely recognized for its sharp insights into the human psyche and an absurd society. In this article, we will summarize Camus’s life, the main characters, and the plot of The Stranger, examine how his ideas are reflected in the work, and reflect on the novel’s significance.

Camus’s Life

An author’s life provides important clues for understanding their work, as personal background and life events form the framework for their thought and the foundation for the characters in their stories. Camus’s upbringing and the people he encountered had a profound influence on shaping his literary world—absurdity, rebellion, and the tension between the individual and society.
Albert Camus was born in 1913 in Mondovi, Algeria, as the second of nine children. His father was a vineyard worker who was killed in action, and he grew up in poverty under the care of his mother and grandmother. However, he received special attention from his teachers at school, which helped him develop his talents and earn a scholarship to attend university. While studying philosophy at the University of Algiers, he held down several jobs to make ends meet, and it was during this time that he met Jean Grenier, who had a profound intellectual influence on him.
In 1934, at Jean Grenier’s urging, he joined the Communist Party but later withdrew after experiencing internal conflict; he also gave up his plans to become a professor due to health issues. During World War II, he served as editor-in-chief of Combat, the journal of the French Resistance, and continued to develop his voice as a writer. In 1942, he began to gain literary fame with the publication of his novel The Stranger and his essay The Myth of Sisyphus; he later achieved both critical and popular success with works such as the play Caligula and the novel The Plague.
In the 1950s, he actively spoke out on human rights issues and dedicated himself to campaigning against the death penalty. Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, tragically died in a car accident in 1960. His impoverished childhood, his studies in philosophy, his encounter with Jean Grenier, and his homeland of Algeria were constant sources of inspiration throughout his body of work. Camus himself loved his homeland, and the recurring image of “sunlight” in his works was an element inextricably linked to that Mediterranean land.

Meursault in The Stranger

Meursault is a character who clashes with society because of the way he expresses his emotions and his attitude toward life. He neither exaggerates nor disguises his emotions to conform to outward norms and expectations, and this honesty leads to social misunderstanding and exclusion. This is precisely why he is inevitably called “the Stranger.”
The plot is simple yet intense. Meursault, who works as a clerk at a shipping brokerage office in Algiers, spends time with Marie, a former coworker, after attending his mother’s funeral.
He befriends Raymond, a neighbor in his apartment building, and gets drawn into Raymond’s personal vendetta. While at the beach with Raymond, they encounter a group of Arabs who had been following them. Although the situation is resolved after a fight, Meursault goes to a well on the beach and, momentarily distracted by the glint of a knife held by an Arab he encounters there, instinctively pulls the trigger of his pistol, killing the man.
Part 2 unfolds the trial that follows the murder. Rather than focusing on the motive or circumstances of the crime, the trial uses Meursault’s character—particularly the fact that he did not cry at his mother’s funeral—as the primary basis for moral condemnation. Ultimately, he is judged even more harshly for failing to express the emotions society demands, and the trial functions as a mechanism to alienate him from society.
To understand Meursault, we must examine two key concepts. The first is “tears.” In this novel, “falsehood” does not merely refer to stating something that is not true, but also includes the attitude of presenting oneself with greater emotion than one actually feels. In the preface to the novel, Camus explains Meursault as follows: “He refuses to lie. A lie is not simply stating something that does not exist. It means, in particular, stating more than what actually exists—and when it comes to the human heart, it means stating more than one actually feels.”
Various characters in the novel display socially accepted emotional exaggerations—such as tears or compassion—and the prosecutor uses precisely these displays as grounds to condemn Meursault. For example, his mother’s friend and Salaman from the next room wept, and Marie reacted emotionally before the prosecutor, condemning Meursault’s attitude. In contrast, even after his mother’s death, Meursault calmly notes the continuation of daily life by saying, “Sunday passed,” and regarding love, he honestly states, “I don’t think I’m in love.” By rejecting the normative expression of emotion, he instead encounters even greater distrust and hostility.
The second element is “sunlight.” Throughout the work, sunlight appears as an element almost as important as the characters themselves. At the funeral home, when he receives the pistol from Raymond, and when he encounters the Arab on the beach—intense sunlight accompanies every pivotal moment. Camus uses sunlight to symbolize the “present” and “reality,” and its physical and sensory intensity directly influences Meursault’s actions and inner state.
Meursault cherishes his sensory perceptions, particularly concrete experiences such as the feel of sunlight and the sea. After being imprisoned, he longs for “tangible things” like sunlight, the sea, and the sensation of immersing himself in water. Furthermore, in the moments before his death, he reacts with anger to the priest’s offer of salvation, revealing a candid certainty about his own existence. He states that he has “certainty about myself, about everything,” clinging to the sensory reality of life until the very end.
Ultimately, the reason Meursault became an outsider in society was that he refused to feign false emotions and instead took concrete sensory experiences—such as sunlight—as his standard for life. Society attempts to maintain order through conventional expressions of emotion and the attribution of meaning, but Meursault did not conform to such norms, and his honesty became the spark that ignited his trial and social exclusion. The Stranger sharply exposes the gap between an individual’s sincerity and societal expectations, asking us: Which life is more authentic, and why does society refuse to tolerate such truth?

Meursault and Death

Meursault displays a different attitude toward death than ordinary people. Reflecting Camus’s atheistic and non-religious perspective, death is simply “the end” for Meursault. Rather than seeking God or spiritual meaning, he values the things within his immediate reach—the objects and sensations before his eyes—more highly.
For him, the most intense experiences are sensory phenomena like sunlight; through the sunlight, he fully feels his own present existence. This attitude leads to a way of life that does not exaggerate or fabricate emotions. Ultimately, Meursault is a character who deliberately refrains from displaying social or emotional expressions such as tears or compassion, and lives his life prioritizing the “present” above all else.

Meursault, the Outsider

So why did Meursault become an “outsider” in the novel? He has little interest in abstract and normative concepts such as emotions, God, sorrow, morality, and religion. While he usually acted according to his natural senses and logic, during the trial, all of his actions became subject to interpretation.
Camus stated that the meaning of the work lies in the parallel relationship between Part 1 and Part 2. In Part 1, Meursault’s actions are described without any particular significance, but in Part 2, those actions are interpreted by others. In court, his failure to cry at his mother’s funeral is interpreted as indifference, and his lack of remorse after the murder is seen as a moral deficiency.
The court and the prosecutors conclude that Meursault was fully aware of his actions and that it is difficult to grant him mitigating circumstances. Ultimately, he is sentenced to death. As Camus noted, Meursault is a character who speaks very little throughout the story, and his silence is misinterpreted as carrying greater significance during the trial.
Parts 1 and 2 can also be viewed as two distinct worlds. The world before the murder is composed of everyday, vernacular language, whereas the world after the murder is a space dominated by trials, rhetoric, and normative logic. The same words take on different meanings in each of these worlds. For example, the term “relationship” refers to natural human connections in Part 1, but in Part 2, it is interpreted as a connection governed by prescribed and artificial logic.
Meursault has no intention of lying, and his indifference compels him to remain silent. No one understands him. Ultimately, even in the setting of the trial, he is alienated, and that alienation becomes his fate as “the Stranger.”

Camus’s Philosophy

Absurdity

Camus’s literary world is often explained as being divided into three stages. The first stage is considered to be absurdity, the second stage rebellion, and the third stage temperance; The Stranger, along with The Myth of Sisyphus, is a work that represents the first stage, “absurdity.” It is generally assessed that the third stage remained unfinished due to Camus’s death.
The novel reveals absurdity through narrative techniques such as free indirect discourse. In particular, criticism of the judicial system and the prison world persists throughout Part Two; this is achieved through realistic depictions (the prison, the visiting room, the prisoners’ reactions) and satirical contrasts (the clash between the reality experienced in Part One and the prosecutor’s rhetorical interpretations).
The mechanisms of the trial expose absurdity and subjectivity. In a world ruled by chance, the abuse of logic and the desire to provide a coherent explanation are revealed, and in the process, the individual is negated and forgotten. The judicial system of the time tended to select and try those who appeared to have sufficient grounds for suspicion, and humanity was easily excluded.
This critique of such trials is linked to the religious maxim “Do not judge others,” which is closely connected to the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” Camus’s support for the abolition of the death penalty stems precisely from this critical perspective.
In this way, through the character of Meursault, Camus sought to expose social and judicial absurdity by employing a clear division between Parts 1 and 2 and various narrative devices.

Existentialism

Existentialism is a philosophical and literary movement that emphasizes individual freedom, responsibility, and subjectivity. Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir are among its leading figures. Although Camus refused to classify himself as an existentialist during his lifetime, his works are regarded as existentialist literature for their insights into human existence and their search for a new ethics in an absurd world.
Sartre interpreted The Stranger as follows: “A work that reveals its value simply through its own character, without striving to prove anything.” In line with this assessment, the novel narrates Meursault’s actions in a matter-of-fact manner, without exaggeration or dramatization.
Sartre also analyzed that the novel’s sentences are each independent, and that the key point is that Meursault lives in the “present.” For Meursault, the past and future hold little significance; his experience of each moment is the entirety of his existence. This narrative style, in which each sentence is arranged like an independent spark of light, aligns the novel’s content with its form and effectively reveals Meursault’s existential attitude.
In this context, The Stranger possesses an existentialist character, and Meursault presents himself to readers as a new ethical and ontological case study.

Conclusion

Albert Camus’s The Stranger is a representative work of the author’s “absurd” phase, exploring human alienation and absurd social structures through the character of Meursault. Meursault’s attitude, which prioritizes the sensory present, becomes the subject of misunderstanding and interpretation within the institutional space of the trial, ultimately leading to alienation and punishment.
The message this work conveys to modern society remains powerful. To quote Sartre’s assessment, “It is entirely possible to identify the main characteristics of future French literature within Camus’s dark yet pure works”; his literature, while offering no illusions, is filled with faith in humanity and demonstrates a restrained passion that is harsh yet excludes unnecessary violence.