A Hero Within

A Hero Within Albert Camus’ The Stranger follows the life of Meursault, an Algerian man, who is also the protagonist and narrator of the novel. Divided into two parts, the narrative offers a comprehensive, albeit detached, account of Meursault’s life before and after he commits a senseless, apparently unprovoked slaying. As Meursault starts off as removed, emotionless man without a care for his friends and family aspects of Camus’s philosophy of the “absurd” can be uncovered. On the surface, Meursault’s apathy and indifference signify not a failed man, but an fully, self-aware absurd one however; it is not until Meursault is faced with the absurdity of the human condition during his murder trial and subsequent death sentencing that he truly develops into the “absurd hero”. At the core of the Camusian notion of the “absurd” is the claim that there is a fundamental struggle between what one wants from life and what he or she actually receives (Handout). What one naturally seeks from the life is meaning and/or rational order yet, what he or she ultimately finds is pandemonium (Handout). One can search the universe far and wide and never find the answers he or she so anxiously yearns to discover. This constant search for meaning is known as the human condition. The human condition is the natural longing to impose meaning and order in a world without it. The basis of the absurd human condition is the conflict between one’s desires for significance or meaning and the unresponsive, callous world they eventually encounter. According to Camus, this is essentially the “absurd”. The “absurd hero” could then be characterized as an individual that fully accepts and embraces this absurd condition.
Upon first glance one might believe Meursault lives his life in the manner of a man completely aware of the absurd. At the start of the novel readers discover that Meursault’s mother, who resides in a nursing home, has recently passed away. When recounting his mother’s

Cited: Camus, Albert, and Matthew Ward. The Stranger. New York: Vintage International, 1989. Print.