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Resul Kaan ONAÇ
20200782
Section 06
Second Essay Final Draft
MEANINGLESS IN LIFE & BEING OUTSIDER
Life may have a meaning for people who have normal relationships with other people. There would be such a moment that reasons force people’s life to be meaningless. In these cases individuals have not too many alternatives that they can do. As we see in Albert Camus’ words “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life” (Albert Camus), sometimes life may not have meaning for people having normal relationships. Somebody feels life has not got any meaning because of an important reason that affects him or her. For instance, death of an important person makes a profound effect on this person. Again important events like that change person’s ideas and makes him/her does not want to find a meaning of life. However, it may be a character or understanding of world that person’s ideas about life are same and not changed by any events.
Camus believes that searching for happiness in life is unnecessary and brings unhappy. If we try to find a meaning in life, we won’t certainly be happy. This is the view of Camus’ sentences above. The main character of The Outsider, Meursault, also shows that there is a meaningless in his life. We can understand that from his behaviours in the novel. Besides that, meaningless in life is also the main theme of The Outsider and life has no meaning for Meursault. We can find out these kinds of behaviour that shows us Meursault is an outsider and does not cares life many times in the novel. We will deal with these examples further parts.
At the beginning of the novel we can find out Meursault’s behaviours against events that become after his mother’s death and his thoughts about these events that how he reacts to these. After this part Meursault’s trial and his life in the prison are told in the second part, as we are able to call.
After he learns his mother’s death, he goes Marengo in order to takes part in the funeral. His mother lives at old people’s home in Marengo. Meursault thinks the day of the funeral is more important than the funeral, because his boss is able to think he wanted to make four days holiday with this additional two days off includes Thursday and Friday. He serves having no emotions and feelings about his mother’ dead during the funeral. After the funeral he meets with Marie when he goes for swimming. They go to a movie together. After this, he has a dinner with his neighbour, Raymond. He learns from his neighbour that Raymond beats his Arab girlfriend. Then, while Raymond, Meursault, and Marie are walking around the beach, they see Arab girl’s brother. Our main character Meursault makes an unexpected action and shoots him. This action is unexpected, because there is no reason to kill him. He shoots suddenly when nobody is able to think.
He is judged in the trial. He is repeatedly questioned about his mother’s death. He accepts that he does not worry about his mother’s death. Then, the jury is frightened about that he has no or less emotion, namely his lack of emotion. They are frightened and surprised, because they don’t witness such a situation: a man who does not care about his mother’s death. Afterwards, he says the reason is only sun towards the questions about the murder. He says sun causes him to shoot the Arabic man. Despite of the fact that he does not believe he will be punished, the verdict is not as he expected. Because he thinks he is not guilty. But, the jury agrees that Meursault is decapitated by guillotine. After the verdict, he says he is happy. His last wish is that there should be a crowd of spectators at his execution.
The novel starts with this important line "Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know" (Camus 9). The stressed point is that our hero, Meursault does not care life and as a natural result the life has not got any meaning for him. If it has a meaning, he would be related with life because of at least one reason. Only one reason would be enough in order to be related with life and as a result having a meaning of life. The next sentence is already enough to correct us. “I had a telegram from the home: “Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.” That does not mean anything. It may have been yesterday” (Camus 9). It means there is no meaning and so there is no aim again. There is no meaning of life for Meursault, and he has feelings and emotions too. It cannot belong a normal people. Because people who have normal relationships should be sorry about their mothers’ deaths and they should suffer from this. It is not an obligation for them. It comes from human nature that means normally people get worried about a death of their mother or dad or such an important person. Nobody tells them to get worry; because it will be silly if there is. However there isn’t also. It is located into our brains and conscience. But Meursault does not care about this fact that his mother dies. There isn’t any meaning of his life. If there is, he will suffer from his mother’s death. Don’t care about this is not a normal behaviour that expected from a person who believes life is meaningful. These all are contradictions in Meursault’s life and they show us there is a meaningless in Meursault’s life.
We can find out another examples to correct our opinions above. While reading these sentences “I caught her up and, put my arms around her [Marie] waist and we swam together. She was still laughing. On the quayside, while we were drying ourselves, she said ‘I am browner than you.’ I asked her if she wanted to come to the cinema that evening” (Camus 24), it is easy to fall into the trap of believing Meursault to be a man who has emotion and passion. But it is so frighteningly untrue. It may mislead the readers that he has feelings and emotions due to sentences above. On the other hand, it can’t be true while he displays many examples of having no feelings and emotions. This quotation provides us that the contradictions in Meursault’s life continue. These contradictions provide us again there is meaningless in his life, because contradiction means something goes wrong and these contradictions means also he gets confused. So, he treats strange and incomprehensible. He has no aim and, so no meaning in his life.
“She was wearing a pair of my pyjamas with the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed, I fancied her again. A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her that it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so. She looked sad” (Camus 38). He says he fancies her. But he does not love her at the same time and he says it does not mean anything. These words can’t belong to a normal person, because Marie is like his girlfriend and whether love her is not important. These show us the life has no meaning and no aim for him. Although there is contradiction between Meursault’s behaviour, we can realize that there is more behaviour that shows us he feels himself as an outsider and the life is meaningless for him than he has normal relationships with people. Here again, the contradictions and strange treatments that are not expected by a person who has normal relationships. For instance, being indifferent to his girl friend’s questions about loving her provides he does not have normal relationships and it means again there is no meaning of life for him.
The caretaker came in behind me. He must have been running. He stuttered a bit. ‘We covered her up. But I was to unscrew the coffin to let you see her.’ He was just going up to the coffin when I stopped him. He said, ‘Don’t you want to?’ I answered, ’No’ He didn’t say anything and I was embarrassed because I felt I shouldn’t have said that. After a moment he looked at me and asked ‘Why not?’ but not reproachfully, just as if he wanted to know. I said, ‘I don’t know.’ (Camus 12)
We can understand that seeing his mother’s body is not important and has not got any meaning for him. Although it is not a normal and expected kind of behaviour by society, he does not want to see his mother body. The main reason of this is again meaningless in his life. Living does not refer anything, if it refers anything, he must behave like other people as we can call normal people. For instance, people with normal relationships if there is a funeral of their any relatives, will attend the funeral as normal, because it is expected by society. Meursault also attends the funeral as it is expected. However, he does not attend sincerely and the problem is this. There is again a contradiction in his treatments comparing people who have normal relationships. This is the difference too. So, it is normal to having problems with meaning of life; namely having meaningless in life.
This sentence is also important: “It was a long time since I’d been out in the country and I knew how much I’d have enjoyed going for a walk if it hadn’t been for mother” (Camus 17). He does not want to attend this funeral, however he has to do something because of the expectations from society. It will be wrong and not pleasant. Normally, it is like that in any country. He has to also obey this rule. So, he attends he funeral although he does not want. As we see in the quotations, Meursault does not treat as normal people. This is the normal result of his thoughts about life. If we try to consider what kind of behaviours are his behaviours, we will reach this result: he has not got normal relationships with people. He doesn’t treat as he is expected by society. All of these provide us able to decide he is an outsider there is no meaning in life.
Works Cited
Camus, Albert. The Outsider. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983.
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