The theme of prototypical existence and essence is a useful guide to The Stranger inasmuch as the novel clearly reflects Camus’s concern at the time with various atheistic existential motifs, such as the absurd nature of human existence, alienation from self and others via stereotyping, and the basic unavailability of essentialist answers (such as Christianity) to the question of meaningful life. Objects, stereotypes, and essences, however, are exact opposites of the human type of being to the extent that they are frozen in a fixed and inert state. Their existence is open to the possibility of choice and change, a project in the making. 1 Humans have and make a history for themselves.
The distinction is that between the freedom of human beings and the thinglike nature of objects, stereotypes, and essences. Which is the real Meursault?Ī useful guide in this search is the existentialists’ own distinction between existence and essence. Is he an absurd hero or a dangerous psychological type? There are clearly two personifications in the novel: the Meursault of Part One, an embodiment of sensualism and carpe diem, a hedonist possessing minimal self-reflection and the Meursault of Part Two, a condemned criminal, a heinous killer-in the eyes of society at any rate-whose existence has been converted into a series of stereotypical categories. One of the most enigmatic characters in modern literature is Meursault of Camus’s The Stranger.
John Valentine, Savannah College of Art and Design
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