Stranger Journal #8

Not gonna lie, my first impression of the book led me to believe that Camus was basically insane. However, when I remembered that this was the same Camus from my philosophy books, it shed a whole new light on the book for the second reading. I thoroughly enjoy the book as I begin to understand his thought process and piece together Camus' intent. I love his ability to use the book as a philosophical allegory to tie together all 6 elements of Existentialism. In the course of a fictional work, he is able to soundly reject Angst, Existential inauthenticity, while simultaneously embracing the Look, the Existential Other, and Absurdity. I have seen books that have valued philosophies against each other, but this is the first I've seen to truly internalize the philosophy and critically analyze it. Camus was able to make every piece relevant to every other piece in the book (which sucks for I.B. Juniors trying to analyze it, but makes it a great piece of literature). Just as important is his incorporation of moral philosophy which is usually excluded in works focused on personal philosophies. His use of Deontology to support this semi-Existentialist outlook was quite beautiful. I regret that as a class we were unable to truly analyze the philosophies inside the book. For example, I feel like most of us actually believe that Camus is an Existentialist or and "Absurdist" (lol). In terms of minor characters, I enjoyed his use of people like Raymond or even smaller characters like the Robot lady to personify these intellectual ideas, although I think he started to stretch his point about Ontological reasoning when he got to Salamono. It just seemed like such a large area that either he didn't receive enough attention or Camus should have made that the focus of a completely separate work. I am beginning to understand why this effectively revolutionized the philosophical world of the time. While I personally don't agree with it, his defense is both admirable and solid. One final complaint I have about Camus' method was that he never gave Meursault an independent rationale for existence post recognition of the Absurd (which serves to open up a whole for all traditional Existentialists and philosophers). Other than that, I think that he did a great job.

Thesis: In Albert Camus' "The Stranger", the motifs of light, sleep and water exposes the futility of attempting to moralize life, where light represents the illumination of the world's amorality, sleep reflects Meursault's desire to ignore the ugly truth about life that the light exposes, and water symbolizes Meursault's recognition and embrace of  life's meaninglessness. Ultimately, the only way to appreciate life is to recognize and embrace or ignore life's lack of inherent meaning.

Backup Thesis: Albert Camus uses the judiciary and discrimination to expose the futility of attempting to moralize life. Ultimately, relativity of morals makes it impossible to apply external justice.