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The Stranger


Third, and logically following, Meursault lives entirely in the present. .
             The past is past and dwelling upon it in any mood is simply a waste of the present. As to the future, the ultimate future is death; to sacrifice the present to the future is equivalent to sacrificing life to death. Finally and obviously, since the present is his sole milieu, Meursault takes note of each moment of life; since there is no outside value system, no complex future plan, to measure against, and as a result of his passion for truth and consequently justice, he grants every moment equal importance. One moment may be more pleasurable than another, one boring, one mundane, each receives "equal time" in his narration of his life. Meursault has one failing trait, a direct and logical result of his unconsciousness of his own view of life and philosophy of living, indifference. Perhaps because his way of life and thinking seem so natural to him, he has never considered their roots, has never confronted the absurdity of death, with the consequent recognition of the value of his life. .
             Out of indifference he fails to question and thereby errs out of indifference he links forces with violence and death, rather than with love and life. As a result of indifference, he kills a man. Meursault kills a man and is brought to trial. But in truth he is not tried for murder, nor for his error, he is tried for his virtue. Here Camus shows how many men fear the absurd, refuse - not to accept it - to confront it at all. Instead they make compromises with it, grant it importance and supernatural meaning, and live for it. The result is lives built on sham, hypocrisy, paper scaffolding. The natural man, the man of truth and reality, can only threaten their authority, the very fragile web of their lives, that is, his very existence may force them to see through themselves. It is for this that they condemn Meursault to death. Faced with the guillotine, Meursault is forced to confront death, his own death.


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