Five Minute Lit: The Stranger

History is full of restless, ambitious overachievers who wanted to make some difference in the world. But what if our idea of the world is wrong? What if life is nothing more than a dumb accident of the universe with no meaning? This is the philosophy of absurdism. In Albert Camus' The Stranger, the idea of absurdism is told through the character of Meursalt, a guy so checked out of life that he can't even explain why he murdered someone. On this week's show, we're talking about life, death, and the meaning of it all. 

WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

In the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, the American founding father Alexander Hamilton comes across as this relentless, ambitious striver with more things to do in his life than he has time to do them. Like, get a load of this guy.

SPEAKER_04 0:13

My name is Alexander Hamilton. And there's a million things I haven't done. I am not thrown away ma shot. I am not thrown away my shot.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Even though we started at the very same time, Alexander Hamilton began to climb. How to account for his rise to the top? Man, the man is nonstop.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Okay, now maybe you don't really identify with a guy like that. Like, what if you want nothing out of life? Because life is just a stupid accident. Well, have we got a guy for you? His name is Murceau, and he's the central character in The Stranger by Albert Camus. This story introduces the philosophy of absurdism through the actions, or inaction, of Merceau. On this week's 5-Minute Lit edition of Five Minute Trivia, we're talking about the author, the story, and the meaning of life. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_04 1:23

We choose to go to the moon. The Rum Tugger is a curious cat. Hundred billion other galaxies.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Albert Camus was born in 1913 in Algeria. Back then, Algeria was a colonial holding of France, and his parents were French. He wrote a lot and organized his writing into three distinct cycles, in which he wrote an essay, a novel, and a play all around a central theme. The first one was the cycle of the absurd. Absurdism is the philosophy that life itself has no meaning. Our existence is just an accident of the universe with no grand purpose. Camus personifies this galactic accident through the character of Mersot. Like Camus, Merceau is a Frenchman living in colonial Algeria. Ye get a sense of this guy's priorities from the book's very first line.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Maman died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Maman is Merceau's mother. He gets a telegram that she's died, and his reaction is basically Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Whatever.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

He doesn't remember what day that was or why it's important. He goes to the funeral, but doesn't want to view the body and doesn't mourn at all. In fact, he just spends the night of the vigil, smoking and drinking, next to her closed coffin. Then he goes back to Algiers and meets up at the beach with an old co-worker named Marie. Then he meets his neighbor Raymond for dinner. Raymond is a pimp who just beat up his mistress and had a fight with her brother. Raymond wants Merceau to write a letter to lure the mistress back so he can humiliate her again. Murceau agrees because Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Whatever.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Marie asks Murceau if he loves her. He says no. He gets offered a promotion at work and doesn't care, so his boss fires him. Then Marie asks the unmotivated, unloving, and now unemployed Murceau to marry her. You can probably guess what he said.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Yeah, sure. Whatever.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Merceau, Marie, and Raymond go to the beach. Then Merceau and Raymond go for a walk. The brother of Raymond's mistress sees them. He and a group of guys attack Raymond. Raymond runs away and gets a gun. Murceau takes the gun and goes for a walk. He sees the brother again and shoots him dead because apparently the sun was bothering him. So he goes to jail. Murceau shows no remorse for shooting the man or any regret at his own mother's death. His defense attorney is repulsed by him. The judge calls him the Antichrist. In jail, Merceau thinks about all the things he's lost, like cigarettes. He's more bored by jail than anything, so he just remembers the details of his apartment. Merceau is found guilty and sentenced to death. The chaplain tries to visit and force religion on him, but Merceau rejects all of it. He says, I did some things in life, I didn't do other things, and none of it matters. The novel ends with Merceau waiting for the guards to haul him off to the guillotine. So what was Camus trying to say here? Basically, that life is meaningless and nothing matters. We've assigned these rules and morality, but all it takes is one stranger to those rules to disrupt everything. Camus believed that it was important to embrace the idea that life is absurd. Trying to find meaning in an irrational world just leads to conflict, and we're better off finding our own meaning through our own personal choices. Camus himself didn't have much in common with Murceau. He was a moralist and a revolutionary and an anti-fascist. He was a hero of the underground French resistance to the Nazis in World War II. He wrote five novels, six plays, an anthology of short stories, and a ton of essays and academic theses. He was the second youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the first from Africa. Honestly, he sounds a lot more like.