Reflection on Albert Camus' 'The Outsider'

In the persistent stream of honest consciousness laid bare on the page, I found myself becoming deeply connected and intertwined with this dislikeable man, his strange truth and his fate.

We find elements of ourselves in this person who has done a terrible thing, who is honest to the point of dislikability, brutally unfiltered, lacking empathy and indeed lacking anything really that makes a human, relatable character. Yet, here we are, enjoying this undeniable candid human-ness.

The intimate stream of thought that has no apparent regard for external perception is a freeing style of prose and something that has encouraged me to read more Camus.

Many analysis' of this text highlight the meaninglessness with which Meursault approaches life, but I read it as something different. He tells his life as it is, finding satisfaction in smoking on balcony all day. He does not try to sensationalise.

The meaninglessness and non-attachment with which he approaches his existence, to me, reads as as liberating and stoic.

The mundane narrative is punctuated by sudden and vivid blazes of something that reaches out and hits you in the chest. We are inside the mind of Meursault, as much as he is inside ours.

The sections in prison, surprisingly, are full of these blazing cries of vividity. The language of thrill and happiness in boredom and monotony, the noticing of time passing, of certain sounds and certain lights, the whispering memories of summer evenings and their colours.

To claw for another day and breathe a sigh of relief at sunrise despite seeing it through a barred window awaiting death.

He says he believes that a man could live a day and still have enough memories to last time a lifetime in prison.

There is something in his time in prison that is powerfully allegorical.

Living on memories, being survived by a full life, to long for one more day despite watching the sunset frames by window bars.

To be enamoured with life despite its limitations and confines of experience and time.

And despite the hopelessness of fate, he says, if were to live again, he’d hope for 'a life that reminds me of this one,’ with all its mistakes, loss, and discomfort.

The sections in the prison cell are unexciting yet rousing as he grapples with the idea of the inevitable cessation of existence, whilst allowing himself to be electrified by the impossible idea of immortality.

The idea that we are all sitting in our cells waiting for the guillotine that we know will come, playing dangerously with the implausible idea that maybe there will be no death for us.

The Outsider is starkly morbid yet perfectly captures the indomitable human will to live, and the liberation allowed by laying bare one’s own human nature.