Monsieur Meursault as an Absurd Hero Anonymous 10th Grade

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” This is the explanation of Albert Camus’ absurdity, written in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus’ The Stranger is a novel about the moral journey of a peculiar character Monsieur Meursault to the discovery of life’s absurdity and its acceptance. The novel can be treated as an example of the ideas Camus expressed in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, which was released around the same time. Monsieur Meursault progresses throughout the novel, from being an indifferent person to an Absurd Hero. During the first part of the novel, Meursault is an indifferent character, trapped in the absurdity of this world. He does not make any choices by himself, so he follows the stream of life. For example, when being proposed to marrying by Marie, he says: “I said it didn't make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to." (41) He does not care about an important decision like marrying and says that it does not make any difference to him. He follows the stream by agreeing to marry if Marie wants to. He also describes...