Bookmarked Musings: Albert Camus’s The Stranger- Meaning of Meaninglessness by Ramlal Agarwal

In this essay, Ramlal Agarwal takes us through Albert Camus’s The Stranger, analyzing the story, its characters, and the ending.

The German occupation of France and World War II dissolved old certitudes and unshakable assumptions from the former ages. Some of the most sensitive and creative intellectuals and writers of the age found themselves in a void. They were besieged by a sense of the absurdity and meaninglessness of human existence. Albert Camus was one of them. He subjected his feelings to the rigors of philosophic inquiry and artistic treatment, combining the roles of a philosopher and a poet. Philosophically, he dealt with it in his seminal and heart-searching book, The Myth of Sisyphus, and artistically, he explored it in his various novels and plays, of which The Stranger and Caligula are the most prominent.