Absurdism, a style of literature that began in the 20th century. With the help of Albert Camus, writers began looking at the “absurdity” that we humans search for the meaning of life when in actuality, no meaning exists (Pereira, 2024). It is a “confrontation, opposition, or conflict between two ideals. The human condition is known to be absurd through man’s confrontation with meaning, clarity, and purpose on the one hand, and a silent, cold, and purposeless universe on the other” (Pereira, 2024). Camus is best known for his two works, The Stranger and The Plague. Both deal with the idea that things simply happen. They mean nothing. Camus embraced the idea that there are two types of freedom—common freedom and absurd freedom. Absurd freedom means to live a life without meaning-understanding that one can do whatever one wants without harming others. This allows a person to create and follow her own values (How to Live Freely, 2022).
Camus viewed life as meaningless, and this allowed him the freedom to search and find his own ideas. He joined the Communist Party and then the Algerian People's Party and was finally associated with the French Anarchist movement. He was able to open himself up to all that was available in life. He married twice, both times declaring his disbelief in the idea of marriage (“Albert Camus: Biography”). However, again, he gave himself the freedom to experience this lifestyle on his own terms. Society did not dictate that he marry. It was a choice that was his alone to make. This belief in marriage meaning nothing was brought to the forefront in his story The Stranger when Marie asks Meursault if he was going to marry her. He said that he would. She asked if he loved her. He wondered if it made any difference. This is a character whose story we began at his mother’s funeral. Camus was extremely into ensuring we knew that life and death were meaningless in the first chapter. Meursault did not have any particular feelings about his mother’s death. He would gloatingly find this true in today’s society in the way we treat our elderly. Look at the percentage of elderly that are not being taken care of by family members. In the small town of Hugo, there are three different nursing homes. Many of these elders are put away and forgotten until their death. Then society says we must have a funeral.
The average funeral today costs $8,300 (Martin, 2024). This is money that is spent to put a person in a box and put that box in the ground. That does not include the cost of a funeral plot, the digging of the grave, or creating a mausoleum. If he were writing today, it is obvious from his story that he would find the absurdity in that. We will spend thousands of dollars on a person once that person is dead, but we will not even spend time with him or her while alive. Once dead, that person feels no happiness or love. Throughout Meursault’s story, he finds love, but he doesn’t believe that love is important. He kills a man and goes to jail, and he still doesn’t see the difference in living his life outside the walls of prison or in the prison walls. It is obvious that Marie does. She continues to see him and stand by him; however, his lack of emotions toward his mother’s death and the murder that he committed ensures that he is convicted.
In The Plague, Camus looks at how people live with being locked together where anyone can pass the disease to anyone. This creates a trust issue towards neighbors, family members, and anyone within a distance. For Camus, this was written to symbolize the war, dictatorship, the Nazi regime, etc. However, this easily is a book that has rolled back around to being relevant since the COVID-19 plague. It did just as in the story. It crept up on the world. There was isolation, a mistrust of authority, a mistrust of friends and family, and finally fear and panic. In the story, Tarrou, who has fought to keep people alive, falls to the disease (Camus, 1948). However, eventually, as with us in COVID-19, hope returned. We returned to the offices, we returned to the stores, and we returned to big gatherings. We began to see that life would not always be illness and mistrust. Again, I believe Camus would have used his beliefs in the absurd to present this as society's tenuous ties to reality and away from fear. Look at 9/11 when the Twin Towers fell. The same panic engulfed society. We created the Patriot Act which allowed the government to begin to look at our private lives, to come into our homes just under suspicion. When a major event happens, society does see a difference in life and death. That is when fear becomes the dominating emotion. Camus believed that if we understood that it was all meaningless; and nothing had a purpose we would find the true freedom to begin living life because we could begin seeing that all the trappings in life were just that. .
When we truly look at Camus' ideas of life having no purpose, we must begin to question who has the most freedom in this world. Those who have money or those who have nothing. Those who have money have obligations that they did not create. They might have had the idea and the ambition to fight for the money; however, once everything fell into place, their freedom to live their own life disappeared. However, look at the homeless people. They have a freedom that is not there for all to feel. There is much discomfort; however, there is a freedom to simply exist. There is freedom in going from place to place with little or no obligations. In society, we believe that we must get an education, have a religion, grow up, buy a home, find a mate, and live in a manner befitting a certain lifestyle. That is what we consider success. Camus would believe that if all of these choices were made because we found it within ourselves to choose this job, this house, these payments, these obligations and that there was no purpose in those choices, except following our own path, we would have found true freedom—absurd freedom.
However, I drive by, and I do see the homeless, and I wonder about the absolute freedom they have. I am going to school to get a degree because I want to get a job that pays money, so I can do things. But, do I really like school? Am I going because I have chosen to go or because society and the job market say I should? Am I living within the confines of common freedom or am I doing this for the pure joy of gaining knowledge? I don’t want to be homeless; however, after studying Camus I can see that he would see that our society has not become less influencing our choices. We have more choices, but the judgment is still there. During his time, it might have been marriage, ethnicity, etc.; however, we still look at jobs, age, money, etc.
Camus has his characters challenge the idea of fear and purpose. He uses characters to challenge the idea that there is no meaning to life or even meaning to death. This is especially obvious in The Stranger when the priest asks Meursault, “Have you no hope at all? Do you really think that when you die you die outright, and nothing remains?” (Camus, 1942). The priest was trying to get him to understand, to see that life was not meaningless and that there was something more that we could have upon death. However, Meursault could not understand this concept. He didn’t believe that being alive or being dead was relevant. He believed that once we left, people forgot, and no mark was made. He felt nothing with these thoughts which was obvious when he attended his mother’s funeral, killed a man, thinking Marie might be dead, or thinking about his own death. In a few weeks or months, nobody would remember, and nobody would care.
When reading Camus, I understand his ideology; however, I don’t know if it is possible to live on this earth, in our society, and simply exist. He wants us to strip everything away and form our own beliefs with no purpose. I don’t think society can function that way. Society needs to believe that it has a system set up. To not have that system is to create chaos. Many are not able to envision a world of absurd logic. We want money and power, whether it comes with responsibility or not.
Albert Camus is ironically idealistic and cynical. But, he remains relevant. The irony cannot be lost on those who study the absurdist. While trying to make society understand they need to strip away all purposes, Camus created a form of literature that served a purpose—to expose the need for that purpose.
References
Albert Camus: Biography, author, writer, Nobel prize. Biography. (2023, August 8). https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/albert-camus
Camus, A. (1942). The stranger.pdf. Google Drive. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8qUyTkGux7eYkNES2gtNHBLcFE/edit?resourcekey=0-hxPdlh0Y1k6UnRqKYV-2iA
Camus, A. (1948). The Plague . https://ratical.org/PandemicParallaxView/ThePlague-Camus.pdf
How to Live Freely in this Meaningless World--Alburt Camus (Philosophy of Absurdism) (2022, June 26). Bing. https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=camus%2Band%2BHomelessness&mid=91BCA84DC16D9257750091BCA84DC16D92577500&FORM=VIRE
Martin, A. (2024, June 1). How much does a funeral cost in each state? (2024). Choice Mutual. https://choicemutual.com/blog/funeral-cost/
Pereira, A. (2024, September 17). The philosophy of absurdism - owlcation. Owlcation. https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Philosophy-of-Absurdism
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