The View from Inside the Guillotine – The Stranger by Albert Camus

09/06/20

Before the main thing, some thought experiment with no conclusion.

Imagine waking up one morning, you are in prison. And its not just any ordinary day, but the day of your execution. It is sometime in the early 1900s, method of passing: the guillotine. You are brought to the guillotine. It is not on some pedestal, but instead it is just on the ground, on the same level as everyone else. Everyone standing around and watching, filled with disgust and yet some animalistic excitement to see a person’s head being chopped off. Everyone jeering and shouting curses at you. The executioner shouts an order, and the knife falls. But for some reason it fails. The knife doesn’t fall as intended. So, your head is still attached to your body. How should that feel? Such dread of dying, and then the guillotine doesn’t work. They have to start over again. Reattach the blade to the top, with the rope, tie the rope…you see everything. And its ready again. Its time to cut the head off, again. Thank god it works this time, though. And now, darkness. You are finally dead. Well, that’d be boring, though. To add some spirit to this, you are also caught in a time loop. Each time your head gets chopped off, your time restarts to the moment you wake up on the day of your murder. Welcome to Groundhog Day!

 

In The Stranger, Meursault is seen as an outsider, or a stranger, or even an alien in society, owing too his apparent lack of morals, as society perceives him. Though he seldom shares his view or even talk about anything, he is not hesitant at all to share his nonchalance with regards to morals.

Meursault is said to be an absurdist, I guess? Believing that there is no inherent morality. Specifically that there is no need to feel bad for someone else’s death, even that of his own parents. (Meursault is said to have a strong hatred for death and despises the culture surrounding death and the importance placed on it.) Also, that there is no need to feel bad for having killed someone. And save that he has no intention to kill when he shot the gun, but he also did not have any reason, it was just a spur of the moment thing. Just as Meursault killed the Arab, he could just as well have not killed the Arab. Two equally possible realities. And it is as indeterministic as the dust in the sky reflecting the sunlight, or the flap of a butterfly’s wings causing a raincloud to shade you from the sun. As such, the act of killing is seen as a case of bad luck, and it is argued as such in Meursault’s defense counsel.

However, Meursault ends up getting punished, a chain of events that began (did it really?) with Meursault killing the Arab. The fact that he was punished for something that could have equally gone both ways, and is out of anyone’s control, is moral luck. And is moral luck really a valid basis for making someone into a criminal?

Something striking is Meursault’s psychological or physical state. I don’t know which one it is, and it seems to be linked. In the version that I read, Meursault is described, multiple times, to be in a sort of dizziness. Granted that the events in the book are set in summer in (almost?) tropical Algeria. (Ok omg lol I just realized that this is set in Algeria, in Africa, instead of France. That changes quite a lot of perspective!) Where, even in the early 1900s, with the ozone layer still thick, the sun is bright and when it shines you heat up. And if you aren’t too conscious of your physical state it is easy to get heatstroke, especially for someone who frequents the beach, like Meursault.

The bright light of the sun has him getting dizzy, the loud noise of the talking room in the prison has him dizzy too. Which makes me think that it is some kind of physiological thing, with his blood or something. Or maybe it is an anxiety thing to do with fear of loud places, considering also that Meursault doesn’t talk much. And in the talking room in the prison it was filled with Arabs and I would assume a language they he does not understand. (Or does he? I don’t know.) That would add to the anxiety or tension.

Or I might guess it is an Asperger’s / High Functioning Autism thing, if considered in conjunction with how he doesn’t bother to fake having some sympathy for his mother’s death, or fake having some kind of remorse for killing a guy. Because that would have totally saved his ass.

Meursault is probably quite educated, a Frenchman in Algeria, which was considered elite. Which means he probably knows about social norms and understands the rules. I do not understand why he wouldn’t just fake a tear, or give some shitty excuse for why he didn’t cry during the funeral, or give some excuse like self defense or something regarding the murder. Because I’m pretty sure the court would have been sympathetic enough if he could so much as show that he felt sorry.

Unless, of course, he did and said everything he did and said because of his belief that even his own life or death doesn’t matter. Which doesn’t seem to be the case, because even though he doesn’t see anything wrong with dying now instead of 50 years later, he loves life and enjoys life and yearns to continue living, if only to visit the beach, etc.

At the end, when Meursault has received his verdict and is about to die, he contemplates trying to escape prison, and realizes that it is not possible, only to settle on trying to convince himself that there is nothing that should compel him to live longer than the next day, for even if he were to survive this moment, he will still end up at the same dilemma a few years down the road, staring into the face of death and nothingness.

Meursault rages at the chaplain when the chaplain tries to convert him, under the guise (I don’t know what other word to use because the chaplain believes what he is saying, I think.) of helping to save Meursault’s soul and give him the chance to go to heaven by accepting god. Meursault flies into a fury and rages and shouts at the chaplain about how god isn’t real and how he has no time to think about god when all he wants to do is calm himself down and die in peace. Honestly, relates, because if some religious freak tries to mess with my brain when I’m about to die and have not much time left, I will certainly be pissed too. Like fuck, just let me relax for once!

In the end, Meursault is able to accept his death. I see this as kind of a last resort thing. Because he has only two options now, to die while happy, or to die while being agitated. The former is obviously the better choice. because it is a very hopeless state that I know I myself will not be able to accept that I am dying soon and can no longer enjoy the beauty of life. This acceptance is thus a luxury of those that do not have a choice. I mean, it would be great to accept that you will die at any moment, and that it doesn’t matter whether I die or not.

Something which strikes me is the use of the first-person perspective writing style in this book. It has perhaps been a long time since I last read a novel in first person, and it’s a bit jarring. Especially for a character like Meursault who lives in the moment and his mind is constantly running with observations of what is currently going on in the physical world around him. And there is a lot that’s going on. It feels like his mind is kind of constantly on fire and noticing a lot, feeling tired, and dizzy from the sun. But I do agree that the use of the first-person narrative serves to bring out Meursault’s philosophy as a absurdist / moral nihilist.

In society, someone who does not appear to believe in the norms of society are seen as “strangers”. Camus himself summarizes the moral of the story as such. “In our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.” Because Meursault does not play the game of caring, or pretending to care for people. His soul is seen as an abyss by the court, and he is deemed to be dangerous and a monster. Seriously, even psychopaths are able to pretend to feel sorry. And that is pure carelessness, or insanity, sticking to his non existent beliefs.

In a way I am kind of like Meursault too. I remember back when I was doing a short module / project on behavioral economics (which is a field in psychology), I remember feeling very confused as to why people will follow certain cues, and why people have a tendency to follow whatever the majority people choose or what the people around you are doing. I asked the mentor the question and it was treated kind of like a given thing that people will want to follow the crowd (herd effect things) because humans are social animals. At that time that kind or reinforced my suspicion that I was probably somewhere on the autism spectrum because I sincerely felt no need to follow the crowd.

If we see social norms as merely a product of the times, if we are able to realize this truth, the compulsion to follow social norms thus becomes irrational and emotional at best. With things such as systemic racism going on in the world right now, I’m quite sure that the future will look on to the current day and exclaim, “how barbaric!”. And even then, they may not be perfect just as current society isn’t perfect. And there is no definitive measure of what is right or wrong, just certain norms which people use to base their morality upon.

Which is really meaningless, come to think about it. Because we could be believing in something that is utterly wrong and not know it, instead believing that it is right even as it hurts everyone in its path. As such, what is the basis for believing in our morals, for trying to stick to our morals? Certainly, it is pointless to mourn someone who is dead past the first few days. Because, from nothing we were made to be, and to nothing we will become. What’s the point of this whole big spectacle surrounding death?

Now, why don’t we just treat morals as what they really are, just some instincts. Instead of trying to force our morals and perspective onto others in the belief that we are right. Because we may well be wrong.