The Outsider

The Outsider


The Outsider is a cracking read, and made for an interesting seminar.
The main character in the book is called Meursault, an existentialist man who appears to only exist through sensory experience.

Existentialism cares only for the here and now, and isn’t worried about the past and feels no emotions of guilt or conscience, simply because they were solely living for the moment. The novel looks at the behaviour of a person who lives with the existentialist view that it is the decisions we make shape the characters we are.

The novel doesn’t mention time at any point, as time doesn’t matter to existentialists as they are just living for the present. The main idea’s of existentialism are shown through the novel through it being written in the ‘here and present’.

From a relatively normal person’s perspective, the behaviour of the speaker can not only be frustrating but shocking. The way he drinks coffee while in the presence of his recently deceased mother makes the reader question whether he understands social normality, but in truth it is just the typical existentialist way.

The behaviour of Meursault and the existentialism within the novel reminds me of some friends of mine who claimed to be ‘living the dream’ last summer. They would spend the entire time looking for pleasure, be it drinking tea and eating expensive food during the day, or smoking marijuana on the beach at night. They were simply living life solely for personal enjoyment, and lost their grasp of social normality, and weren’t at all bothered about it.

They could make quite wonderful company, but eventually paid for their behaviour when getting to University and having to live within (nearly) normality.
Just like my friends, Meursault eventually paid for being a free-thinking man, and was put to death-not because of the crime itself, but because of his attitude and unusual behaviour.