When discussing the actions of Meursault amongst peers everyone seems to have the view point that Meursault is crazy and irrational. I then proceeded to follow up with these peers and ask them, "would you rather live by the morals of others or be free to choose what you want to do?” and they responded with “follow morals”. Which to me seems like a lie, as why would you conform your life according to other people’s standards? I’m fairly certain that you would agree with me that you would rather live your life according to your own will. Meursault acts according to his own will and his actions that my peers deemed irrational and crazy, yet these actions make complete sense to me.
Meursault is essentially executed for sending his own mother to a nursing home and for not crying when she dies. When Meursault is talking to Salamano he realizes that “some people in the neighborhood thought badly of me for having sent Maman to the home, but he knew me and he knew I loved her very much.” (Camus, The Stranger, pg 45). Meursault had “loved” Maman according to his own subjective definition of love and decided that she would live a better life at a nursing home compared to the life he could offer her. My peers think this action is very irrational as Meursault decides to keep a woman beater, Raymond, around as a friend since Meursault “find[s] what he has to say interesting.” (Camus, The Stranger, pg 28). Meursault would rather keep a woman beater around than his own mother as he is entertained by what the woman beater has to say, while he would have to go out of his own way in order to take care of his own mother. Meursault’s life is centered around living life like an NPC while only keeping things around him that he deems is entertaining, it is an ideology that he believes is selfless as he is giving a better life to his mother yet it is self centered and might even deem him as a bit of a narcissist as Meursault does what he wants with no consideration of what Maman wants at all. The “irrationalness” my peers judge Meursault based on is his tendency to only think of the wants of himself.
Now, where I believe Meursault is justified is in the fact that for him monotonicity equals comfortability. At the beginning of the novel he does not visit Maman as “[s]he was used to it. That's partly why I didn't go there much this past year. And also because it took up my Sunday” (Camus, The Stranger, pg 5). Focus mainly on the first part of the sentence, “[s]he was used to it.” Meursault lived a life of routine and for him having too much freedom to choose was a problem for him, he liked a life of monotonicity and this monotonicity brought comfortability and was his normalcy. Which is exactly why he did not visit Maman, if he would have visited it would have been out of both his normalcy and Maman’s normalcy and would have thrown off both of their definitions of normal. This ideology of monotonicity equating to his normalcy is further established when he turns down the opportunity for a promotion and to move to Paris, most of my peers thought of him as crazy for not taking such an opportunity. But to me, that choice made very much sense, as this is a major change from Meursault’s normalcy as the definition of monotonicity itself is the condition of being unchanging, and picking up and moving to Paris is the exact opposite of unchanging. Meursault was content with his life and decided to stay in his own definition of normal, monotonous. Another prime example of Meursault’s “irrationalness” is given when he is in prison “I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowering overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.” (Camus, The Stranger, pg 77). Meursault is overwhelmed by choice, he would much rather be forced into a life and have to adapt to that life rather than pick out a life of his own and this quote is the perfect example of that. I find that Meursault is justified in his actions as he did what made him comfortable rather than conform to the society around him, he took on the role of an absurdist and did what he felt was right according to his own subjective definitions.
Meursault’s “irrationalness” is really just his self centeredness combined with his indecisiveness and his desire to be an NPC is the madness that pushes the novel forward. The entire novel is based around the decisions of a man who chooses to live his life rather than conform to the ideologies of the society around him. These “irrational” choices are what make the novel as we read the experiences of a true absurdist. The ideologies of Meursault is the entirety of the book and not the actions themselves, if you were to read The Stranger and the only thing you took away was “this guy is crazy” you have failed as a reader and need to go back and reread the novel. I would even go as far as to say that Meusault’s ideologies are not crazy or madness and are only called that by those who conform to society and those whom agree with the ideologies of society just to go along with the popular opinion rather than voicing their own.
Remember in the end, too much freedom is a problem and in Meursault’s case he tried to limit his freedom for the betterment of himself.
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