Nothing Matters in Life

Are you familiar with the question: what is a good life?  A teacher of mine once made a big to do about it.  Whilst analyzing certain characteristics of The Stranger I felt that I was having a conversation with that teacher.  That I was reliving the past.  But that is beside the point.   What is the point?  What is a good life?  What is our purpose?  One could spend an entire life dwelling on these insoluble answers, like Albert Camus evidently did.  But in the center of an existential universe, no one has the answer; and yet, everyone does. 

“When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that.  But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered.” (Pg. 41)

In this part of the book, Meursault starts to become passive.  He realizes that there is no such thing as being ambitious, because there is nothing to achieve.  There is no tangible reward.  The above sentence reflects an attitude that portrays Camus’ identity within the novel.  He takes the reins and becomes the main character.  At the center of Meursault’s life is an emptiness that can be traced back to the lack of authenticity in his identity.  He has lost himself in the philosophy of existentialism, which of course isn’t actually mentioned, but portrayed constantly, as is his lack of passion.  He refuses to let himself become ambitious, because he just one more.  Nothing “matters.”

“It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.” (Pg. 24)

Although I could take the same approach as I did with the excerpt from page forty-one, I think that Camus had something else in mind for this sentence.  Here he begins a theme, indifference.  Camus wants the reader to realize, through the absurd, that society is numb.  He exposes one example, the death of Meursault’s mother, and from there the reader must infer his message.  He sees death as an event, a checkout perhaps.  That is why he can go and have sex the following day, and laugh, and play.  But there is a conflict.  In a society that does not acknowledge its poorly oriented moral compass, the individual recognition of one man that isn’t affected by death is unbearable.  So what is a good life?  Meursault/ Camus would probably say that there is no meaning to life; therefore there is no such thing.

What do you say?