Exploring the Absurd and the Quest for Meaning in Albert Camus’s “The Stranger and The Plague”

Abstract

The novels of Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947) play out human conflict with a meaningless universe. Both works are illustrations of the theory of the absurd, the confrontation of the personal desire to achieve meaning and the silent apathy of the universe, as well as they are based on the tradition of the entire existentialism. The present paper has summarized the literature on the philosophy of the absurd by Camus and its corresponding philosophers (such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre) and demonstrated how these approaches can be used to understand the different characters and the action of The Stranger and The Plague. The impersonal narration and the trial of Meursault in The Stranger have been evaluated as existential tableau whereby the social essences fail before the revelation of the absurdity. Researchers have observed that the eponymous epidemic in The Plague serves as an absurd phenomenon to which people react differently, denial and hope, revolt, and solidarity. According to critics, Camus’s protagonists eventually cut out meaning in action: Dr. Rieux and Jean Tarrou have a purpose in compassionate resistance, whereas Meursault attains a painfully won tranquility by living in the present. This review is a synthesis of recent scholarly articles that argue that stage philosophical dilemmas, suicide, faith, rebellion, confronted by his characters, and these means of narrative are directly connected to existentialist and absurdist philosophy.

Key words:  Absurd, Quest, Albert Camus’s, Stranger, existentialism, Meursault