Introduction A celebrated novelist and postwar intellectual, Albert Camus
is considered one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. In his novel “The Outsider”, he draws up an interesting picture of an absurd experience and absurd philosophy. Camus believes that the world is absurd, that we are born by chance, live by encounter, and die by accident. Although we crave happiness on earth and immortality after death, the disproportion between desire and fulfillment defines the absurd. An absurd world is a world without necessity, without purpose, and without essence. Whatever meaning it has, we ourselves have to provide it. Existentialists believe that, because there is no a priori morality, men’s choices and actions fill the void that was left by the disappearance of God. However, Camus believes, man’s forlornness should not be construed as a source of despair. On the contrary, God’s death should be viewed not as tragedy but as liberation, and it is this newly found freedom that gives men and women the strength to invent themselves. In an absurd world all choices are possible, even suicide. Here, before commenting and exploring the absurd experience in Comus’ novels, it is noteworthy to review his biography and life, which could be considered as one of the reasons, leads him to believe in absurd world. Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria to a French Algerian settler family. His mother was of Spanish extraction. His father, Lucien, died in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during the First World War before Camus reached his first birthday. In 1914 Camus moved with his brother and emotionally detached mother into a small apartment in Algiers which they shared with his uncle and grandmother. The adverse circumstances of his upbringing forged a lasting respect for his hardworking mother and the plight of the underprivileged. With the encouragement of Louis Germain, an elementary school teacher who early recognized Camus's abilities, he won a competitive grant to enter the Grand Lycée in Paris in 1924. At the Grand Lycée, Camus's intellectual mentor was philosophy teacher Jean Grenier, whom he later studied under at the University of Algiers. Shortly before enrolling at the University of Algiers at age sixteen, Camus suffered a near fatal bout with tuberculosis, a chronic illness whose physical and emotional effects haunted him for the remainder of his life. After a period of convalescence, he began studies in philosophy and
literature at the University of Algiers, from which he graduated in 1936. While still a student, Camus married briefly and divorced; he remarried Francine Faure in 1940. Camus became increasingly involved in political activities during the 1930s. He joined the Communist Party in 1935, though resigned his membership in 1937 over ideological differences. He published his first two books, 1937;
The Right Side and the Wrong Side and 1937;
Nuptials, the same year. He also wrote and abandoned his first novel 1971;
A Happy Death. Between 1935 and 1938, Camus was active as an actor, writer, and producer with Theatre Labor Theater, renamed Team Theater after he abandoned the Communist Party. During the Second World War, Camus wrote
The Myth of Sisyphus and
The Outsider while living in France and Algeria. He also wrote for
Combat, the clandestine newspaper of the French Resistance, through which he met existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Upon the Allied liberation of Paris in 1944, Camus was awarded the Medal of the Liberation. Acclaim for “
The Outsider” and his contributions to “
Combat”, which he presided over as editor until 1947, quickly established Camus as a foremost French writer and intellectual of the postwar period. Over the next decade he produced
The Plague, The Rebel, and dramatic works including
Caligula (1944), 1944;
The Misunderstag, 1948;
The State of Siege, and 1949;
The Just Assassins. During the 1950s, Camus's disdain for Soviet communism precipitated his highly publicized estrangement from Sartre and other Left Bank intellectuals. Camus's passivity during the Algerian struggle for independence also drew heavy criticism that damaged his reputation and plunged him into depression and writer's block. Despite such setbacks, he produced
The Fall, the collection of essays 1954;
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, and the volume of short stories 1957;
Exile and the Kingdom. Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Three years later he was killed in an automobile accident near Paris. The manuscript for
The First Man was found in his briefcase at the site of the wreck.