humanity & monstrosity, the stranger on constructions of living

When thinking of the absurd or absurdity, you probably think of it in the context of any subject, action or thing that operates in a way that is completely unreasonable, illogical, or ridiculously foolish. Societies absurd encompasses all that makes zero sense in the pursuit of finding some sort of purpose in life and further, any acts there is no means by which it can be commonly justified to that same cause.

As Human Beings, the idea of doing anything that does not progress you in the world, improve your understanding of it, or increase your perceived likelihood to exist beyond it, takes on no rhyme or reason.

Why would we do something if it doesn't have any purpose?

Well we never really do.

Even doing nothing, isn't truly doing nothing. Something is always going on. On a biological level, the cogs in your brain are turning, consolidating memories and directing blood flow around your body but more than that, you and your consciousness are working to explain - if only to yourself - why it is you are doing what you are doing. Why you need to lie on the floor after a long day. Why you go to the beach. Why you are reading a book. To rest, To Relax, To switch off from the World. We equate reason to everything, and consciously or not we go through life rejecting meaninglessness, monotony and the absurd.

maybe that is what makes us human

But, if we allow ourselves to step away from this understanding or really if we just take a break from trying to understand at all, we can acknowledge the world, our place in it and

The constant tension that arises between the natural human desire for meaning and the meaningless of the universe

by which Albert Camus defines the principle of absurdism, where we look to the universe and our surroundings in a constant search for greater purpose, some reason we are alive and can continue beyond the fact that we were born, enveloped by the truth that the universe is incapable of telling you anything, it is a vacuum of void and unknown.

This highlighted tension presents anytime we are met with something that seems to be involved with or apart of the natural human constitution but is lacking the meaning that makes it human. There is an element that is abnormal, unknown or strange.

And that strangeness is something people need to fix, define or change. To sit in that unknown would generate turmoil - suffering - and there is no logical reason to stay in that negativity, so why would we? We instead look to ideas of morality, the things we do can be defined as good or bad and will go on to affect our futures, We define concepts temporarily with the knowledge that their definitions will be corrected later so that we can grasp a fleeting certainty and some choose to study and govern their own existence under the eye of religion.

They give us rules, something to follow and respect, it is good, easy, manageable. Although Camus doesn't think so. He views these methods as means to cheat the discomfort of living, that at the end of the day we exist in a world where the tools at our disposal and the reality of human perishability mean that you will always have unknowns. In choosing to observe these methods, acknowledging systems societies before us have constructed as proven or factual and following them as so, in a way you are lying to yourself, because "Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is Also, in fact especially, saying more than is true, and in the case of the human heart saying more than one feels" Fundamentally whether you convince yourself you can escape it, the absurd and our striking senselessness, is still there.

So what if you didn't encounter the absurd and construct meaning to evade it? What if meaning was not the goal a person hoped to achieve in living? What does life affirming behaviour look like when not rooted in religion, society or morality?

This is the prospect we are presented with in Albert Camus' The Stranger. The story of Meursault, a Man who on the surface appears to care about absolutely nothing and finds himself on trial for a murder he had no true reason to commit.

A common critique of the novel lies in readers inability to relate to a character who is void of emotion, that it is difficult to care for a man who does not care about anything and while I was in no way exempt from that situation, it almost feels as though you are not supposed to or even allowed to connect to Meursault.

His unrelenting apathy can become so frustrating because it creates intense isolation. Being the reader and possessing humanity, you are confronted with the intrinsic devotion to swerve and root out the cause of our protagonists passivity. We, like the society that judges him, want him to have principles or morality but at every turn that his actions could be justified you are again struck with the truth that this man does not have a reason, he doesn't want it, or consider it, he does what he does because he did and he will.

In turn it becomes impossible to understand a man who does not want or know what it is to understand, he becomes the stranger and so implants a divide. Not just reader from Meursault, but Meursault from the society around him and underneath it all the absurd from common sense.

He is labelled terrifying because he cannot be understood. A threat without sense. A Monster because he refuses to perform the grief and remorse that is expected of him.

Traditionally Monster's couldn't really hide. They were vicious, slimy or fury, uncannily large, with pointed teeth and curling claws, nightmare fuel, with extra limbs and poisonous venom, all characteristics that make them obvious and decidedly not human. Yes scary, but you know what they are when you see them. Today our monsters, both real and fictitious are deceiving. They toe the line between human and not human making them all the more scary because there is more nuance. They are not truly black or white, right or wrong, they mirror real world worries not just of death or injury but contemporary and current fears that are horrifying because they are believable.

Where Meursault is concerned, he appears to be apart of the widely accepted human constitution. To see him on the street, and to all the characters in this novel there is no immediate cause to believe there is anything wrong or inherently scary about him. But to society and the court that judges him, it is his appearance of humanity compared to his striking absence of human emotion that makes him so volatile. He presents a new way of being that doesn't rely upon the foundation of needing meaning. He will not conform even under threat of persecution, hence he must be dangerous, hazardous and his beliefs themselves are a risk.

Where the "emptiness of [his] heart" is an "abyss threatening to swallow up society," and not really a countenance which challenges this societies tendency to construct the world as anything more than an abyss. That these morals and their monsters, what it means to be human or not are ultimately ideas that have been constructed to assist the living to function against a cause and escape tension rather than simply live with the truth that whatever we do, we will all finish life in death, so does it really matter?

The overwhelming nature of his perceived monstrosity and alienation lends itself to the idea that The Stranger is less a story of criminality and more about conformity. Rather jarringly observed in the fact that violence is largely forgotten throughout the text. Yes, Meursault is on trial for murder, but the focus of his court proceedings are less upon the crime for which he is undeniably guilty but instead his lack of conventional emotions surrounding the act and his situation proceeding the crime.

He is met with an animosity unequal to that with which he conducted himself as his peers scramble to find a reason for apparently senseless his behaviour. Scrutinised because he did not cry at his mothers vigil, went on a date the following day, and does not attempt to feign remorse or provide a reason for his actions.

Opposingly, Raymond strategically lures his ex girlfriend to his home with the intention and sole purpose of humiliating her, winds up beating her, and his behaviour is exposed to a wide audience of witnesses- one of which being a police officer - yet he is let off with a warning because Meursault attests to the fact that this assault was founded in reason. The Girl had cheated on him. He was angry, in need of retribution and ultimately displaying emotion accepted as common feelings tied to human experience. So nothing happens to him.

Society forgives this violence, but it will not forgive defiance.

Murder is not Meursault's crime but his refusal to comply with expectation condemns him, because here humanity will always run from the absurd and cannot tolerate people without the capacity or the willingness to do so.

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-AUDS XOXOXO