Existentialism by Albert Camus - Essay Example

Surely they wouldn’t do a thing like that. If they do – I don’t know what will become of me” (Camus, 27). This whole episode made Meursault think of his mother. Camus appears to be saying that people attach life’s meaning from their attachments to things in this life – just as his mother to her friends at the old persons’ home and Salamano to his dog. Meursault later finds himself drawn into trouble by his friend Raymond’s affairs. Meursault shoots Raymond’s mistress’s brother.

At the hearing, Meursault refuses the magistrate’s demand that he swear to his faith in God. Meursault declares he does not believe in God, for which the magistrate dubs him “Monsieur Antichrist.” The trial turned from the events of the shooting to an examination of Meursault’s character, and in the end he is found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Faced by the prospect of his inevitable demise, Meursault looks for a practical way out: “The only thing that interests me now is the problem of circumventing the machine, learning if the inevitable admits a loophole.

” (Camus 68). In the absence of a plausible appeal, his thoughts turn to escape to no avail. He laments the fact that the judgment meted to him was grossly disproportionate to the act upon which it was based. This is debatable, of course, because Meursault took a life. Unfortunately, he took a life and showed little remorse for it. This act of defiance in acknowledging a God and his moral debt to society was what sealed his fate to the gallows. Camus treated the judgment with levity and was amazed that it could effect such serious consequences: “The fact that the verdict was read out at eight P.M. rather than at five,.

Meursault looks for a practical way out: “The only thing that interests me now is the problem of circumventing the machine, learning if the inevitable admits a loophole.” In the absence of a plausible appeal, his thoughts turn to escape to no avail. He laments the fact that the judgment meted to him was grossly disproportionate to the act upon which it was based. This is debatable, of course, because Meursault took a life. Unfortunately, he took a life and showed little remorse for it.

This act of defiance in acknowledging a God and his moral debt to society was what sealed his fate to the gallows. Camus treated the judgment with levity and was amazed that it could effect such serious consequences: “The fact that the verdict was read out at eight P.M. rather than at five, the fact that it might have been quite different, that it was given by men who change their underclothes, and was credited to so vague an entity as the “French people”—for that matter, why not to the Chinese or the German people?

—all these facts seemed to deprive the court’s decision of much of its gravity. Yet I could but recognize that, from the moment the verdict was given, its effects became as cogent, as tangible, as, for example, this wall against which I was lying, pressing my back to it.”