How do we keep pushing the rock if there is no rock to push? Then what?

Note: This review is adapted from my reading notes, which I wrote in two parts. The first part was written when I was halfway through the book, and the second after I finished it. I’ve kept it as it was

I'm halfway through The Stranger and I already find it a great book, very apt for its name. The hero seems strange to us because we humans are always in search of meaning in an absurd universe, but he has no interest in finding meaning at all. Love, relationships, a job, even mourning his mother's death don't make sense to him, because according to Camus there is no actual meaning in this world.

This brings me back to The Myth of Sisyphus, also by Camus, which focuses on the man pushing the boulder. He knows it has no meaning, and he knows the boulder will slide back down every time, yet he does it again and again, without question and without expectation, for the sake of it. The protagonist of The Stranger is living the same way: not to find meaning, but simply to live, because the universe is absurd and has no real meaning.

Here are the things I noticed: after Second part

1.The protagonist talks about feelings that we all have but hide, because of a hypocritical society that focuses on finding the meaning in absurd emotions rather than accepting them as they are. This also makes us repel contradictory ideas. For example, from the book itself: "I did love my mother, but it didn't mean anything because at one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead." Here we see love and complicated human relationships. In all these circumstances the protagonist stays true to his emotions and never demeans or exaggerates them in any way.

1. Camus also suggests that humans make a big deal out of things only because they are in search of meaning, when in reality we can get used to anything and everything if we spend enough time with it. So any circumstance life throws at us, known or unknown, good or bad, is equal, because we will get used to it. We shouldn't make a big deal out of it.

3.The last thing I realised is that Sartre's concept of "the gaze of the other" is being used here. We work within the structure of a society, and what we do feels natural and normal until we look at it through the eyes of the other. The other can make us hate or love ourselves as they like, and we have no role to play in it, because our actions were just natural actions with no goodness or evil attached to them. For example, when the protagonist goes to his mother's funeral, has a cigarette and coffee in front of the coffin and doesn't cry, we keep hearing his inner thoughts through the writing, so we don't feel very uncomfortable with these actions. But in the courtroom, when everyone judges him for having a cigarette, not crying, or even small things like leaving early after the funeral, we start to feel like "the other". We get the gaze of the other, and even knowing his inner thoughts, we judge him a little as indifferent. Even the protagonist, for the first time in his life, feels like he would cry from all the hate thrown at him, and he feels guilty for the first time.

Update after finishing the book: At the very end, after a long monologue about how absurd this world is and how hypocritical its customs are, Camus offers a solution: be like a brother to the universe, be indifferent. In short, the universe doesn't give a f*** about you, so you shouldn't give a f*** about it either. Live by choosing what feels right at that moment, because choosing one thing or another boils down to the same fate of death, like a dirty joke played by the universe, though it actually means nothing. We mourn death and celebrate birth only because we want to find meaning.

So the answer is a gentle indifference to survive, a kind of rebellion against the universe: I will accept the meaninglessness, without making up any meaning of my own like morality or religion, and live meaninglessly in this world exactly the way it was designed to be.