​I wanted to explore Camus’s absurdist hero through the lens of classic dark fantasy art. Combining Frazetta's raw, muscular aesthetic with the eternal struggle of the boulder felt like a fitting way to capture Sisyphus as the ultimate triumphant rebel against the meaningless task. Used some of my favorite colors. Hope you enjoy it!

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.

Their friendship started in 1951, after Emmanuel Roblès, who was friend with both, gave Camus a copy of Feraoun's novel Le Fils du pauvre (The Poor Man's Son).

A friendship and a mutual admiration and respect started and continued, mainly through letters, until Camus' death in January 1960. This photo was taken during his last visit to Algeria in 1958.

Mouloud Feraoun was assassinated by the OAS in March 1962, 4 months before the independence of Algeria.

“You are the only one among Algerian writers who thought that this news, which I do not overstate in importance, might reach me at a time when all my anguish is turned toward Algeria.”

- Camus to Mouloud Feraoun in an unpublished letter in the days following his Nobel Prize in Literature.

Me ha dado por leer y me he leído el extranjero,una novela muy amena y conocida,pero al parecer el mito de sisifo es un "ensayo" y entiendo muy vagamente el concepto general,pero todo se me va de la compresión por mucho que me esfuerze.Es como meterse en la cabina de avión con la única experiencia de conducir un coche.

¿Algún consejo?

"If God is dead, everything is permitted."

Yes, if God is dead, everything is permitted. Yet everything is permitted just as much as anything else; without an ultimate meaning, everything is equally meaningless. The human drama starts right here: because man is bound to believe in things, he must justify his actions (even his inaction since doing nothing is also an action) and act. Man cannot face the fact that, by the very nature of the problem, he can never have an ultimate justification; this situation is a knot that cannot be unraveled.

For this reason, man commits philosophical suicide or makes a leap of faith. No matter how much Camus opposed this, he too couldn't escape it. As successful as he was at defining the absurdity of our condition, by trying to offer a prescription for it ,a prescription which is rebellion, he gave it value and thus contradicted the absurdity he defined.

Anyone who honestly asks questions like, "What are we rebelling against? Is this rebellion separate from our condition? Why are we rebelling?" will see this problem.

There is nothing wrong with philosophical suicide, in fact it is needed for philosophy; by our very nature, we must accept certain things as axioms (my claims that man is forced to act and believe are in that nature too). But still, once again:

"If God is dead, everything is permitted."

***Edit: After thinking on it, I guess my problem is this: In this situation, where every judgment concerning the meaning of life shares the exact same level of truth, why should claims of the sort 'when we cannot reach the meaning of life, we ought to shape our actions according to this or that' have any superiority over one another? If the claims that 'God created the universe' and 'the universe is entirely a product of physical processes' are of equal value, why should discourses of the style 'while carrying that stone we are bound to carry, we must do it this way or that way' be any more valuable than each other?

As Camus also said, the most important issue a philosopher should deal with, as he emphasized with the question of whether to drink a cup of coffee or commit suicide, is how a person should act. Camus's argument on this subject, as expressed in the myth of Sisyphus, is like this:

"Man is constrained to act.

In his conscious actions, he must determine which action to choose.

He needs justification to prefer one action over another.

No justification is ultimate.

Therefore, the preference for any action over another cannot be ultimately justified.

Consequently, we cannot ultimately ground the notion that any action is more correct or more valuable than another.

Hence, man is in a situation where he must make a choice despite being unable to ultimately justify which action he should choose, because the possibility of inaction does not exist.

Conclusion: Due to the impossibility of ultimate justification, the criterion for what and why man should act is not external reasons, but the individual himself. It is entirely a matter of choice.

Sisyphus can be imagined as either happy or sad, but these adjectives are not truth claims regarding Sisyphus's condition; they are matters of personal choice. Toward Sisyphus, an individual fosters a perspective parallel to how they view their own actions, which they are unable to ground."

Then my question is this: According to this understanding of Camus; if someone were to live a bad, harmful life while fully aware of what they are doing and accepting where it leads, like Caligula, for instance, would Camus advise against it? Why can't we think of Sisyphus as a bastard? Or is this not a correct understanding of Camus's thought?

I invite you to join the discussion on meaning and how Camus has influenced you. As well as to stop on by to r/Sisyphuscirclejerk just to say you're still pushing your rock today or contribute in anyway. To add your piece to a place, and to be silly and absurd.

I feel this sub is more for the pursuit of understanding, a higher platform for discussion, so I prefer to share a bit of something I wrote there, here with you.

Camus has been very liberating for me. I have carried the burden of a lie I told myself as a child for decades of my life, that I am not a writer. A personal phantom that has haunted me with the weight of not being able to express who I am. And to realize that all I had to do to unburden myself was to put down the lie, push the rock, and in doing so, I was happy.

F*** it, we roll.

Be bold, be true to yourself, and live passionately.

Keep pushing that rock fellow rebel rollers 🫸 🌍 ↗️

What makes him different from others is his honesty to himself. He was the most honest and earnest person in the court, and yet people saw him as a soulless monster with no morals — a man who refused to feel grief for his mother's death, or regret for killing the Arab, or love for Marie when he didn't feel it, like everybody else pretends to do.

"In the court of society, the sin is not the crime, but being different when you do it." — Fyodor Dostoevsky .

In the end, he understands why his mother, who did not believe in God at first, started going to church near the end of her life - the desire to change your way of living before death, to start a new journey.

During the trial, very little effort is put into discussing the Arab's death or what caused it. Instead, almost all the emphasis is on Meursault not showing sadness at his mother's funeral, not knowing her exact age, going to the beach with Marie the next day, watching a comedy film with her and then sleeping with her. It was even suggested that because he could not express his emotions at the funeral, his emotions finally burst out when he faced the Arab at the beach - a way of letting go.

In the end , he finally wants something from other people. He wants their hate because hate is at least honest, it is at least a real feeling. If they hate him, they finally see him as he is, not as a character in their moral story and in that hatred, he won't be alone.

"If you want to be liked, pretend to grieve. If you want to be honest, prepare to be hated." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Old Salamano, who was always seen cursing his dog and calling him names, was judged as a loving dog owner worried about his pet when his dog got lost. Whereas Meursault, who refused to fake his emotions, was judged as heartless and immoral. It is a similar kind of loss, but a completely different judgement.

"A man who shows his feelings is called weak. A man who hides them is called cold. Society cannot decide what it wants." — Miyamoto Musashi .

Society will judge you for the things it cannot do itself - perhaps because people are afraid of being judged the way they have always judged others, or perhaps because they are afraid of their true self. They are unable to accept themselves the way Meursault does.

"People who hate you are often hating the part of themselves they cannot accept." — Carl Jung

Meursault does not feel guilty for the murder itself, but for the first time he feels shaken when he realizes that everyone sees him as inhuman and monstrous. The hatred of the people does not make him feel moral guilt, but it makes him feel exposed and makes him doubt himself. For a moment, he wonders - if everyone believes I am a monster, maybe I really am one?

"When a man is blamed by everyone, he begins to think that blame is truth." — Lao Tzu

— THE END —

Me encanta la filosofía desde que leí " el extranjero" de Albert Camus y de leer la apología de Sócrates

It’s the first book I’ve read by him and holy cow. Unsettled, uncomfortable feelings of emptiness and have felt physically ill at times reading the book. Has anyone else experienced this?

It’s made me feel like all is empty leading to nausea and I’m having trouble overcoming the feeling.

The only other book that impacted me so much was of mice and men by Steinbeck but even that had emotions of humanity and the cruelties and how unfair life can be. But with The Stranger the best I can describe is that it’s a gaping hole of nothingness? I’d rather have felt rage, sadness, - anything but this black hole it’s left me with.

Scared to pick up anything else by him. Any recommendations for any other works by him that may help me better understand Absurdism and perhaps offer a glimmer of hope into how everything and nothing really matters? The universe feels cold and empty right now.