The Stranger Blog Response 3

Existence is Absurd

Existence is absurd. Life has no meaning. Eventually people will die, and it won’t matter what they did in their lifetime because at the end we will all be dust. If one would enter the debate of the meaning (or lack of) of life, the discussion would last forever. The arguments are intangible and subjective, it is all a matter of perspective. What is unquestionable is that the idea that the book tries to convey is: Existence is Absurd. All along the novel Meursault expresses his disregard for life and how nothing really matters. He kills the Arab, and he never finds a reason for why he did it, precisely that his disregard for life drives him to think at the moment constantly. The last paragraph shows how Meursault, after a short near-death panic, returns to his normal state and accepts death with one thought in mind: Existence IS absurd.