Mersault's Life In The Stranger, By Albert Camus

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A man during an existential crisis may consider that life is meaningless. Just after his time in a prison, Mersault believes, “…That a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison,” (Camus 79). In his situation, Mersault had been in prison for what seemed to be months on end doing nothing but a casual routine, which gave it a boring aspect to it. Since he was an apathetic man, he frequently shows that all he cared for was himself and how he perceived his life in prison was affecting his lifestyle. More overly, Mersault was a man who believed that life had no meaning due to the subjugation of jail time, the struggle between mind over the heart, and carelessness of how he perceived his own life. The Stranger by Albert Camus describes Mersault as an apathetic man who has an ‘I don’t really care’ attitude towards people and events in his life. Due to coming this conclusion, Mersault didn’t feel any remorse or shock towards it because he felt that once you’re in prison there was only two things that mattered which was yourself and your thoughts. For instance, …show more content…
Mersault displays his existentialism through his spoken dialogue with people than within his inner self consciousness. A key example of this existentialist point of view is seen in the relationship with Marie when she asked him if he would marry her. His response was only to please her but it didn’t really matter to him since he knew that no matter what a person has done in their life they ended up dead as their final destination. In which I believe is why he stated that living a hundred years in prison would be easy just as living for one day would imply the same satisfaction. Also, this would explain the reason why prison was ‘easy’ for him to deal with because he knew no matter what he did, what he has done or is going to do, he will
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