1.1 Albert Camus and The Outsider

Albert Camus is a famous French writer and philosopher, born in 1913. Masterpiece The Plague and The Outsider makes Camus the representative of existentialism literature and the philosophy of absurd. He learned philosophy in Algiers, and was occupied in journalism and avant-garde drama.

The novel The Outsider is Albert Camus’s first book published in 1942. Purposing the concept of “Absurd” in the book, Camus also soberly called Meursault, the protagonist of the novel, as “modern hero”, which presents author’s preference for authenticity and integrity.  

“Absurd Sense” is starting point of all Camus’s works. He explored problems in his early works and later works: can we kill ourselves, and can we kill others; and in The Outsider he discussed the former one. During exploration, Camus required some points from himself：He cannot get rid of absurd sense by virtue of invalid faith, ideology or metaphysical assumptions, neither can he use them as an excuse. Those requests can save him from self-deception, a denial attitude towards life.

Although widespread it was published after the World War II, the Outsider was published actually at the beginning of World War II. He was an editor of the Republican Evening News at that time. In the experience and observation of life Camus was fully aware of the complexity that world was different from the theory. In the face of conflicts among different countries, races and ideas, he gradually developed into an independent left-leaning free-thinker who did not associate himself with any policy of doctrine. At the same time, his absurd philosophy was also gradually forming.

1.2 Characterization of Meursault

In accordance with the interpretation of pure text, Meursault may be considered as a numb, a dead-alive person without any feeling. He complies with the logic of his brain, doesn’t understand the way of life, and even his own activities are limited by physiological feelings. But in Camus's eyes, such indifference represents a kind of persistent and deep passion for absolute reality. The ethical rules of “the outsiders” are in two disjointed parallel lines in the real world. The difference is only in how we view the world. Therefore, the two sides of conflict in the story, the common people in the society and Meursault, are different kinds of existence in each other’s eyes. There is no absolute right or wrong. The author created the character Meursault between line to line in depiction of absurd world and absurd people. It is those absurd elements that make the authenticity more precious. Meursault tried to understand the world and deal with relationship in his own manner, fighted against the acknowledged truth in public, and crawled forward in a thorny path filled with moral trials. He is a real free man. His persistent maybe limited his body to some degree though, his soul is free. When people disobey their mind and deal with the world courteously, they are the captive ones.

1.3 Existentialism

Existentialism is a branch of philosophy, which emphasizes inpidual and subjective experience. The first theory proposer is Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. And Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Theodor Jaspers, Martin Heidegger are pioneers of the thought that was widely spread in the middle of the 20th. Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of Dod. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God (Sartre, 2012:231).