This view of the novel seems to me partial and insufficient. There is no doubt that the way in which Meursault’s trial is conducted is ethically and legally scandalous, a parody of justice, because what is condemned is not the killing of an Arab, but the antisocial behaviour of the accused, the way in which his psychology and morality is at variance with the norms of society. Meursault’s behaviour shows us the inadequacies and defects of the administration of justice and allows us glimpses of the dirty world of journalism.
But to go from there to condemn the society that condemns him as being ‘theatrical’ and based on a ‘collective myth’ is really taking things too far. Modern society is no more theatrical than any other; all societies, without any possible exception, were, are, and will be theatrical, although the show that they put on will be different in each case. There can be no society, no form of coexistence, without a consensus that everyone in that society should respect certain forms or rituals. Without this agreement, there would be no ‘society’ but rather a jungle of completely free bipeds, where only the strongest would survive. With his behaviour, Meursault is also playing a role: that of a free individual in the extreme, who is indifferent to entrenched forms of sociability. The problem that the novel poses to us is rather: is Meursault’s behaviour preferable to those that sit in judgement on him?
This is debatable. Despite what the author has implied, the novel draws no conclusion on this issue: it is left to the readers to decide.
The ‘collective myth’ is a tacit pact that allows individuals to live in a community. This has a price that men and women — whether they know it or not — must pay: they must relinquish absolute sovereignty, cut out certain desires, impulses and fantasies that could endanger others. The tragedy that Meursault symbolises is that of an individual whose freedom has been impaired to make life in society possible. It is this, the fierce, irrepressible individualism of Camus’s character, that moves us and awakens our inchoate solidarity: in the depths of us all there is a nostalgic slave, a prisoner who would like to be as spontaneous, frank and antisocial as him.
But, at the same time, it is necessary to recognise that society is not wrong to identify Meursault as an enemy, as someone who would break up the community if his example were to become widespread.
His story is a painful but unequivocal demonstration of the need for ‘theatre’, for fiction, or, to put it more crudely, for lies in human relationships. Fake feelings guarantee social coexistence, for however empty and forced they might seem from an individual perspective, they are both substantive and necessary from a communitarian point of view. These fictitious feelings are conventions that cement the collective pact, like words, those sonorous conventions without which human communication would not be possible. If men were, like Meursault, pure instinct, not only would the institution of the family disappear, but also society in general, and men would end up killing each other in the same banal and absurd way that Meursault kills the Arab on the beach.
One of the great merits of The Outsider is the economy of the prose. When the book appeared, it was said that it emulated Hemingway’s purity and brevity. But the Frenchman’s language is much more premeditated and intellectual than the American’s. It is so clear and precise that it does not seem written but spoken or, better still, heard. The absolute way in which the style is stripped of all adornments and self-indulgence is what contributes decisively to the verisimilitude of this implausible story. And here the characteristics of the writing and those of the character become intertwined: Meursault, too, is, transparent, direct and elemental.
What is most terrifying about him is his indifference to others. The great ideas or causes or issues — love, religion, justice, death, freedom — leave him cold, as does the suffering of others. The beating that his neighbour Raymond Sintes inflicts on his Arab lover does not provoke any feelings of sympathy; quite the opposite, he is prepared to offer him an alibi for the police. He does not do this out of affection or friendship but, one could say, out of mere negligence. By contrast, small details or certain daily episodes interest him, like the traumatic relationship between old Salmadano and his dog, and he gives his attention and even his sympathy to this. But the things that really move him have nothing to do with men and women, but rather with nature or with certain human landscapes that he has stripped of humanity and turned into sensorial realities: the hustle and bustle of his neighbourhood, the smells of summer, the beaches of burning sands.
He is an outsider in a radical sense, because he communicates better with things than with human beings. And, in order to maintain a relationship with humans, he must animalise them or objectify them. This is how he gets on so well with Marie, whose clothes, sandals and body strike a chord in him. The young woman does not awaken feelings in him, something durable; at best she awakens a string of desires. He is only interested in what is instinctive and animalistic in her. Meursault’s world is not pagan, it is dehumanised.
What is curious is that, despite being antisocial, Meursault is not a rebel, because he has no concept of nonconformity. What he does is not tied to a principle or a belief that might lead him to defy the established order: that is just the way he is. He refuses the social pact, transgresses the rituals and forms that underpin collective life, in a natural way and without even any awareness of what he is doing (at least, until he is condemned). For those that are judging him, his passivity and lack of interest are clearly more serious than his crime. If he had ideas or values to justify his acts and behaviour, then perhaps the judges would have been more lenient. They could have contemplated the possibility of re-educating him, of persuading him to accept the norms of society. But, as he is, Meursault is incorrigible and cannot be reclaimed for society. Faced with him, all the limitations, excesses and absurdities that comprise the ‘collective myth’ or social pact are thrown into relief — everything that is false and absurd in communal life from the standpoint of an isolated individual of any description, not only someone as anomalous as Meursault.
When the attorney states that Meursault has nothing to do with ‘a society whose laws he is unaware of’, he is absolutely right. Obviously, from where the judge is sitting, Meursault is a kind of monster. But his case also reveals the monstrous, limiting aspects of society, since all societies, however open, always put obstacles and punishments in the way of the absolute freedom that each individual, deep down, aspires to.
Within the existential pessimism of The Outsider, however, there burns, albeit weakly, a flame of hope. There is a moment not of resignation but of lucidity that occurs in the beautiful final paragraph. Here, Meursault shakes off his anger towards the chaplain who had tried to domesticate him by offering to pray for him, and embraces, with serene confidence, his destiny as a man open to ‘the tender indifference of the world’.
Camus’s pessimism is not defeatist; on the contrary, it is a call to action or, more precisely, to rebellion. The reader leaves the pages of the novel probably with feelings for Meursault, but certainly convinced that the world is badly made and should change.
The novel does not conclude either explicitly or implicitly that since things are the way they are we should resign ourselves to accept a world organised by fanatics like the judge or pettifogging histrionic lawyers. We feel repugnance for both these characters. And we even find the chaplain disagreeable due to his inflexibility and lack of tact. With his disturbing behaviour, Meursault shows the precariousness and dubious morality of the conventions and rituals of society. His discordant attitude reveals the hypocrisy, lies, errors and injustices that social life entails. And at the same time it shows how the demands of living in a community lead to the mutilation or — to quote Freud, the great discoverer and explorer of the concept — the repression of individual sovereignty and certain instincts and desires.