Stranger by Albert Camus the Main Character,

Stranger by Albert Camus

The main character, Meursault, mother dies in the book, and he travels to her funeral. As he sit by the coffin, he displayed virtually no emotion or offers any indication of grief. The next day, he meets an old coworker has is named Marie. They go out on a date to a diner and then a movie and shortly after a relationship forms. Later these two individuals take the relationship to the next stage and announce their engagement. Meursault's neighbor, Raymond, who is a notorious pimp and portrayed as immoral man, asks for help to lure his mistress back as well as to help him get acquitted at the police station on charges of beating her up. Meursault indifferently agrees to help Raymond as a neighborly thing to do.

As the plot develops, the author starts to portray Meursault's escalating indifference to life. Meursault then kills an Arab because of hot weather and a fight with Raymond. He is arrested, thrown in jail, and brought to court. When the character is in jail he really starts to wrestle with the philosophy of life. He takes something of an existential approach and decides that there really is no ultimate meaning to life. He is later sentenced to death and though he dreams of being acquitted in the beginning, he comes to terms with his inevitable sentence. This seems to make him even number however.

. Meursault's personal philosophy is told to a chaplain, who him in the jail cell to perform the last rights. Meursault rejects them on the grounds that atheist and doesn't believe God. He is then labeled a monster. However, a strange thing happens. After Meursault finally gets the concept that there is no meaning to life and no rationality or external meaning, he is able to enjoy his last days. He is portrayed as somehow enlightened by his revelation.

I can understand Meursault's logic and I have also felt like life is meaningless at times. However, I have also heard it framed in another way somewhere. Someone said that atheists have nothing to live for and it is actually quite the opposite. Atheists technically have nothing to die for. That is, they do not believe in any external being or supernatural world that supersedes this one. As such, the only thing left is this life. All an atheist gets is one life and since they don't believe there is anything else, they should make the best of the one that they have.

Therefore, for me personally, I don't think that an atheist has to ultimately decide that the world is meaningless just because they don't accept any supernatural forces. In fact, I think that there can be optimism in an atheist's life just as in any other worldview. There are many things to live for. Just because an atheists' lives may not contain absolute truths or external meaning, does not necessarily imply that they will come to the same conclusions as Meursault and be numb and indifferent.