Questions tagged [albert-camus]
Questions about the works of the Algerian-born French philosopher and author Albert Camus (1913 – 1960) or his life as a writer. His works should be tagged with [french-literature]. He is best known for his works 'The Stranger', 'The Plague' and others.
25
questions
3
votes
1answer
47 views
What does Albert Camus mean with “they remembered pleasure”?
In his novel The Plague, Albert Camus wrote among others:
So everyone comes down into the streets, they deafen each other with
talk, argue or lust after one another - and the town, under the red
July ...
1
vote
1answer
26 views
Did Camus have a known source of inspiration for Meursault's behaviour during and after his mother's funeral?
Camus's novel The Stranger begins with the news of the death and the funeral of Meursault's mother. Meursault smokes cigarettes during the wake, doesn't weep before, during or after the funeral, and ...
6
votes
2answers
148 views
Did Camus ever say “Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth”?
This statement has been attributed to Albert Camus in various places on the internet. For example, this one:
However, his Wikiquote page doesn't contain this quote. So did he actually say it? If he ...
3
votes
0answers
49 views
Interpretation of a Camus Quote
In The Plague, Rieux, the main character of the novel, in Chapter 15, claims that
I've seen too much of hospitals to relish any idea of collective punishment.
What does he mean by that? How exactly ...
1
vote
0answers
23 views
Notebook epigram referring to 'only death in the universe'
Camus says somewhere that there is only death in the universe. By 'death' he simply means physics (energy, matter). He is rejecting the metaphysics of a universal dualism: Life and Death. I believe ...
8
votes
1answer
299 views
Where did Camus define “the novel as the place where the human being is abandoned to other human beings”?
Albert Camus once defined the novel as the place where the human being is abandoned to other human beings. The plague novel is the place where all human beings abandon all other human beings. Unlike ...
1
vote
1answer
68 views
A quote on failure and triumph attributed to Kierkegaard by Camus
In chapter 3 of his essay The Myth of Sisyphus / Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Camus discusses how several philosophers who have dealt with what he calls the absurd. One of these is Kierkegaard, of whom he ...
3
votes
3answers
105 views
Why would not giving money to the poor qualify a person as a Sadducee?
In the first chapter of Albert Camus's novel The Fall, the narrator asks his addressee a few questions:
Possédez-vous des richesses? Quelques-unes? Bon. Les avez-vous partagées avec les pauvres? ...
4
votes
1answer
112 views
Meaning of «Ah! les Bazaine» in La chute / The Fall
In Albert Camus's novel La chute / The Fall, the main character
talks about his life to an unnamed listener. In the second chapter, he
makes the following statement while talking about friends and ...
2
votes
1answer
202 views
What is the significance of the names Mersault and Meursault?
The novel A Happy Death, written in the late 1930s and published posthumously in 1971, has a main character named Patrice Mersault. Camus's novel The Stranger, written a few years later and published ...
0
votes
1answer
43 views
How does The Meursault Investigation reference The Fall?
Kamel Daoud's novel The Meursault Investigation (Meursault, contre-enquête, 2013) is a retelling of and sequel to The Stranger / L'Étranger by Albert Camus.
But that is not the only Camus novel it ...
4
votes
2answers
108 views
In which interview did Camus say that Meursault is the only Christ we deserved?
In two YouTube videos about Albert Camus's novel L'étranger / The Stranger, I have found the following quote,
which supposedly comes from an interview from 1955:
Meursault est le seul Christ que nous ...
5
votes
2answers
421 views
How is the Czechoslovak traveller's story relevant to The Stranger as a whole?
In chapter II of Part II of Camus's novel The Stranger, Meursault narrates a story that he read in an old newspaper cutting that he found under his mattress in prison. Below is a summary.
A man from ...
2
votes
1answer
79 views
Is Meursault bothered that he doesn't know what day Maman died?
The first line of The Stranger goes like this:
Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: "Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours." That doesn'...
3
votes
2answers
128 views
Why would Maman ask for a religious burial?
In the first chapter of The Stranger, it says:
The director stopped at the door of a small building. "I'll leave you now, Monsieur Meursault. If you need me for anything, I'll be in my office. As ...
2
votes
0answers
51 views
Is Marie's comment based on the existence of a two-tier justice system in French Algeria?
In Camus' novel L'étranger / The Stranger, Meursault gets arrested for shooting "an Arab". During his pre-trial detention, his girlfriend Marie pays him a visit in prison and tries to give him some ...
2
votes
2answers
389 views
What is Meursault's problem with the heat?
Meursault in The Stranger seems to spend a lot of time describing the temperature, and especially the heat. There are numerous cases where he mentions the sun and the heat:
It occurred to me that all ...
7
votes
1answer
267 views
Why does Mersault say “Hello image!” to his girlfriend?
I have read the novel A Happy Death by Albert Camus. In this novel Mersault (the absurd hero) at one point says to his girlfriend, "Hello, image!". I am wondering why he calls his girlfriend "image". ...
2
votes
1answer
325 views
What does Camus mean by this sentence?
I read 'A happy death' by 'Albert Camus' . In this book , Mersault once said:
Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory . . . Everything is
forgotten, ...
3
votes
1answer
201 views
What does Camus mean by “the disastrous fact that love and desire must be expressed in the same way”?
Here is a set of lines from the book A Happy Death by Albert Camus:
In the past, whenever Mersault had spent any time with one woman, he made the first gestures of commitment, he was conscious of ...
5
votes
1answer
97 views
Allusion by Albert Camus to another author
In Camus's essay The Sea Close By there's a sentence:
This life rebellious to forgetfulness, rebellious to memory, of which Stevenson speaks.
(page 5 of Penguin Classics 2013).
Can anyone tell ...
5
votes
1answer
91 views
On a quote of Hegel in L'été (Summer) of Camus
This is my first question on this website, so I am not completely sure that this is the most adequate one (I could have also tried Philosophy stack exchange).
In the chapter "L'exil d'Hélène" of L'...
15
votes
4answers
1k views
Why is the tense wrong in the beginning of The Stranger?
The first lines of Albert Camus' The Stranger go something like this:
Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday
It's told in the present tense, as in, when Meursault is recounting the event it had ...
14
votes
1answer
247 views
Why is Camus asserting that “Marx scientific Messianism” is Bourgeois?
In The Rebel, Camus asserts that
Progress, the future of science, the cult of technology and of production, are bourgeois myths, ...
Why is Camus defining these themes as "bourgeois myths"?
14
votes
4answers
29k views
Why does Meursault kill “the Arab” in The Stranger?
In Albert Camus' book The Stranger, Meursault kills a character known as "the Arab" for no real reason at all. Meursault even acknowledges that he doesn't have to kill "the Arab"
It struck me that ...
