Albert Camus' idea of rebellion in the Outsider

Abstract EN

Albert Camus' political and literary writings reveal his revolutionary opinions about the various issues dominating the fourth and fifth decades of the twentieth century such as fascism, the Spanish civil war, poverty, social injustice, as well as the role of the intellectuals in the political life of his age.

In his book, L'Homme Revolte he describes history as a series of horror and portrays Europe as a world lacking all moral and intellectual significance.

Camus was considered a distinguished member in the French Resistance during the German occupation and an active journalist whose writings displayed a revolt against the enemies of democracy, the fascists fellow travelers, the feudal supporters of the industrial , banking and agricultural order.

Through these writings he formulated his opinions about history, morality and revolution.

He was the first among the French intellectuals who treated the case of Algeria seriously and called for equal treatment for the Arabs and the Europeans alike.

In his novel The Outsider, Camus depicts the reality of the French colonialism in Algeria.

The novel presents Camus' condemnation of Meursault's indifference to the brutality of the colonial society he belongs to.

Meursault kills an Arab and he is judged not for this crime but because he doesn't behave according to the codes of his society during his mother's death.

This shows that the Europeans treat the 'others' as 'things' ,and for the European judges, the murder of an Arab is not different from breaking a stone or cutting a tree.

Meurault is a stranger in a strange world and the revelation he experiences at the moment of facing this world splits him from the values of his society.

He retreats into the world of sensations, he trusts only the things he can see and find meaning in, refusing the abstract values of his society which are devoid of meaning.

This substantiates Camus's message of art as a rebellion against the rigid system imposed on man and his attempt to transcend the limits of his society and create his own world of ideas in which he feels free to enjoy what he never experiences before, art as a transformation of human existence and an everlasting struggle for giving it meaning.