The Outsider, an absurd experiment with the unpresentable
“If the world were clear, art would not exist”
Albert Camus[1]
The Outsider by Albert Camus is often considered the epitome of Absurdist fiction. In The Myth of Sisyphus, his major philosophical work concerning the idea of the Absurd which is often read alongside the novel, Camus believes that innately people desire meaning and unity[2], but I will show that in The Outsider, this intrinsic human need is flouted. Nonetheless, in spite of their similarity and the fact that the latter is published a few months after the former, it would be rash to assert that The Outsider is merely a literary manifestation of The Myth of Sisyphus, as Cruickshank maintains (143). It is therefore imperative that this essay not be confined by the framework of Camusian philosophy and merely show how the Absurd is invoked in flouting the above intrinsic human need. Going beyond Camus’s own philosophical framework, in this essay, I will explore the experimental quality of The Outsider. I will argue that The Outsider is experimental in its invocation of a sense of unpresentability. The question of unpresentability will first be elucidated from a stylistic point of view. Afterwards, drawing from Jean-François Lyotard’s idea of the sublime, the essay will seek to explain why the unpresentable can be seen as the core of the novel- it will be argued that the notion of the unpresentable is pertinent in explaining the novel’s imagery as well as the crafting of Meursault. Furthermore, the essay will show that the unpresentable is foregrounded and dramatized by the theme of judgement. At the end of the analysis, this essay will reexamine the value of this experiment using Roland Barthes’s idea of the degree zero of writing.
Stylistically, the narrative strategy contributes to creating anticlimactic moments. In the trial, most of the talking of the jury, the lawyers, the judge and Meursault himself is recounted in indirect speech, as in the bulk of the novel. For instance, Camus writes, when “the judge coughed slightly and in a very low voice asked me if I had anything to add […] I said […] that I had never intended to kill the Arab [, and the judge] had me specify [my] motives [..] I said quickly that it was because of the sun” (99). The employment of indirect speech creates an out-focusing effect on the judge’s words and Meursault’s defense. Rather than a vigorous defense against a serious accusation, Meursault’s response appears detached. Likewise, the judge’s questions do not appear to matter to him. In effect, the entire solemn murder trial is trivialized by the narrative technique, as in other supposedly significant moments in the novel. Another case in point is the job offer to Paris. There is only one direct quote in the conversation between Meursault’s boss and Meursault, and the rest of the conversation is again recounted in reported speech and is devoid of adjectives or adverbs, extinguishing any hint of excitement on the prospect for a pied-noir in impoverished Algeria to work in Paris. Similarly, Marie’s proposal that comes immediately afterwards is paraphrased into an indirect quote, “that evening, Marie came round and asked me if I wanted to marry her” (44), as though the proposal were but a banal happening. The bulk of the dialogue that follows is also recounted in indirect speech, and again, adjectives are sparsely used. Contrary to romantic expectation, the marriage proposal is rendered anti-climatic by the novel’s out-focusing narrative strategy. By recounting extensively in indirect speech with sparing use of adjectives, supposedly key moments such as Meursault’s murder trial, the job offer to Paris and Marie’s proposal are trivialized to the extent that the novel becomes almost a piece of minimalist art- unemotional and deprived of anticipated climax. This extreme simplicity, on one hand, creates a peculiar sense of detachment by dint of flouting readers’ expectation, but on the other hand, risks turning the novel overly bland. The accumulation of anti-climaxes might lead to insipidity, and even a nihilistic sense of what Meursault repeatedly concludes: it does not really matter or does not mean anything[3].
Nonetheless, a lyricism permeating in The Outsider acts as an antidote to the blandness created by the accumulation of anti-climaxes. In many instances, physical experience is dilated and written poetically. For example, Meursault recalls the moment he flirts with Marie in the beach: “I had the whole sky in my eyes and it was all blue and gold” (24). Also, at the funeral, he recounts that he “was surprised how rapidly the sun was climbing in the sky” and he notices that “the countryside had been alive with the humming of insects and the crackling of grass”. The sun and the countryside are personified, and the sounds of nature amplified. The seeming insipidity in the above examples, resulting chiefly from overly objective description, is compensated for in the highly subjective lyricism of these descriptions through the lens of Meursault. With regard to the poetics of the novel, the lyricism of the account of Meursault’s bodily experience redeems the anticlimaxes and seeming nihilism discussed above.
This lyricism recalls the idea of the sublime, which then recalls Romantic arts which also often feature sublime elements. The sublime in The Outsider, however, is not purely Romantic; it is more experimental in its invocation of the unpresentable, an example of which is the moment before the murder. Preparatory to the five shots that take away the Arab’s life is a lengthy description of how Meursault is entirely overwhelmed by the wilderness. Qualities of vastness and oppressiveness are metaphorically given to nature. As he walks back to the desert, he recounts, “the heat was pushing full against me…” (58). The imagery of walking in the vast wilderness with the mighty sun “pushing against” and the haze “pouring into” (58) him resembles that of an ordeal. Just before the murder, he recounts, “the sun was clashing against my forehead”, and “[the light reflected by the Arab’s knife] was like a red-hot blade gnawing at my eyelashes and gouging out my stinging eyes” (60). This ordeal, described at length in these long passages, is depicted almost like an odyssey. It is thus rightly a conglomerate of pain and passion exemplary of Edmund Burke’s idea of the sublime as a kind of “positive pain” which men indulge[4]. Moreover, nature is bestowed a sense of eternity: “waves sounded even longer and lazier than they had been at midday” and “[there were] the same sun, the same light, and the same sand as before” (59). Time appears suspended. Moreover, this sublime sensation, as put by Burke, suspends not only motion, but also reasoning[5]: the inexplicable murder of the Arab is chronologically linked with this chain of sublime elements that overwhelms Meursault, as though, absurdly, a causal link is established. It is also this inexplicable murder that puts an abrupt end to the lengthy suspension created by the sublime. Therefore, the absurdity therein, exemplary of Camus’s view that the world is devoid of reason, seems to suggest that lying at the heart of this sublime moment is the inexplicability of the murder. Rather than Burke’s sublime that is characteristic of Romantic arts, this sublime is what Jean-François Lyotard considers to be avant-garde, the focus of which is on foregrounding the unpresentable[6], here being the murder and the four shots that follow- while the repressive environment is described at length, the murder is narrated briefly without explaining exactly why Meursault shoots. More precisely, Camus writes “the trigger gave” (61) instead of, for instance, “Meursault pulled the trigger”. By hiding Meursault’s name in the act of shooting, it seems to suggest that an unpresentable sublime force makes it happen rather than Meursault does it.
Furthermore, The Outsider in entirety is a piece of sublime art, not in the Romantic sense yet more in the above avant-garde sense. To begin with, the sun can be interpreted as a megametaphor[7] of the avant-garde sublime. Under the Algerian sun which lurks between the lines throughout the novel, an inexplicable force that transcends human reason is omnipresent. Prior to the murder, Meursault thinks that the sun is the “same sun […] as before” (59). This is suggestive of the sun under which he appears peculiarly emotionless at his mother’s funeral. Before the funeral, Meursault recounts that "with the whole landscape flooded in sunshine and shimmering in the heat, it was inhospitable and depressing" (20). Similar to the long passages building up to the murder of the Arab, the whole funeral procession teems with description of the oppressiveness of the sun which makes him “[feel] a bit lost”, hardly able to “see or think straight any more” (21). Overwhelmed by the sun, Meursault only recounts his mother’s burial in scattered images: “then there was the church and the villagers in the street, the red geraniums on the tombs in the cemetery, Perez fainting […], the blood-red earth tumbling onto mother’s coffin, […] more people, voices, the village, […]”. Seemingly because of the sun, this supposedly emotional moment is presented in this series of detached and fragmented images. The power of the sun is again demonstrated- it dazzles not only Meursault, but also readers by dint of distorting the unity of narrative. This sublime moment violently annihilates reasons and unity. The sun also lurks in the second part of the novel. For instance, the first day of the trial is marked by a crescendo of heat. At one moment, he “wipe[s] the sweat from [his] face and only vaguely remember[s] where [he is] and what [he is] doing there” (86). His capacity of human interaction is diminished by the sun. Then, when transported back to prison from the court, all of a sudden he remembers the happy days before imprisonment when he recognises "the familiar smells and colours of a summer evening" (93) of the neighbourhood and recalls happy moments of the past, "as if a familiar journey under a summer sky could as easily end in prison as in innocent sleep" (94). Meursault escapes the present due to the heat and light of the Algerian sun, which provoke in him this stream of inexplicable feelings. The sun is thus paradoxically associated with both joy and his inexplicable crime. More precisely, this whole paradox, initiated by the sun, is inexplicable. Again, the sun is in action, exercising its puissant but aleatory influence over Meursault’s feeling and fate. From these examples, it appears that the sun is an overarching transcendental metaphor that represents the presence of the powerful unpresentable, rather than a life-giving force as it is conventionally represented. Pain and pleasure, central to Burke’s sublime, are no doubt associated with this metaphor, but the effect of the sublime sun in the novel is consistently the annihilation of reason. The sheer alterity of the sun invokes a sense of unpresentable- happenings take place under the sublime sun and they cannot be explained by conventional reasons.
Moreover, hedonistic and primitive, the protagonist Meursault personifies the unpresentable. In fact, the crafting of Meursault strategically invokes the unpresentable. The day after the funeral, when Meursault meets Marie on the beach, he is instantly attracted to her and flirts with her out of primitive instinct, without finding it inappropriate. The bulk of the passage, punctuated with Marie’s laughter, is unabashedly descriptive of their physical contact, with Meursault “help[ing] her onto a buoy”, “brush[ing] against her breasts”, “let[ting his] head sink back onto her stomach”, with “Marie’s stomach throbbing gently under the back of [his] neck”, etc. (23-4). Psychological description of the first-person narrator is almost absent, but Marie’s laughter suggests that the two enjoy the process of flirting with each other, almost animalistically. This lack of psychological reflection in Meursault suggests that he tends to act on impulse, free of sophisticated human reflection, reason and intention. Another example is when Raymond hands him the gun with which he shoots the Arab. Initially, he tries to convince Raymond not to shoot the Arab. However, amid the silent sunlit desert and sea, he appears to have completely lost his power of reasoning, remarking: “I realized at that point that you could either shoot or not shoot” (57). Again, instinct takes over. In general, he is just not used to human reflection and reason. This primitive nature explains why the murder trial, the job offer to Paris and Marie’s proposal appear trivial in his eyes: these are sophisticated social rules, yet Meursault is not aware of all these. The construction of these characteristics gives Meursault a sense of innocence to all social rules. He becomes almost an empty signifier that resists the signifying forces from a society that tries to make sense of him. To foreground the unpresentability of this empty sign, The Outsider shows Meursault’s strangeness even in the most trivial matters. For instance, when facing the friends of his deceased mother before the funeral, he observes in the solemn context, “I’d never noticed before what huge paunches old women can have” and “their lips were sucked into their toothless mouths” (15). Banal as it is, this is an uncanny timing to make such observations. Meursault, who is habituated to following his instincts, apparently does not consider whether these are appropriate observations to make. Appropriateness is, after all, a social construct to which the primitive and hedonistic Meursault is not bound. Like the sublime sun, Meursault obliterates conventional meanings and reasons. Thus, the crafting of Meursault brings The Outsider in line with the avant-garde, which, as put by Lyotard, “do not try to find the unpresentable at a great distance, as a lost origin or end, to be represented in the subject of the picture” (126). Meursault makes the unpresentable highly pertinent to the novel.
Furthermore, the unpresentability of Meursault’s motives behind his strangeness is counterpointed with the theme of judgement. In the trial, Meursault notices that the prosecutor and the defence attorney argue “with all [the] long sentences and the endless days and hours […] about [his] soul” (101), as though they can see through it, assigning a signified to the empty signifier. Meursault, primitive and hedonistic as argued above, is easily influenced by the inexplicable sublime forces of nature. He flirts with Marie the day after his mother’s funeral merely out of hedonistic instinct, but this, along with the fact that he does not cry at his mother’s funeral, is found to be scandalous by the jury and judged to be immoral. However, like a naïve child, he calls his mother “maman”[8]. As argued above, he is portrayed as an empty signifier. It appears he is judged from preordained binary rules of society that decide between moral and immoral, while he is at best amoral. Under the binary morality system in the novel, his amorality is unpresentable in the courtroom. His unpresentability in face of justice is further highlighted by Meursault’s inability to explain his behaviour. When Meursault’s defence lawyer tells him to keep quiet and let him do the talking, Meursault thinks: “‘But all the same, who’s the accused? It’s important being the accused. And I’ve got something to say!’ But when I thought about it, I didn’t really have anything to say” (95-6). Even Meursault cannot signify his murder. He is thus entirely powerless in face of this morality system. Eventually, he is sentenced to the guillotine “in the name of the French people” (103). This judgement further alienates Meursault, elevating the tension between the desire to judge and the unpresentability of Meursault to a collective level. At the end, the tension built up erupts when Meursault soliloquises after telling off the chaplain:
“…They were announcing a departure to a world towards which I would now be forever indifferent. … As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world. And finding it so much like myself, in fat so fraternal, I realized that I’d been happy, and that I was still happy. For the final consummation and for me to feel less lonely, my last wish was that there should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred”. (117)
This soliloquy effectively brings the tension between the judging world and the unpresentable Meursault to a dramatic dénouement. In this soliloquy, Meursault recognizes that his death his near. By oxymoronically soliloquizing that he “lay[s] himself open to the benign indifference of the world” (117), on the one hand, he recognizes the absurdity of his fate due to unfair judgement for the very first time. As Camus puts it, “from the moment it is recognized, the absurd becomes the most harrowing of passions”[9]. The realization that the world is indifferent not only exemplifies Camus’s idea of the Absurd about the absence of meaning in the world in spite of human’s desire to find meaning, but also dramatizes it by dint of recognition. On the other hand, Meursault describes this indifference as “benign”, and he lays himself open to it. This suggests an acceptance of fate, and in Camusian philosophy, this elevates Meursault to a lucid absurd hero, similar to Don Juan and the conqueror in The Myth of Sisyphus[10]. Though an empty signifier, he accepts the fate of being signified and even dying for it. His wish that there should be a crowd of angry spectator at his execution creates the ekphrasis of the scene with him alone facing the unjust judging world till his last breathe, further reinforcing his heroic image at the end. Through Meursault’s recognition of the Absurd and acceptance of his fate, the accumulation of tension between the theme of judgement and that of the unpresentable reaches its peak at this soliloquy. His anticipated death therefore leads to strong catharsis. On the whole, the theme of judgement foregrounds and dramatizes the sense of unpresentability.
While the experiment with the unpresentable appears to triumph so far, it is worthwhile to re-examine the value of this experiment. In Writing Degree Zero, Roland Barthes describes the style of The Outsider as “an ideal absence of style” that prevents it from “being overlaid by a secondary commitment of form to a History not its own” (77). What Barthes means, in the context of his book, is that while some writers conform to preexisting writing tradition and accordingly present certain preexisting historical views, The Outsider does not seek to follow any grand narrative- it seeks to invoke the unrepresentable. It does not judge whether Meursault is moral or immoral in killing the Arab, or in not crying at his mother’s funeral, or in starting a romantic relationship the day after his mother’s death. Rejecting the traditional binary morality, it appears to affirm, in semiological terms, the presence of a signifier without signified. However, more than 70 years after its publication, with it being dubbed a classic and with Camus being hailed and even having received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, The Outsider is now canonized, and in Barthes’s words, has become itself a myth, “demote[d …] to a mere manner” (78). One success of this literary experiment, as argued earlier, is that it negates myths of binary morality in presenting an unpresentable amorality. Within the novel and at the time it is written, morality is indeed chiefly binary. Thus, in the context of the novel, Meursault is an empty signifier struggling against the signifying forces, However, outside the context of the novel, once signified as an amoral hero and later even mythicized, Meursault is no longer much of an empty signifier. The triumph of this experiment cannot last.
The world is not clear, and some artists seek to render it clear by presenting things of the world. However, Camus takes the opposite direction in The Outsider. In an attempt to invoke the unpresentable, the novel appears to risk turning itself bland. Nonetheless, it finds its remedy in the amplified quasi-Romantic beauty of the world, and in the sublime sensation that highlights the tension between the unpresentable and the judging world. It appears, however, upon reexamining the value of this literary experiment, the token of the triumph of The Outsider is its break from what is preordained, yet after being canonized, the novel becomes part of the new establishment. From this conclusion, literary experiment of the unpresentable is also a Sisyphean rock: it is an attempt to push the rock to a summit, yet even when attained, the rock is destined to fall down. Another experiment then awaits.
End Notes:
[1] Translated from « Si le monde était clair, l'art ne serait pas » (Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 135)
[2] Camus wrote: “Even in its most elaborate operation, the profound desire of the spirit parallels man’s unconscious feeling in face of his universe: it insists upon familiarity and an appetite for clarity”. Translated from : « Le désir profond de l'esprit même dans ses démarches les plus évoluées rejoint le sentiment inconscient de l'homme devant son univers : il est exigence de familiarité, appétit de clareté » (Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 34)
[3] There are a number of moments in which Meursault concludes that what happens does not matter or does not mean anything. For example, in the beginning of the novel, after receiving the telegram from the old people’s home that informs him that his mother died and the funeral would take place the next day, Meursault concludes that “That doesn’t mean anything. It may have been yesterday” (9).
[4] Edmund Burke argues that “the person who grives, suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it; he loves it: but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.” See Burke, p.44-5.
[5] Edmund Burke argues that “the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force.” See Burke, p.76-7.
[6] Lyotard traces the development of the idea of the sublime from Longinus’s formulation to those of Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, and the from the Romantics to Paul Cézanne and the avant-garde artists such as Marcel Duchamp. He suggests on p. 101 that the focus of the avant-garde’s sublime is to “present the fact that there is an unpresentable”. See Lyotard, 89-107.
[7] Megametaphor means an overarching metaphor that spans over a novel. See Kövecses, 57-59.
[8] Used in the French version of The Outsider, but its connotation of naivety is not retained in Joseph Laredo’s translation. See Camus, L'Étranger.
[9] Translated from « A partir du moment où elle est reconnue, l'absurdité est une passion, la plus déchirante de toutes » in Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe , 40
[10] Camus considers those who see the absurdity in life as lucid. Moreover, in Camus’s discussion of “L’Homme Absurd” ["The Absurd Man”], he praises Don Juan for accepting his fate and living his life fully, arguing that “un destin n’est pas une punition” [“a fate is not a punishment”]. Furthermore, he maintains that lucidity is a strength, arguing that "... we call the lucid people virile and we do not want a strength that separates us from lucidity". Therefore, lucidity and living life fully are Camus’s criteria for an absurd hero. Translated from "... nous appelons virils les lucides et nous ne voulons pas d'une force qui se sépare de la clairevoyance» in Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 104, 105, 124
Works Cited:
Barthes, Roland. Writing degree zero. Trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, New York: The Noonday Press, 1977. Print.
Burke, Edmund. “Joy and Grief”. A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: With an Introductory Discourse Concerning Taste. Philadelphia: Printed for S.F. Bradford by J. Watts, 1860. 44-5. HKUL. Web. 22 Apr 2016.
Burke, Edmund. “Of the Passion Caused by the Sublime”. A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: With an Introductory Discourse Concerning Taste. Philadelphia: Printed for S.F. Bradford by J. Watts, 1860. 76-7. HKUL. Web. 22 Apr 2016.
Camus, Albert. L'Étranger [The Outsider]. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1942. Print.
Camus, Albert. The Outsider. Tr. Joseph Laredo. London: Penguin Books, 2000. Print.
Camus, Albert. “La création absurde” [“The absurd creation”]. Le Mythe de Sisyphe [The Myth of Sisyphus]. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1942. 129-159. Print. [In French].
Camus, Albert. “Un raisonnement absurde” [“An absurd reasoning”]. Le Mythe de Sisyphe [The Myth of Sisyphus]. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1942. 17-92. Print. [In French].
Cruickshank, John. “The Art of the Novel (I)”. Albert Camus and the literature of revolt. London: Oxford University Press. 1978. 142-163. Print.
Kövecses, Zoltán. “Metaphor in Literature”. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 49-62. Print.
Lyotard, Jean-François. “Representation, Presentation, Unrepresentable”. The inhuman: Reflections on time. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington, Rachel Bowlby. Oxford: Polity Press, 1991. 119-128. Print.
Lyotard, Jean-François. “The Sublime and the Avant-Garde”. The inhuman: Reflections on time. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington, Rachel Bowlby. Oxford: Polity Press, 1991. 89-107. Print.
