A Moral Rebel

Camus discusses the estrangement of an individual in a benign and indifferent universe, one in which conformity prevails. He not only satirizes the conformity of society, but religion and the legal system as well. Throughout part one of the novel Meursault focuses primarily on the physical world, leaving emotions almost completely out of the picture. This works to develop Meursault’s philosophy that is grounded in the objective, physical world. Later it is revealed that Meursault is not very religious at all, mainly because he refuses to accept the standard beliefs. He questions conformity and subsequently chooses his own path to understanding. In The Encounter with Nothingness it is stated that “Religion to medieval man was not so much a theological system as a solid psychological matrix surrounding the individual’s life from birth to death, sanctifying and enclosing all its ordinary and extraordinary occasions in sacrament and ritual” (24). In refusing the assumptions of reli...