‘The Outsider suggests that people are powerless to direct their lives.’ Discuss

While Meursault’s inability to lie or bend the truth to accommodate societies fears and expectations makes his future ultimately unavoidable it is not true that other people have no control over their lives. In fact anyone in Meursault’s position who was willing to tell society what they wanted to hear would have found themselves acting with the power to walk away from the situation they had found themselves in.

Meursault refuses to lie and with that refusal to defend himself in the manner society expects he sets the course of his life in stone. The first instance in which Meursault condemns himself to the death penalty is when he refuses to lie to the magistrate. His refusal to say that he believed in god, “obviously I said no,” even though the magistrate said that if he didn’t his life would be meaningless, “you want my life to be meaningless?” is what causes the magistrate to stop trying to help him. Before his refusal to “put his trust in him” the magistra...