Fred Adolphsen 14 September 2011 AP Lit P.

4 Uriarte

The collective consciousness we know as society is ill defined, one would be hard pressed to determine at what level of organization a group of men becomes a society at. It would be harder still to differentiate civility from savagery. This is because society does not represent an organizational system at all. A society is most well defined as a group of people with like minded morals and reasoning, and we measure the success of that motion through civility. I am guilty myself of kneeling to this standard, grounding my morals with the majoritys opinion. In Albert Camus The Stranger society is scrutinized through the eyes of an absurdist who, unlike the rest of society, sees that morality only represents the majoritys opinion. Society morphs morals and defines good and evil in an abstract yet finite way, influencing how I feel about all things. Throughout the stranger it is stressed that the concept of morality is absurd, as the protagonist philosophizes about the impermanence and irrelevance of his (evil) actions. Meursault is almost desperate as he struggles to spill his thoughts on life and God to the chaplain. The chaplain represents the epitome of a man whos ethics have been manipulated by society, changing his idea of what good is. This representation works exceptionally well, seeing as religion is merely a more extreme projection of the idea of society. The church represents a group of like minded people who allow their logic and morality to be altered by their deitys wishes, we call this willingness faith. This same faith can be found in

society. Though not dedicated to a God, peoples faith can be found placed in the hands of the majority, so that they have an ethical norm to follow. As a citizen, I use these social norms as safety blankets, relieving me of any moral guilt. Not many people have the capacity to determine their own morality without any foreign influence, and thats what frustrates Meursault more than anything. Society creates a reasonable and moral path for one to follow, and stepping off results in punishment. Albert Camus presents the audience with a question, how do you decide whats good, and whats evil? Society would answer that evil is simply breaking the agreed upon moral code of the people. As Meursault painfully discovers, however, the relationship between good and evil is blurred. When carefully examined, morality has nothing to do with a greater good or evil. Ethics is truly only the measure of how biologically favorable an action is for our species and our society. Murder is evil, hunting is good. Doing what is right is not doing what God has said is right; it is doing what will aid civilization and humanity. This is Meursaults saving grace as he awaits his execution. Camus mocks the trivial efforts to enforce ethics and reason, championing absurdism and impermanence as the reader follows a man who is truly free from society on a mental level, yet still shackled to it still in a physical way. Meursault struggles at first with being caught in a world in which his indifference does not shield him from the influence as other, hence his desperation to escape the machinery of justice. He does escape in fact, through his own philosophy. It is assumed he dies a free man. Will I die a free man though? I am, like so many others, a prisoner of the moral infrastructure that has been implemented through decades of social refining.