Existentialist features of Albert Camus’ novels: In the case of ‘The Outsider’ and ‘The Plague’

Abstract

Existentialism is a philosophical movement. It questions the reality of every human-created philosophical system and seeks to discover existential truths that lie beyond the human. It returns to its origins: it considers existentialism as a fundamental path to a true understanding of some idealised concepts of human thought. This article presents a critical analysis of the characteristics of existentialism that become the central references of two important novels by Albert Camus, The Stranger and The Plague. These sources include scholarly works on the history of existentialism and its two philosophical foundations, as well as sources devoted to the social and cultural context in which these ideas arose, such as newspaper articles or online publications. These sources constitute the context of the study. The study analyses the existential dimensions of the novels in question and conducts a thorough examination of the numerous social and cultural vectors that surround them. This study is therefore not only a literary criticism but also a field of sociological research that contributes to literary studies and sociology. This work fills a gap in previous research; to my knowledge, no comprehensive analysis has examined these novels together as important existential texts. This study attempts to fill this gap in the literature. It uses a qualitative and analytical approach to demonstrate the presence of existential elements in the two novels through a comprehensive textual analysis. Based on the theoretical foundations of existentialism, this analysis focuses on the broad themes of absurdity, absurdity, and moral resistance. The paper demonstrates how Meursault is concerned with the meaninglessness and absurdity of life in The Stranger and how, paradoxically, he demonstrates the fragility of everyday life in The Presidents in the Time of Plague. Both novels are deeply rooted in the fundamental themes of human existence: meaninglessness, frailty, isolation, and the will to power. This theme is based on literary characters and events, and ultimately, the study argues that fiction reveals one of the deepest existential themes and how fiction can be a way to access the emptiness and complexity of human life.