Week 4 Seminar 2

The Outsider - Albert Campus

The Outsider is novel written in 1942 by Albert Campus. The novels theme and views are based on existentialism. Existentialism looks understanding human existence and experiences based on philosophical approach. In other words the assumption that individuals are free and responsible for their own choices and action. As Hence stated: " we are not victims of circumstances because we are what we have chosen to be. Campus never considered him self as a existentialist as he took different approaches of thoughts which the novel included such as absurd-ism, determinism, nihilism, naturalism and stoicism. The novel tells the story of an emotionally detached,amoral young man named Meursault who lives in Algeria. He does not cry at his mother's funeral, does not believe in God, and kills a man he barely knows without any discernible motive. For the crime, Meursaults is seen as a threat to society and sentenced to death. When he comes to accept the "gentle indifference of the world" he finds peace with himself and with the society that persecuted him. Camus's absurdist philosophy implies that moral orders have no rational or natural basis. Yet Camus did not approach the world with moral indifference and he believed that life's lack of a "higher" meaning should necessarily lead on to despair. On the contrary, Camus was persistent humanist. He is noted for his faith in man's dignity in the face of what he saw as a cold, indifferent universe.

Preface To Frants Fanon's "Wretched of The Earth"

The Wretched of the Earth is Frants Fanon's most famous work. The book was written during the Algerian struggle for independence from colonial rule. Fanon was a psychiatrist explored the psychological effect of colonization on a nation as well a broader implications for building a movement for decolonization. Decolonization is the action of changing a status from colonial to independence. The book relates to the novel The Outsider in a way that they both advocate a racial definition of indigenous national identity of multiculturalism. Nationalist philosophies look at the principles of all african nationalist ideologies are unity, and self determination or independence from European Society.