The meaning of the suffering of Meursault from the angle...

Existentialism tends to focus on the question of human existence — the feeling that there is no purpose, indeed nothing, at the core of existence. The term itself suggests one major theme: the stress on concrete individual existence and, consequently, on subjectivity, individual freedom, and choice. Sartre did not believe in God, so there was no place for the essence of humanity to be before human existence. For Existentialists like Sartre, the absence of God has a much larger significance than the metaphysics of creation. Without God there is no purpose, no value, and no meaning in the world. Existentialism posits that individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives, as opposed to deities or authorities creating it for them.†¦show more content†¦From the opening of The Outsider, Meursault reveals himself to be indifferent toward emotion and interaction with others. Instead of grieving at the news of his mother’s death, he remains cold, detached, and indifferent. When he receives the telegram, his primary concern is figuring out on which day his mother died. He has no emotional reaction at the death of his mother because he believes that his mother’s death is nothing exceptional but very much inevitable so it is meaningless for him to mourn for her death. Meursault confesses: â€Å"I probably loved mother quite a lot, but that didn’t mean anything. To a certain extent all normal people sometimes wished their loved ones were dead.† Throughout the whole book his mothers death had absolutely no meaning to him but when he is put in the same situation, facing death, he finally realizes what death must have been like for her and for the first time in the whole story thinks about her feelings: â€Å"I felt that I understood why at the end of her life she’d taken a ‘fiancà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ and why she’d pretended to start again†¦So close to death, mother must have felt liberated and ready to live her life again. No one, no one at all had any right to cry over her,† Existentialism emphasizes the freedom to choose and the choices one makes should be made without the assistance of another person or standard. Existentialist crisis is that as Sartre says, â€Å"The individual is