The Stranger - Albert Camus

"I'd passed my life in a certain way, and I might have passed it in a different way, if I'd felt like it. I'd acted thus, and I hadn't acted otherwise; I hadn't done x, whereas I had done y or z. And what did that mean? That, all the time, I'd been waiting for this present moment, for that dawn, tomorrow's or another day's, which was to justify me. Nothing, nothing had the least importance and I knew quite well why" (Camus 74-75).

The Stranger follows the account of Meursault, who proves to hold little value for life as the story's events unfold. Between caring little about the passing of his mother and murdering a man for no reason, everything Meursault does reflects his bitter indifference. It is at this point in the novel, as Meursault is faced with his mortality, that the book's underlying nihilistic themes truly present themselves.

Nihilism is the belief in nothing. It holds that life has no intrinsic value or purpose. We are godless, insignificant, and our coming into existence was just as pointless as our inevitable disappearance will be.

Meursault exhibits this nihilist outlook throughout the book. The choice that he makes in murdering the Arab who had cut his friend Raymond leads him to his demise. When confronted by a chaplain in prison, he begins to reflect the impact of this decision. Consistent with nihilist thinking, he reasons that his impending doom is no different from the death we are all destined to face. He followed the path that he did, and the end was no different from the end he would have met if he had followed any other path.

This quote is one of the most important in the novel because it lays out the basis of Meursault's thinking. He believes that no one is any more important than anyone else because no one is important. No matter what path we take, we will not escape the nothingness of death.

The nihilist theme of life's intrinsic insignificance is also present in the above picture of a boot about to crush a flower. The flower is an immensely complex organism which has spent its entire life growing to the point at which it is pictured, but it is also about to be erased from existence, destroyed without anyone's knowledge or consent, regardless of all its success in growing to a fully flowered plant. However, the foot that is about to crush the flower is in no way a more significant entity, for eventually it will become equally as dead and meaningless as the flower it is crushing.