“The Stranger” by Nobel prize novelist Albert Camus: Why did Camus believe in the philosophy of “Absurdism”?

Albert Camus believed  in “Absurdism” (see Wikipedia).

His novel, The Stranger, with its autobiographical absurdities, suggests how he came to that philosophy.

The novel comes to a surprisingly abrupt end when the first-person narrator and protagonist, Monsieur Meursault, who has been convicted of murder, is in jail awaiting execution. He does not explain how, if he will be executed, he is here to tell his tale, or, if he will escape execution, why he does not know it. Since he has not kept a diary or journal or told his story to anyone, the ending is an unexplained, autobiographical absurdity.

Back at the beginning of the novel, Meursault had attended his mother’s funeral. He had guessed that she had been in her sixties. There are conceivable circumstances in which a son would not know his mother’s age, but he does not mention any. He treats his memory gap for her age as ordinary, but it is not. It is another example of his absurd, unexplained, autobiographical ignorance.

In the middle of the novel, Mersault tells how he committed murder. But he does not remember why he sought out his victim, shot him, and then shot the corpse four more times. The memory gaps about this murder are yet another example of absurd autobiographical ignorance.

What kind of person has memory gaps that cannot be explained by ordinary forgetfulness?  It is a cardinal symptom of multiple personality. Since the person’s memories are divided among various personalities, none of the personalities has the whole story.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay on this novel says, “The stranger is, finally, myself in relation to myself… “The stranger, who, at certain moments, confronts us in a mirror” (quoted from “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus’s essay on his novel) https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Stranger_Albert_Camus/YXDlsha-vcIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+stranger+who,+at+certain+moments,+confronts+us+in+a+mirror&pg=PA6&printsec=frontcover Also see my past post on the symptoms of multiple personality in Sartre’s novel, Nausea. And note that some people with multiple personality do, indeed, see strangers (alternate personalities) in the mirror.

1. “The Stranger” [1942] by Albert Camus. Translated from the French by Matthew Ward. New York, Vintage International/Random House, 1989.