Stranger: #5

“My lawyer raised his arms and pleaded guilty, but with an explanation. The prosecutor waved his hands and proclaimed my guilt, but without an explanation” (Camus 98).

            In the usual courtroom scene, the truth prevails. The justice system is always successful and the correct person is always punished. Therefore, the average person can take comfort in the fact that we live in a world that is just and fair. However, in the courtroom scene in The Stranger, Albert Camus undermines this idea of justice. He believes that it is irrational and silly, just as he believes in the absurdist philosophy. The absurdist philosophy states that the efforts of humanity to find inherent meaning will ultimately fail and are absurd. This philosophy is clearly portrayed in the courtroom scene. Mersault has no rational explanation for killing the Arab. Although he speaks up and tells he judge that he never intended on killing him, no one regards hiscomment. The prosecutor continues to construct a meaning within the murder when there is no inherent meaning at all. Because they cannot just accept the fact that Mersault killed a man with no intentions, the authorities continue to construct their own explanation of the murder. This explanation is based off of false assumptions, so the story becomes so twisted that it points to Mersault committing the murder premeditated. If the courts were not focused on always finding an answer to the “why” question and they just accepted confessions as they were, they would not waste as much time and actually try the defendant fairly.