Meursault leads an unremarkable bachelor life in Algiers until he commits a random act of violence. His lack of emotion and failure to show remorse only increase his guilt in the eyes of the law, and challenge the fundamental values of society - a set of rules so binding that any person breaking them is condemned as an outsider.
For Meursault, this is an insult to his reason; for Camus it encapsulates the absurdity of life. In The Outsider (1942), his ...