In The Stranger, Albert Camus introduces us to a puzzling character who seems to be oddly (and almost inhumanely) indifferent to the world around him. This character, Meursault, is a frog. Or rather, he should’ve been a frog.

One of the most important traits that humans possess which separates us from other life forms is the ability to look to the future. We can hope, we can dream, and we can (occasionally) consider the future consequences of our actions. Humans will spend their entire lives trying to bring new innovations and ideas just for the betterment of the lives of the humans that come after. However, due to the terrifying uncertainty that one finds when they look into the deep dark unknown of the future, our obsession with tomorrow often causes us to spiral into a bizarre crisis of existence. Thus, our ability to look forward in time is both a blessing and a curse. It is what makes us both the greatest and most unreasonably anxious species on earth. It is human nature to be scared of the future, and thus it is just as natural to question and attempt to give reason to the unknown.

Love, family, friends, children, competition, achievement, money, these are all constructs that humans employ to attempt to give our lives meaning. Do these things actually have meaning? No, not really. However that doesn’t mean there is no purpose in them. Wars have killed billions of people, empires have risen and fallen, we’ve made buildings that touch the clouds, we’ve been to space, is none of that real? The concepts those things were built on might be made-up, but that doesn’t make the resulting innovation and progress any less real.

Existentialists believe that the only way to live an “authentic” life is to accept that the concepts which we use to justify our existence are pointless and that living under them is living under illusion. It’s hard to tell if Camus himself supports an existentialist point of view, but assuming he does, and assuming that Meursault is an existentialist character, I believe from the deepest part of my heart that Meursault (and perhaps Camus as well) would’ve been much better off had they been born as frogs.

Frogs, like most other animals, live completely in the moment. Just like Meursault, they go about their day, spending most of their time sitting and blinking as simple thoughts drift around in their teeny tiny frog brains. If you pick a frog up with your fingers pressed on it’s belly and back, and begin to squeeze, the frog will only try to wiggle out once it can no longer breathe. The implications of what might happen if it remains under the increasing pressure doesn’t matter until it becomes clear that death is imminent. It doesn’t fear death, because it can’t imagine death. It can’t imagine the future, it can’t think of the possible consequences of staying locked between two giant fingers pressing on either side of it’s body until those fingers are nearly touching.

Frogs never change their expressions, nothing in the world aside from food, sex, and death will ever cause them to take motivated action. They are, in the simplest way possible, alive. But they are not living.

Meursault upsets me, as I can’t imagine that anyone would ever consider his an authentic life, as if we should all follow his example. Meursault achieves nothing in The Stranger, his lack of imagination and fear of the future is borderline inhuman. To regret the past, to overlook and undervalue the present, to fear and imagine the future, nothing is more human. People like Meursault may see it as a fault, it may annoy him, but to lack these feelings on the past, present, and future is to me the most inhuman trait one could possibly have.

Existentialists may believe that they are above others, that they have somehow unlocked the proper way to live, but at the end of the day they too are just trying to cope and comprehend the incomprehensible. Frogs are the true existentialists, as they truly could not care less about why they’re alive or where they’ll be a week from now. They just go around sitting in mossy ponds and dirty gutter puddles with their black beady eyes looking for the next way to have babies or eat the nearest thing that can fit in their mouths, whichever comes first.

That sounds like a fitting life for Meursault, I think he’d find himself much happier in a society where he can exist without questioning, one where nothing more than remaining alive is expected of him, and one where the only purpose he needed to acknowledge was to live and die (probably in the mouth of a bigger, more bumpy frog).

The story of the Czechoslovakian man on pages 79 and 80 is seemingly random. It is a small, insignificant break in Meursault’s thoughts from prison. It just doesn’t look like it fits within the story. The first time I read it, my eyes glazed over as a skimmed the paragraphs, whether from boredom or misunderstanding, I don’t know.

However, after rereading, I began to realize that the story of the Czech man is arguably the most important 2 pages of the entire novel, because it is parallel to Meursault’s own story.

The Czechoslovakian man’s trajectory of his life almost identically mirrors that of Meursault’s. Both characters start out with almost everything they could have in life. The Czech man gets riches because he moved away, and also builds a family. Meursault has a steady job, an apartment, and he has his time with Marie.

Then, in absurd events, both characters lose everything. The Czech man dies because he tried to trick his mother and sister, so they killed him. Meursault shoots the Arab and is arrested and imprisoned for murder.

In its essence, the story of the Czech man is a much more dramatized and obvious version of Meursault’s own story, and he recognizes this. Meursault says the story is both highly unlikely, but that he can also see how it makes perfect sense. He sees the story in his own life, how both his life and the story went from ups to extreme downs in an instant.

Additionally, Meursault mentions that he thinks the man got what he deserved because he gambled with the life that he had and ended up losing it. This is one of the reasons why Meursault isn’t distraught in prison and can accept the fact that he is being punished. He knows that he gambled with his life and lost, just like the Czech man.

He doesn’t feel remorse for what he did, but he is able to understand that he deserves what punishment he gets because he took that risk. His recognition of this allows him to find peaceful moments in prison, most often in his own thoughts. This allows him to begin to live his life to the fullest, his prison life, as he calls it.

If he spent his time wishing he weren’t in prison, he would be further wasting the life that he still had. However, he thinks about Maman’s philosophy that one can adapt to any environment they are in, and coupled with the story of the Czech man’s gamble on life, Meursault adopts a mentality that allows him to be stable and almost happy in prison.

His life took an absurd turn because he gambled with it (shot the Arab), and therefore he is living the rest of his life in prison to the fullest extent by recognizing that this is the life he is living now, and is unable to change it.

At the end of the book, it is assumed that Meursault is guillotined, which lends itself to the last comparison between the Czech man. They both die. Really, this is the least absurd part, because all lives end in death. Camus is showing the reader that through the mirroring of the story of the Czechoslovakian and Meursault. That in the end, one lives an absurd life, and then they die, both in “unusual” ways, but their fates are the same.

The story of The Stranger and the mini story of the Czech man show that life, at its core, most pure self, is unpredictable and absurd. And that is okay. That is how it should be. It is up to you to live your life the way you want, because it is absurd, and also in opposition to that absurdity. If you make a mistake, pick yourself up and dust yourself off. Adapt. That is what you are supposed to do with life, keep living it.

I think this lends itself to gratitude. Appreciating what you have in the moment, and appreciating where you are, whether or not you want to be there. Because at the end of the day, this is your life, and all you can do is accept it. There will always be parts of it that are absurd and out of your control.

In The Stranger, although Meursault’s mother never appears directly in the novel, her death serves as a constant presence that shapes the novel’s events and meaning. Through Meursault’s detached response to her passing and society’s harsh judgment of it, Camus uses Maman to expose the absurdity of social expectations and to highlight the novel’s central tension between individual authenticity and societal conformity.

Throughout the novel, Meursault shows an incapacity to express human emotion, often appearing detached and passive about his life. A prime example of this is the opening line in Chapter 1, where Meursault says, “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know” (3). Immediately, the reader is hit with his emotional detachment as Meursault doesn’t express any grief or sadness over her death. It also shows a test of society and moral expectations: how will he react to the death of his mother, an event that would make most people grief-stricken?

But Meursault doesn’t respond in the way society expects him to, as his indifference continues and can clearly be seen at Maman’s funeral and vigil: Meursault does not cry or want to see his mother’s body, and instead smokes a cigarette and takes a nap. Then, after the vigil is done, he returns to work completely normal and ready to continue on in his life. For Meursault, he found it hard to feel and express human emotions, and as a result, he doesn’t cry at Maman’s funeral, something that would be expected by society to happen. This robotic-like behavior later becomes evidence against him, showing how society judges based on social norms rather than personal truth.

Moreover, society fixates on finding an explanation for Meursault’s actions, only focusing on his response to Maman’s death, rather than the actual murder. During the trial, the prosecutor emphasizes Meursault’s lack of reaction to Maman’s passing, pointing out that he didn’t cry, and the day after, he went to see a comedy with Marie. They only briefly go over the timeline leading up to the murder before fixating on Maman’s death. The prosecutor even says, “Gentlemen of the jury, the day after his mother’s death, this man was out swimming, starting up a dubious liaison, and going to the movies, a comedy, for laughs. I have nothing further to say” (94).  The jury desperately wants to find an explanation behind Meursault’s actions other than his blaming the sun. As a result, Maman’s death becomes central to his conviction, not because of the murder, but because he violates emotional conventions, revealing the absurd priorities of human justice. They point their fingers at Maman’s death as an explanation for why Meursault killed a man.

Through Meursault’s reflection on his mother’s death, he can accept that life has no inherent meaning, conveying Camus’s theme on life. In his final hours, Meursault has a lot of time to think and mull over his life. He realizes why Maman took on a fiancé so late in her life, as she accepted that life has no higher purpose and the universe doesn’t care about the comings and goings of humans; therefore, you should live freely, as every individual dies one day. He says that she “must have felt free then and ready to live it all again” (122). This final recognition of his mother’s acceptance of life’s absurdity mirrors his own, linking her symbolic role to the novel’s existential awakening: When people accept the inevitability of death and the indifference of the universe, they free themselves from the illusion that life must have a higher purpose or lasting meaning. This acceptance allows them to live more honestly in the present, unburdened from false hopes or fears about the future. In recognizing life’s lack of inherent meaning, individuals can find peace and fulfillment in simply experiencing existence as it is.