Meursault, central character of L'Étranger (The Stranger), 1942, illustrates much of this essay: man as the nauseated victim of the absurd orthodoxy of habit, later - when the young killer faces execution - tempted by despair, hope, and salvation. The essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), 1942, expounds Camus's notion of the absurd and of its acceptance with "the total absence of hope, which has nothing to do with despair, a continual refusal, which must not be confused with renouncement - and a conscious dissatisfaction". His love for the theatre may be traced back to his membership in L'Equipe, an Algerian theatre group, whose "collective creation" Révolte dans les Asturies (1934) was banned for political reasons. He also adapted plays by Calderon, Lope de Vega, Dino Buzzati, and Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun. But his journalistic activities had been chiefly a response to the demands of the time in 1947 Camus retired from political journalism and, besides writing his fiction and essays, was very active in the theatre as producer and playwright (e.g., Caligula, 1944). The man and the times met: Camus joined the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation was a columnist for the newspaper Combat. Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest in philosophy (only chance prevented him from pursuing a university career in that field), he came to France at the age of twenty-five. His origin in Algeria and his experiences there in the thirties were dominating influences in his thought and work.
The same burning sun that so oppresses him during the funeral walk will once again blind the calm, reserved Meursault as he walks along a deserted beach a few days later-leading him to commit an irreparable act. Later, while waiting for the wake to begin, the harsh electric lights in the room make him extremely uncomfortable, so he gratefully accepts the coffee the caretaker offers him and smokes a cigarette. The day his mother dies, Meursault notices that it is very hot on the bus that is taking him from Algiers to the retirement home where his mother lived so hot that he falls asleep.
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