Jurisprudence of criminal punishment: A critical study of Albert Camus’ the outsider

Abstract

Albert Camus’s The Outsider led the contemporary literature in many respects. Tormented by the horrified experiences of World Wars along with fears of holocaust of Hitler’s Nazi regime made the intellectuals including Albert Camus to dig at the rationality of human life and its redemption. The major protagonist of The Outsider, Meursault; not a self-centred but a self-absorbed person, is arrested for his irrational act of killing an Arab. The narrative mainly dealt with his injudicious trial; the trial that focuses on his personality, individuality and his set of value, being different. The writer, through the case of Meursault, highlights the working of system of Justice and its applicability in a rather apt manner. Very forcefully, Camus, strikes the synthesis of truth on the basis of unrelated facts. The present paper is designed to find out the philosophy of jurisprudence of criminal punishment in the novel The Outsider written by French - Algerian philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist and political activist Albert Camus.