Albert Camus' existential novel The Stranger ends with the protagonist Meursault being found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to death. In part, Camus honors the discovery Meursault makes about himself and his absurd place in the universe, in the face of this death sentence for a crime which was far from premeditated. In fact, Meursault does not remember much about the act of murder itself, and certainly has no idea why he did it. Aside from the philosophical considerations, the book shows how the justice system which condemns Meursault is not just at all. In fact, Meursault is given little or no legal defense from his blatantly incompetent lawyer. Camus demonstrates the injustices of the legal system (and, perhaps, of life itself, or at least, of society as a whole?), through the use of irony and character.
The Stranger is about the isolation of the individual from the community and from human relationships. Meursault has lived his life in ignorance and bewilderment, a state which leads him to commit an apparently meaningless murder, a murder with little motivation and no obvious purpose. What Meursault finally learns and accepts is that he is responsible for his actions and that he is prepared for the execution which awaits him. However, this acceptance and the conclusion of the condemned man can hardly be taken as a declaration that human community and meaningful relationship are likely in such an existentialist world:
For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate (Camus 1989, 123).
If there is any "justice" in such a conclusion to the book and to the life or Meursault, it is only in the most ironic sense. Justice in the conventional sense is absent from the book, from the life of Meursault, from the circumstances which lead him to kill, from the murder itself certainly (th...