Question One: Gide's "Les Caves du Vatican"
Andre Gide intended to demoralize his readers with his 1914 work "Les Caves du Vatican" (as if in that terrible year people needed any further impetus to feel despair). In attempting to disconcert and to demoralize his readers he chose two characters, Lafcadio and Julius de Baraglioul, who in the beginning are at least seemingly fundamentally different from each other - although both of them are adrift in modern society. De Baraglioul is defined by his having written enough bad books to be welcomed by the French Academy: He is a man who does not care that there is no intrinsic value in what he does so long as his actions allow him to arrive where he wants to be. Lafcadio also argues that there is no real sense in much of what we do - so therefore rather than following the rules as De Baraglioul has he chooses to act in gratuitously meaningless ways.
As the action progresses throughout the novella, De Baraglioul becomes increasingly attracted to Lafcadio's insistence of admitting to and even reveling in the meaningless of human life - until the moment when Lafcadio murders Amedee. This contact with the logical conclusion of Lafcadio's philosophy both terrifies and revolts De Baraglioul, who mentally flees to the comfort that he had originally found in his own perception of the universe as trivial but at least essentially ordered in a Cartesian way.
Albert Camus's The Stranger is the story of an exile ended. Through the course of the book, Meursault, who serves as both the narrator and the protagonist of the story, travels from disengagement with life - both his own personal story and any sense that human life can even be meaningful - to a profound appreciation of the fact that life is in and of itself good. His relationship with Marie mirrors, and in many ways influences) this psychological and spiritual journey of his.
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