Coming to Terms with the Need for Meaning: How an Existential Demand Awakens in Camus’s L’Étranger

Abstract Many critics have argued that Meursault, the protagonist of Albert Camus’s L’Étranger , is profoundly aware that life is absurd. In this paper, I argue that this is partially correct: although Meursault believes that life lacks meaning (the existential lack), he has also failed to acknowledge the need for meaning (the existential demand). Since the Camusian account of the absurd involves both an existential demand and an existential lack, Meursault initially fails to completely recognize the absurdity of life. I analyze his initial failure to acknowledge the existential demand, its subsequent coming into conscious awareness in the second half of the novella, how it could have been out of awareness in the first place, and how the possibility of proactively pursuing a meaningful life is forlorn once he has become aware of the existential demand, which explains his sense of guilt at the end of the novella. This analysis offers crucial insight into both the phenomenology of the absurd and the normative implications that follow from the absurdity of life. The story, in short, implores us to embrace the existential demand – not only for the sake of integrity, but also to guide us towards a more meaningful life.