Freedom and death in The Stranger (The Outsider)In The Stranger (The Outsider), as in all of Camus' works, Camus' opinions on freedom and death – each dependent on the other – are the main themes. For Camus, freedom is born in the awareness of one's life, the life of every moment, an intense and glorious life that does not need redemption, regrets, tears. Death is unjustifiable, absurd; it is nothing other than a reintegration into the cosmos for a "free" man. Until a person reaches this awareness, life, like death, is absurd, and indeed, in general, life remains absurd, although the life of each individual can be valuable and significant for him. In a sense, The Stranger is a parable of Camus' philosophy, with the emphasis on what is necessary for freedom. Meursault, the hero of The Stranger, is not a person one would encounter in reality in this regard; Meursault does not achieve the awakening of conscience, so essential to freedom and living Camus' philosophy until the end of the book, yet he has lived his entire life according to the morality of Camus' philosophy. Its equivalent in Christian philosophy would be an irreligious person whose homeland has never encountered Christianity and who, after having a missionary explain it to him, realizes that he has never sinned. What is the morality, the qualities necessary for freedom, that Meursault manifested? First of all, the dominant trait of his character is the passion for absolute truth. While in Meursault this takes the form of a truth of being and feeling, it is still the truth necessary to conquer oneself or the world. This passion is so deep that it persists even when denying it could save his life. The second, and not unrelated to the first, is Meursault's acceptance of nature for what it is and nothing more, his rejection of the supernatural, including any god. In reality, God's "rejection" is not accurate until later, when he is challenged to accept the concept; Meursault simply never considered God and religion worthy of prosecution. The natural makes sense; the supernatural is not. It follows that for Meursault too, death is what it naturally is; the end of life, cessation and that's all. Third, and logically consequent, Meursault lives entirely in the present. The past is the past and dwelling on it in any mood is simply a waste of the present. As for the future, the ultimate future is death; sacrificing the present to the future is equivalent to sacrificing life to death.