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In his essay "Paris under the Occupation", Sartre wrote that the "correct" behaviour of the Germans had entrapped too many Parisians into complicity with the occupation, accepting what was unnatural as natural:

The Germans did not stride, revolver in hand, through the streets. They did not force civilians to make way for them on the pavement. They would offer seats to old ladies on the Metro. They showed great fondness for children and would pat them on the cheek. They had been told to behave correctly and being well-disciplined, they tried shyly and conscientiously to do so. Some of them even displayed a naive kindness which could find no practical expression.^[41]

Throughout the occupation, it was German policy to plunder France and food shortages were always a major problem as the majority of food from the French countryside went to Germany.^[44] Sartre wrote about the "languid existence" of the Parisians as people waited obsessively for the one weekly arrival of trucks bringing food from the countryside that the Germans allowed, writing about how: "Paris would grow peaked and yawn with hunger under the empty sky. Cut off from the rest of the world, fed only through the pity or some ulterior motive, the town led a purely abstract and symbolic life".^[44] Sartre himself lived on a diet of rabbits sent to him by a friend of de Beauvior living in Anjou.^[45] The rabbits were usually in an advanced state of decay full of maggots, and despite being hungry, Sartre once threw out one rabbit as uneatable, saying it had more maggots in it than meat.^[45] Sartre also remarked on conversations at the Café de Flore between intellectuals had changed, as the fear that one of them might be a mouche (informer) or a writer of the corbeau (anonymous denunciatory letters) meant that no-one really said what they meant anymore, imposing self-censorship.^[46] Sartre and his friends at the Café de Flore had reasons for their fear; by September 1940, the Abwehr alone had already recruited 32,000 French people to work as mouches while by 1942 the Paris Kommandantur was receiving an average of 1,500 letters/per day sent by the corbeaux.^[47]

Sartre wrote under the occupation Paris had become a "sham", resembling the empty wine bottles displayed in shop windows as all of the wine had been exported to Germany, looking like the old Paris, but hollowed out, as what had made Paris special was gone.^[48] Paris had almost no cars on the streets during the occupation as the oil went to Germany while the Germans imposed a nightly curfew, which led Sartre to remark that Paris "was peopled by the absent".^[49] Sartre also noted that people began to disappear under the occupation writing about how:

One day you might phone a friend and the phone would ring for a long time in an empty flat. You would go round and ring the doorbell, but no-one would answer it. If the concierge forced the door, you would find two chairs standing close together in the hall with the fag-ends of German cigarettes on the floor between their legs. If the wife or mother of the man who had vanished had been present at his arrest, she would tell you that he had been taken away by very polite Germans, like those who asked the way in the street. And when she went to ask what had happened to them at the offices in the Avenue Foch or the Rue des Saussaies she would be politely received and sent away with comforting words" [No. 11 Rue des Saussaies was the headquarters of the Gestapo in Paris].^[50]

Sartre wrote the feldgrau ("field grey") uniforms of the Wehrmacht and the green uniforms of the Order Police which had seemed so alien in 1940 had become accepted, as people were numbed into accepting what Sartre called "a pale, dull green, unobtrusive strain, which the eye almost expected to find among the dark clothes of the civilians".^[51] Under the occupation, the French often called the Germans les autres ("the others"), which inspired Sartre's aphorism in his play Huis clos ("No Exit") of "l'enfer, c'est les Autres" ("Hell is other people").^[52] Sartre intended the line "l'enfer, c'est les Autres" at least in part to be a dig at the German occupiers.^[52]
After August 1944 and the Liberation of Paris, he wrote Anti-Semite and Jew. In the book he tries to explain the etiology of "hate" by analyzing antisemitic hate. Sartre was a very active contributor to Combat, a newspaper created during the clandestine period by Albert Camus, a philosopher and author who held similar beliefs. Sartre and de Beauvoir remained friends with Camus until 1951, with the publication of Camus's The Rebel. Later, while Sartre was labeled by some authors as a resistant, the French philosopher and resistant Vladimir Jankelevitch criticized Sartre's lack of political commitment during the German occupation, and interpreted his further struggles for liberty as an attempt to redeem himself. According to Camus, Sartre was a writer who resisted; not a resister who wrote.
In 1945, after the war ended, Sartre moved to an apartment on the rue Bonaparte which was where he was to produce most of his subsequent work, and where he lived until 1962. It was from there that he helped establish a quarterly literary and political review, Les Temps modernes (Modern Times), in part to popularize his thought.^[53] He ceased teaching and devoted his time to writing and political activism. He would draw on his war experiences for his great trilogy of novels, Les Chemins de la Liberté (The Roads to Freedom) (1945–1949).
"If we want French civilization to survive, it must be fitted into the framework of a great European civilization. Why? I have said that civilization is the reflection on a shared situation. In Italy, in France, in Benelux, in Sweden, in Norway, in Germany, in Greece, in Austria, everywhere we find the same problems and the same dangers ... But this cultural polity has prospects only as elements of a policy which defends Europe's cultural autonomy vis-à-vis America and the Soviet Union, but also its political and economic autonomy, with the aim of making Europe a single force between the blocs, not a third bloc, but an autonomous force which will refuse to allow itself to be torn into shreds between American optimism and Russian scientificism.^[56]""
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausea_(novel)#References
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Part 1[edit]

Meursault learns of the death of his mother, who has been living in a retirement home. At her funeral, he expresses none of the expected emotions of grief.^[4] When asked if he wishes to view the body he declines and, instead, smokes and drinks coffee in front of the coffin. Rather than expressing his feelings, he comments to the reader only about the aged attendees at the funeral.

Meursault later encounters Marie, a former employee of his firm. The two become re-acquainted, go swimming, watch a comedy film, and begin to have a sexual relationship a day after his mother's funeral. In the next few days, Meursault helps his friend and neighbor, Raymond Sintès, take revenge on a Moorish girlfriend suspected of infidelity. For Raymond, Meursault agrees to write a letter to his girlfriend, with the sole purpose of inviting her over so that Raymond can have sex with her but spit in her face at the last minute as emotional revenge. Meursault sees no reason not to help him, and it pleases Raymond. He does not express concern that Raymond's girlfriend is going to be emotionally hurt, as he believes Raymond's story that she has been unfaithful. While listening to Raymond, he is both somewhat drunk and characteristically unfazed by any feelings of empathy. In general, he considers other people either interesting or annoying, or feels nothing for them at all.
The letter works: the girlfriend returns on a Sunday morning, but the situation escalates when she slaps Raymond after he tries to kick her out, and he beats her. Raymond asks Meursault to testify in court that the girlfriend has been unfaithful. Meursault agrees and the two go out to a café. On their return they encounter Salamano, his curmudgeonly old neighbour who has lost his abused and disease-riddled dog, who is maintaining his usual spiteful and uncaring attitude for the dog. Later that evening and the next, Salamano goes to Meursault for comfort - he explains that he had adopted the dog shortly after his wife's death as a companion. Salamano mentions that the neighbours 'said nasty things' about him after sending his mother to a retirement home. Meursault is surprised to learn about the negative impression of his actions. Later, he is taken to court where Meursault, who witnessed the event while returning to his apartment with Marie, testifies that she had been unfaithful, and Raymond is let off with a warning. After this, the girlfriend's brother and several Arab friends begin trailing Raymond. Raymond invites Meursault and Marie to a friend's beach house for the weekend. There they encounter the spurned girlfriend's brother and an Arab friend; these two confront Raymond and wound him with a knife during an altercation. Later, Meursault walks back along the beach alone, now armed with a revolver which he took from Raymond to prevent him from acting rashly. Meursault encounters the brother of Raymond's Arab girlfriend. Disoriented and on the edge of heatstroke, Meursault shoots when the Arab flashes his knife at him. It is a fatal shot, but Meursault shoots the man four more times after a pause. He does not divulge to the reader any specific reason for his crime or what he feels, other than being bothered by the heat and intensely bright sunlight.

Part 2[edit]

Meursault is now incarcerated, and explains his arrest, time in prison, and upcoming trial. His general detachment makes living in prison tolerable, especially after he gets used to the idea of being restricted and unable to have sex with Marie. He passes the time sleeping, or mentally listing the objects he owned in his apartment. At the trial, the prosecuting attorney portrays Meursault's quietness and passivity as demonstrating guilt and a lack of remorse. The prosecutor tells the jury more about Meursault's inability or unwillingness to cry at his mother's funeral and the murder. He pushes Meursault to tell the truth, but the man resists. Later, on his own, Meursault tells the reader that he simply was never able to feel any remorse or personal emotions for any of his actions in life. The dramatic prosecutor denounces Meursault, claiming that he must be a soulless monster, incapable of remorse, and thus deserves to die for his crime. Although Meursault's attorney defends him and later tells Meursault that he expects the sentence to be light, Meursault is alarmed when the judge informs him of the final decision: that he will be publicly guillotined.

In prison, Meursault awaits the results of his appeal. While waiting to learn his fate, either his successful appeal or execution of his death sentence, Meursault meets with a chaplain, but rejects his proffered opportunity of turning to God. Meursault says that God is a waste of his time. Although the chaplain persists in trying to lead Meursault from his atheism (or, perhaps more precisely, his apatheism), Meursault finally accosts him in a rage. He has an outburst about his frustrations and the absurdity of the human condition, and his personal anguish without respite at the meaninglessness of his freedom, existence and responsibility. He expresses anger about others, saying that they have no right to judge him for his actions or for who he is, that no one has the right to judge another. It is hinted that the priest believed Meursault’s appeal would be granted, but it is unclear if he is still of this opinion after the ordeal. Meursault however has grasped the universe's indifference towards humankind, and prepares for his execution. At night in his cell, he finds a final happiness in his indifference towards the world and the lack of meaning he sees in everyone and everything. His final assertion is that a large, hateful crowd at his execution will end his loneliness and bring everything to a consummate end.^[5]

Critical analysis[edit]

In his 1956 analysis of the novel, Carl Viggiani wrote:

On the surface, L'Etranger gives the appearance of being an extremely simple though carefully planned and written book. In reality, it is a dense and rich creation, full of undiscovered meanings and formal qualities. It would take a book at least the length of the novel to make a complete analysis of meaning and form and the correspondences of meaning and form, in L'Etranger.^[6] ^ Viggiani, Carl A (December 1956). "Camus' L'Etranger". PMLA. 71 (5): 865–887. JSTOR 746766.

Victor Brombert has analysed L'Etranger and Sartre's "Explication de L'Etranger" in the philosophical context of the Absurd.^[7] Louis Hudon has dismissed characterisation of L'Etranger as an existentialist novel in his 1960 analysis.^[8] The 1963 study by Ignace Feuerlicht begins with an examination of the themes of alienation, in the sense of Meursault being a 'stranger' in his society.^[9] In his 1970 analysis, Leo Bersani commented that L'Etranger is "mediocre" in its attempt to be a "'profound' novel", but describes the novel as an "impressive if flawed exercise in a kind of writing promoted by the New Novelists of the 1950s".^[10] Paul P. Somers Jr has compared Camus' L'Etranger and Sartre's Nausea, in light of Sartre's essay on Camus' novel.^[11] Sergei Hackel has explored parallels between L'Etranger and Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.^[12] ^ Feuerlicht, Ignace (December 1963). "Camus's L'Etranger Reconsidered". PMLA. 78 (5): 606–621. JSTOR 460737.

Bersani, Leo (Spring 1970). "The Stranger's Secrets". NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction. 3 (3): 212–224. JSTOR 1344914.

Somers Jr, Paul P (April 1969). "Camus Si, Sartre No". The French Review. 42 (5): 693–700. JSTOR 1344914.

Terry Otten has studied in detail the relationship between Meursault and his mother.^[13] Gerald Morreale examines Meursault's killing of the Arab and the question of whether Meursault's action is an act of murder.^[14] Ernest Simon has examined the nature of Meursault's trial in L'Etranger, with respect to earlier analysis by Richard Weisberg and Richard A. Posner.^[15] René Girard has critiqued the relative nature of 'indifference' in the character of Meursault in relation to his surrounding society.^[16]

Kamel Daoud has written a novel The Meursault Investigation (2013/2014), first published in Algeria in 2013, and then republished in France to critical acclaim. This postcolonialist response to The Stranger counters Camus' version, elements from the perspective of the brother of the unnamed Arab victim (naming him and presenting him as a real person who was mourned) and other protagonists. Daoud explores their subsequent lives following the withdrawal of French authorities and most pied-noirs from Algeria after the conclusion of the Algerian War of Independence in 1962.

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Sisyphus

Greek mythology

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Sisyphus, in Greek mythology, the cunning king of Corinth who was punished in Hades by having repeatedly to roll a huge stone up a hill only to have it roll down again as soon as he had brought it to the summit. This fate is related in Homer’s Odyssey, Book XI. In Homer’s Iliad, Book VI, Sisyphus, living at Ephyre (later Corinth), was the son of Aeolus (eponymous ancestor of the Aeolians) and the father of Glaucus. In post-Homeric times he was called the father of Odysseus through his seduction of Anticleia; cunning obviously provided the link between them. Sisyphus was the reputed founder of the Isthmian Games. Later legend related that when Death came to fetch him, Sisyphus chained him up so that no one died until Ares came to aid Death, and Sisyphus had to submit. In the meantime, Sisyphus had told his wife, Merope, not to perform the usual sacrifices and to leave his body unburied. Thus, when he reached the underworld he was permitted to return to punish her for the omission. Once back at home, he continued to live to a ripe old age before dying a second time.
Sisyphus was, in fact, like Autolycus and Prometheus, a widely popular figure of folklore—the trickster, or master thief. Clearly, he is everlastingly punished in Hades as the penalty for cheating Death; but why he is set to roll a great stone incessantly is a puzzle to which no convincing answer has yet been given. It appears to belong with other Greek imaginings of the world of the dead as the scene of fruitless labours.
The figure of Sisyphus inspired an existentialist classic, Albert Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus: Essay on the Absurd (1942).