Abstract:
The loss of a life for natural causes has always been, always is and always will be something tragic for human beings, even if it was foreseen. It is all the more tragic when the loss of human life is caused by violent circumstances such as murder or an accident, as in the case of the untimely death of Albert Camus in a car accident. The worst, however, is when a miscarriage of justice in court, due to an error on the part of the judge, results in the loss of a valuable life by the death penalty. This value must be assessed in existential terms, in terms of the human being contextualized in a life worth living despite its absurdity, as described by Camus. It must be realized that this brutal death is imposed by a few words pronounced by a fallible judge, imposing the death penalty on another fallible human being, and that the sentence is then carried out by another fallible human being – all of whom are fundamentally subject to human imperfection and who regularly make mistakes in life. By emphasizing the fallibility of the human being in various ways in his literary works, Camus convincingly demonstrated that, in our already absurd existence, the death penalty is the ultimate scandal, making this punishment truly exponentially absurd – the absurdity of absurdity.
How the author demonstrated that fallibility, the eternal imperfection of human beings, is the main reason why the death penalty exceeds absurdity. Using L'Étranger as a starting point, a novel in which the death penalty is mentioned only at trial, on death row, and in the very last part of the novel, and which is strategically supported by other works by Camus, this essay explores how Camus may have used his characters to subtly illustrate the relationship between the everyday imperfections of human beings and the possible death penalty. The essential principle is that there is a precise operational link between the essence and structure of everyday conflicts and the structure of a trial. Parallels are drawn between conflict and trial, particularly with regard to the fallible human beings participating in both, in various judicial capacities, confirming Camus' conviction that the death penalty is the absurdity of absurdity.
