In The Stranger by Albert Camus, Camus uses his main character Meursault to portray the philosophy of existentialism. He uses the chaplain as a foil to Meursault to represent someone who is not living the way he should. Camus starts by showing Meursault as amoral and "psychologically detached" and at the end shows him coming to a "moral reconciliation" about his life and his deeds. Because of this transformation, a happy ending is given to the story even though Meursault is to be sentenced to death.
             At the beginning of the book, Meursault is simply living; he is unattached from the world around him and lives amorally. When his mother passes away, Camus uses this to display Meursault as unattached he thinks, "Mother died today. Or, maybe yesterday; I can't be sure." The reader starts to question if he cares or not. A moral change in Meursault is apparent at the end of the book as he waits to be executed. Meursault thinks, "For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration." He wants others to learn from his mistake and to live their lives to the fullest because once you die there is nothing. A happy ending is achieved because of his moral transformation.
             To begin with, Meursault doesn't live his life to its fullest advantage; he lazily sits around not doing much. The Sunday after his mother's death, he is in his apartment. He talks of sleeping, eating, smoking, and watching the people walk the streets below but is too lazy to go down and join them. Then he talks about this being a "typical Sunday afternoon" even though his mother has just died. Camus uses this to show that Meursault doesn't live his life fully and doesn't appreciate what he has. It is shown that he is amoral when Raymond, a friend in his apartment complex, asks him to help write a letter to a girl to...