The Futility of Meaning in Albert Camus’ The Stranger and the Myth of Sisyphus and Joel and Ethan Coen’s Film Noir The Man who wasn’t There
The Myth and the Man
There is no meaning in life; there are only bad decisions.
Albert Camus’ philosophy of absurdism in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” and The Stranger is an ironic contrast to the Coen brothers’ The Man who wasn’t there, a noir narrative that chronicles the unextraordinary life of Ed Crane, a barber, who hopelessly and tragically seeks to find meaning in a universe that is as Camus puts it—meaningless. The downward spiral of Ed Crane’s life begins with blackmail and later snowballs into unexpected crime-related events. He exemplifies the failure of Camus’ absurd hero through the Coen brothers’ irrational and often tongue-and-cheek exploration of Ed Crane’s drive to find validation and purpose amid an unfulfilled life and a life without meaning. In essence, Ed Crane is a foil to Mersault who is emblematic of Sisyphus, the absurd hero, and understands that the universe is indifferent and the tragedy that befalls man becomes real only if man is conscious of it. Thus, there are two selves in which Ed Crane fails to reconcile—the first is the monotonous, unexciting, life as a barber and the second is the man with a soul and purpose. Man expects purpose and meaning from a universe that fails to manifest in the irrational expectations of life—which is reminiscent to Camus’ Absurd manifesto. Unlike Mersault, Ed Crane’s refusal to see the meaninglessness of life becomes a crime itself, both literally and figuratively. In consequence, his life spirals into a chain of ironic absurdities and then culminates into a conscious tragedy in which Ed Crane later fails prey. He is far from the Sisyphus myth and its literary embodiment, Mersault, who represents the quintessential absurd hero who triumphs against a world that has no meaning. Ed Crane’s real crime is the way he chooses to live absurd life. He is obsessed with the concept of human destiny, which is both illogical and nonexistent. According to critic Hughes, “the heart of the Absurd lay what Camus saw as the confrontation between the human desire for a rational account of the world and a world that resisted any such explanation” (5). Thus, it is irrational for man to search for his calling, which becomes the crux of Ed Crane’s destruction.
To further understand Ed Crane’s existential quandary is to juxtapose it with Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus and its relationship to the absurd philosophy that is also illustrated in Mersault’s character in The Stranger. Camus’ assertion on the absurd works alongside the prototypal Greek myth of the Sisyphus, a condemned mortal who has betrayed the Gods by stealing their secrets. His punishment includes repeatedly carrying a rock on a hill only to catch it once it descends. But Sisyphus does not succumb to the tragedy—nor does he allow himself to be conscious of it. Instead, he becomes “superior to his fate” and becomes “stronger than his rock” (Camus, Sisyphus 121). His refusal to succumb and acknowledge his own tragedy makes him the absurd hero. The literal (i.e., the punishment itself) becomes existentially transcendent for Sisyphus each time he retrieves the rock; it is the moment of reflection when he waits for the boulder or rock to return in which he does not decry the discomfort of his punishment. Instead, he triumphs in his feelings of happiness. Camus asserts “Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent” (Camus, Sisyphus 121). From this, Camus concludes “there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn” (Camus, Sisyphus 121). Unless man yields to despair, man will create his own demise.
Furthermore, Camus’ Mersault is the personification of Sisyphus, the absurd hero. He “unconsciously accepts the premise on which The Myth of Sisyphus: is based” (Thody 2). Therefore, for Meursault, “Family, affection, love, friendship, ambition, none of these has any meaning for him. Only the sensation of being alive either remains or seems to matter” (Thody 3). He is indifferent to secular values that do not have any bearing on Mersault’s life. As the novel begins with the death of his mother, he is unphased by the loss and life continues as usual. He also declares, “for now, it’s almost as if Maman weren’t dead” (Camus, The Stranger 3). The reactionless response to the death of his mother becomes emblematic of his emotional disconnection with individuals who are supposed to be important in his life. During his mother’s vigil, it was more like a Kafkaesque experience. He is absent emotionally. There were no feelings of grief or tears. He refuses to let the caretaker open the casket because it will not change anything. He decides to smoke a cigarette and drink coffee during his mother’s vigil even though he feels apprehensive about his manners being out of place. He states:
“I didn’t know if I could do it with Maman already there. I thought about it; it didn’t matter” (Camus, The Stranger 8). There is also a moment when he dozes off; even his physical state did not coincide with feelings of grief. His indifferent mannerisms make him feel more like a stranger during his mother’s vigil. He has unintentionally separated himself from the rest of the guests who came to pay their respects—also symbolic of his lack of acculturation in social codes. He admits: “It was then that I realized they were all sitting across from me, nodding their heads, grouped around the caretaker” (Camus, The Stranger 10). He is aware that he is somewhat of an outcast at his mother’s vigil.
Camus also attacks funeral traditions and the way society deals with death. Mersault’s indifference towards traditions such as burials and the loss of a loved one runs contrary to the norms. Mersault resents the physical inconvenience during his mother’s funeral procession where he must walk three-quarters of an hour under the blazing sun to get to the church. His physical suffering becomes the primary focus for Mersault as opposed to the feelings of grief. The emotional disconnect with his mother is not one of animosity but rather of irrelevance and insignificance. As an adult, Mersault does not need his mother; he can fend for himself. The nurture she has provided for him as a child is irrelevant in his adult life. When he was asked to give a statement to the court about his relationship with his mother whom he has placed in a facility that cares for the elderly, he states: “I answered that Maman and I didn’t expect anything from each other anymore, or from anyone else either, and that we had gotten used to our new lives” (Camus, The Stranger 88). The separation between mother and son, which has existed prior her death as well, was the most logical decision—according to Mersault. The distance between Mersault is his mother has nothing to do with uncharitable sentiments he harbors for his mother.
A life without his mother, even in the wake of her death, has had no impact on his life, other than the fact that he must go through the motions of having to asks his boss to take a day off from work. Even the day after he buries his mother, life continues without any changes and his mother’s death does not mark any significance in his life. He states “it occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really nothing had change’ (Camus, The Stranger 24). What matters to Mersault is the physical aspects of life. Soon after his mother’s death, he engages in a sexual affair with Marie, a former colleague, after he takes her to watch a comedy. The next day he “befriends” his neighbor, a physically abusive pimp named Raymond Sintes who coaxes him to write a letter to his Arab mistress whom Raymond suspects of having cheated on him. Having no reasons to refuse, he writes the letter—since, at the moment, he enjoys Raymond Sintes’ offering of wine and blood sausages. Because of Mersault’s immersion in life’s sensations, he is not a “product of the collective moral code” that coincides with “the very definition of conformity” (Gloag 46). And seeing his actions from a secular lens, that is, the timing of his relationship with Maria and his socially unacceptable “friendship” with Raymond, make him a man of dubious morality. Estranged from secularism and conventionality, Mersault feels a sense of freedom that transcends existence. The physical existence only consists of the physical sensations of life; there is no such thing as friendship, loyalty, love, etc. Therefore, acknowledging the heat from the sun (which he has had to contend with at his mother’s funeral) becomes more painful on a physical level. The emotional pain for his mother does not exist.
Therefore, the socially prescribed role as the grieving son, one he clearly does not consider, is a role that is foreign to Mersault, and eventually becomes the basis of his public persecution, especially when it is used as “evidence” for being placed on trial for killing the Arab, the brother of Raymond Sintes’ mistress. From this, “The [French] bourgeois society is demanding a drama of explicit expression” under specific circumstances such as a funeral. (Gloag 45). As he dismisses the role of the grieving son, it has “lead to suspicion from other members of society,” and “Mersault is therefore a suspect before he has committed any crimes” (Gloag 45). This is clearly underscored by his own feelings from the guests at his mother’s vigil. “For a second I had the ridiculous feeling that they were there to judge me” (Camus, The Stranger 10). Thus, “Mersault seemingly lives a life void of morality” (Gloag 48). The murder is not prompted out of malice but rather out of the physical discomfort from the hot sun particularly during Mersault’s altercation with the Arab who coincidentally returns to the same area where Mersault happens to be. He laments how “the sun [has started] to burn ‘his’ cheeks, and [he] could feel the drops of sweat gathering in [his] eyebrows” (Camus, The Stranger 58). It is not the same sun in which he has relished in while swimming with Marie, but rather the oppressive sun that reminds him of his mother’s funeral when he must trudge his way to the church. But the day of the murder, he has reacted to the sun, culminating in the firing of the bullets not once but four more times—a repetitive reflex from the harsh weather conditions. But when asked by the prosecutor why he has paused between the first and second shot, Mersault reflects on how he “could see the red sand and feel the burning of the sun on [his] forehead” (Camus, The Stranger 67). At the time, Mersault’s firing of the shots has given him respite from the oppressive sun, but such action has led him to pay the price, particularly in a society that values moral conformity. Mersault has never been motivated by intentional and vengeful retaliation against the Arab who has been a foe to his “friend” Raymond Sintes.
Mersault’s emotional disconnect and rebellion against the moral collectiveness (due to his indifference to death in general) are perceived as unacceptable from a society who thinks otherwise—hence, making Mersault a stranger to society. His reactions, or lack thereof, towards commonly known tragedies such as the death of his mother and the murder of the Arab have cemented Mersault’s guilt by default. Furthermore, the trial itself “also provides the stage from which Camus expresses his disdain for the general bourgeois conformity” and the French justice system (Gloag 48). Such a contempt also reverts to the concept of absurdity in which there is no emotional explanation when it comes death. The justice system has directly connected Mersault’s inappropriate demeanor at his mother’s funeral along with his other acts of “strangeness” to being morally unacceptable. Among them include his cigarette smoking and coffee drinking during Maman’s vigil; his tearless countenance throughout the funeral; his ill-timed sexual affair with Marie that took place a short time after his mother’s funeral; and his “friendship” with a pimp, Raymond Sintes, whom Mersault has willingly “help” lure Raymond’s mistress back to his flat only to be beaten again by him. The “the trial is there to point out the absurdity of the fact that Meursault is guilty not of killing another human being, but of not shedding tears at his mother’s funeral” (Gloag 49). Furthermore, the trial itself becomes Camus’ critical affront to secular and moral values. Camus disagrees with any type of moral conformity. He attacks the norms of the French judiciary by showing the ridiculousness behind the reasoning of Mersault’s guilty verdict.
The Existential Crime
Mersault sees the absurdity but does not succumb to an irrational world in which there is an explanation for dreadful events. On the other hand, Ed Crane in the Man who wasn’t there, is guilty of another crime, the crime to find meaning in a supposedly promising future. Ed Crane entangles himself in the cycle of absurdity—one that Sisyphus and Mersault are able to triumph over, since life has no meaning. Mersault indulges in the pleasureful aspects of life: eating, sleeping, smoking cigarettes, swimming, and having sex. Ed Crane searches for meaning while being caught up in the monotony of life and succumbs to the absurdity, especially as a barber and a cuckolded husband. He is aware that his wife is having an affair with a department store manager, Dave (James Gandolfini). Ed Crane wishes to change the status quo of his life—whereas Mersault, when offered a job to work in Paris from his boss, refuses because he “wasn’t interested in a change of life” and “that people never change their lives” and “that in any case one life was as good as another” (Camus, The Stranger 41). Mersault gravitates towards the palpable, the concrete, the actual such as the carnal indulgences from a woman or the comforting warmth of the sun. Existence is not about an arbitrary “promise” of a better future. Unlike Ed Crane, “Mersault is not interested in projecting himself into the future, which is clearly illustrated in his refusal for a job promotion and his disinterest in marriage—he lives in the present, for the moment” (Gloag 49). He has no qualms starting an affair with a former co-worker and enjoys the sexual comfort of a woman—especially in the wake of his mother’s death. Grief has no place in Mersault’s life. What can be actualized is what is important to Mersault. This is what Ed Crane fails to learn from Mersault. Human desire does not materialize into actual meaning. Unlike Ed Crane, “Mersault has recognized the absurdity of life and has gone through the experience of the absurd before his story begins. His lack of consciousness is only apparent—at several points in the story shows himself a shrewd observer of men and society”—in effect, drawing emphasis on a first-person narrative that that “represent[s] a universe entirely devoid of order and significance” (Thody 7). Ed Crane’s vision of the world is completely the opposite.
The Meaningless of Human Destiny
As Mersault accepts life for being meaningless, Ed Crane is unable to fathom such belief, which is underscored through his attempt to transform himself from being a barber to a dry-cleaning entrepreneur—occupations that do not lead to any promise of change or meaning. They are, in essence, the same repetitive occupations—but Ed Crane does not understand how a decision that appears to lead to change will only continue the cycle of absurdity. At first, he is apprehensive toward making a deal to start a dry-cleaning business with a barber shop customer, Creighton (Jon Polito), also referred to as the Pansy due to his attraction to men. The Pansy convinces Ed Crane the promise of a lucrative career in a dry-cleaning business. Ed Crane weighs the risks of trusting a potential business partner—who comes off as a fast-talker. But Ed Crane is drawn to the risk because such a risk leads to opportunities of change. He chastises himself for doubting and fretting over opportunities that cross his path. He tells himself: “My first instinct was no, no, the whole idea was nuts. But maybe that was the instinct that kept me locked up in the barbershop, nose against the exit afraid to the turning the knob?” The transformation to become the ideal man Ed Crane is seeking to become will provide him a sense of existential meaning. In doing so, Ed Crane fails to enjoy life as he falls into more destruction. His destruction begins with his attempt to start a dry-cleaning business. In order for Ed Crane to get the $10,000 start-up business money to give to the fast-talking and money swindling businessman, Creigthon (Jon Polito), also known as the Pansy, he decides to send his wife’s lover an anonymous blackmail letter demanding $10,000 or else his affair will be exposed. The deal eventually goes awry as Dave is able to trace the letter back to Ed Crane after Dave gets wind of a dry-cleaning deal from the Pansy. Dave confronts Ed Crane during an arranged clandestine meeting at the department store’s office, which culminates into a deadly scuffle, leaving Dave fatally stabbed by Ed Crane who initially tries to defend himself from his attack. Eventually, Doris, his wife, becomes the prime suspect. Before her trial begins, Doris commits suicide, leaving Ed Crane wrack with guilt. Ultimately, Ed Crane’s life-changing endeavors is a tragic mockery.
For Mersault, it’s the sensation of being alive and for Ed Crane, it’s the sensation of finding significance in a chaotic world. To be more exact, Ed Crane’s existence is likened to a Kirkegaardian malady—according to film critic, Karen D. Hoffman. “[Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard] writes that one who lacks infinitude has ‘emasculated oneself in a spiritual sense” as Ed doesn’t exercise his agency in the world” because he “passively acquiesces to others’ choices” (Hoffman 247). He has never allowed himself to carve out his own identity. The Pansy’s business proposal becomes an opportune moment—an escape from his feelings of existential marginalization and subordination.
The internal conflict that plagues Ed Crane typifies the noir hero—especially in the way the genre treats existentialism in which “existentialism is an outlook which begins with a disoriented individual facing a confused world that he cannot accept’” (Gaughram 229). The noir hero is a dichotomy of both the noir protagonist and the absurd hero who fails miserably. Furthermore, existentialism “places its emphasis on man’s contingency in a world where there are no transcendental values or moral absolutes, a world devoid of any meaning but the one man himself creates’” (Gaugham 229). However, the meaning that Ed Crane attempts to create is both absurd and cyclical, thereby, making him a foil to Mersault. Ed Crane, a man of very few words around others, is purely a reflective man, observing those around him and contemplating his existence amid his observations of his wife, his occupation, and his future prospects. He obsesses over sentiments of the secular world—love, ambition, a future—all of which are thrown out the window in Mersault’s approach to existence. Therefore, “family, affection, love, friendship, ambition, none of these has any meaning for him” and therefore “accepts the premise on which The Myth of Sisyphus is based” (Thody 3). Yet, Ed Crane craves for anything that might have intrinsic value.
Typifying the classic noir convention, The Man who wasn’t There’s narrative weaves together a steady confessional (in the form of a voiceover), reflecting on some of the destructive developments that happened throughout his life. He is more of the literary modern confessional hero or rather anti-hero (developed and created by the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky) in which his confessional anti-heroes engage in “new mode of self-examination” that adopts “Christian metaphysics” more so in the form of a confessional narrative (Axthelm 9). The confessor is “afflicted and unbalanced, disillusioned and groping for meaning” and “he views his condition not with anger but with a deep internal pain; he rejects external rebellion in favor of self-laceration” (Axthelm 9). Similarly, in the film’s exposition, Ed Crane engages in earnest and unflattering confessions about his life. His confessional lament about his unhappy marriage and how he was roped in it is a form of purgation. He reflects on how has anticipated the seriousness of marriage. A couple weeks after his blind date with Doris, she proposes to him. He is overwhelmed with apprehension when he asks her “don’t you wanna get to know me more?” Doris dismisses his request by responding, “why, does it get better?” In hindsight, he admits that she had a point and that they “knew each other as well then as now.”
He reflects on how she likes him because he was a man of a few words. He states: “We went to a movie; Doris had a flask; we killed it” and “at the end of the night she said she liked I didn’t talk much.” The fact that he is docile and not forthcoming to Doris, he basically yields to all her decisions—such as getting married, going to church together so that she can play bingo, and having guests at the house in spite of the fact that he does not care for entertaining. After marriage, comes nothingness, that is, no gain in making the self of greater importance. In fact, he is invisible to his wife. Doris finds solace in drinking and having a sordid affair with a married man. And the inability “to be” reduces him to a cuckold and then later a wishful barber, yearning to find more in life.
Furthermore, his quiet demeanor that Doris finds appealing has made him easily malleable to an identity that has no real merit. After acquiescing to marriage, Ed Crane ends up defaulting into an occupation that he has regretted. He confesses “I stumbled into it [my job as a barber]—well, married into it more precisely” and “I only work here.” For Ed, being a barber is the next best thing to do. His wife’s brother, Frank, owns the shop and conveniently offers Ed Crane a job. This confessional despair is an existential lethargy that becomes rote when he talks about the different cuts he must perform for his clients. He compares his occupation to a barman or a soda-jerk because “there is not much to it once you’ve learned the basic moves.” Therefore, “Ed seems to exist as a kind of everyman who is no one in particular. He is not aware of the possibility of becoming greater. Living in the world without exercising his agency in it” (Hoffman 247). To make matters worse, “he is absent from his own life and seems to lack a strong sense of self” (Hoffman 247). In Camus’ exploration of the Absurd, “Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows. What follows is the gradual return in the chain [of monotony] or it is the definitive awakening” (Camus, Myth 13). Ed Crane’s ruminations on his marriage and occupation make him conscious of his loss of self and the tragedy of his existence.
Ed Crane’s attempt to find meaning in marriage is a stark contrast to Mersault’s reactions to marriage and love. He responds to Marie’s proposal to get married with indifference. He tells Marie in The Stranger that it does not matter whether they get married or not. He is indifferent to marriage. He tells her “it didn’t make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to” (Camus, The Stranger 41). And as far as Mersault loving her, he tells her “[love] didn’t mean anything” and “that [he] probably didn’t love her” (Camus, The Stranger 41). Moreover, he flat out disagrees with her when she tries to convince him that marriage is a serious thing mainly because he is indifferent to marriage.
Unlike Sisyphus, who refuses to acknowledge and succumb to his punishment (i.e., the physical monotony), Ed Crane becomes privy to find substance in what appears to be the most trifling. Otherwise, he will perceive his occupation as a doomed existence, which he eventually does later on in the narrative. He becomes more conscious of his monotonous life as a barber—and attempts to break it. Ed Crane has learned his trade by rote, exacerbating his restlessness. When he glowers over the head of seated young boy whose hair he has finished cutting, he tells his brother-in-law and owner of the barber shop, Frank (Michael Badalucco), “you ever wonder about it . . . how [the hair] keeps growing . . . I mean it’s growing, it’s part of us. And we cut it off. And throw it away.” Frank, bewildered about his comment and sees the growing hair as a boon to the business, is stunned when Ed Crane asserts “I’m gonna take his hair and throw it out in the dirt . . . I’m gonna mingle it with common house dirt.” For Ed Crane, cutting hair is perceived as punishment—as it ties him to the monotony of his job and the monotony of his marriage where there is no love, making him feel less significant. Ed Crane is aware of his locked identity—a barber who must cut hair because it keeps growing. He tells Frank, his brother-in-law, the “hair is part of us,” an existence plagued with repetitive stagnation, causing him to languish away. By contrast, “in The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus wants to turn the negative power of the absurd in the opposite direction; to show that Sisyphus would fail at every task and rejoice in the effort” (Kaplan 60). The task, although repetitive, is a victory for Sisyphus. But Ed Crane is a far cry from this triumph.
Other critics such as Richard Gaughran believes that “both characters assume, even if unconsciously, a meaningless universe” and that “Crane has much in common with Mersault” in which “love and marriage lack meaning for these characters” (Gaughran 237). However, what differentiates the two are their approaches to the meaninglessness of life. Although they have to contend with a world that is indifferent, irrational, and often chaotic and where there are no set moral standards of behavior, Ed Crane is one who seeks morals and who makes sense of the chaos that surrounds him, particularly when things do not go as he has initially planned. He refuses to succumb to the insignificance. While Mersault is a stranger to society in his unorthodox approach to life, especially when it comes to moral and secular conventions, Ed Crane is a stranger to himself, unconscious of his own understanding of his limitations and the futility of his authenticity.
On the other hand, understanding Mersault’s “strangeness” towards society can also prompt a certain type of existential reckoning for fully integrated individuals (bounded by socially prescribed moral codes and behaviors) to understand how liberating it is to rebel against societal collectivism. Such approach to existentialism becomes a “subtle process [that] enables us [i.e., society] to look back on what we thought were our own moral values and discover that they are only the product of a collective moral code. In doing so, we begin to liberate ourselves from that moral code and face the meaninglessness of the world” (Gloag 46). Mersault is devoid of morals and operates in accordance to what he feels on a literal basis. In earnest, he tells a lawyer the reason why his actions might not be appropriate. He states, “my nature as such that my physical needs got in the way of my feelings” (Camus, The Stranger 65). Yet, Ed Crane is conscious of morals. He wants to take responsibility for what has happened to his wife. However, his wife’s lawyer rejects Ed’s willingness to come clean mainly because his wife’s lawyer cannot “sell” the truth to the jury. A husband being his wife’s only defense makes the case less credible and less believable. Ed Crane believes in collective morality—one that fits in an idealistically honest justice system.
Furthermore, “in a world without value, humans are nothing, are ‘not there,’ until they create themselves. And, Crane, not self-created, just “the barber,” is a wisp of a man invisible to others” (Gaughran 237). This includes his wife. Both Mersault and Ed Crane live in a chaotic and meaningless world. However, Mersault is more acutely aware of it. Ed Crane is the one who does not prevail or become superior to his fate, making them a stark contrast to Mersault. Like a doomed absurdist, he falls into the cycle of finding meaning in life—and more specifically—finding meaning in the self. Thus, it is hard to agree with Gaughran’s comparison that they are more alike. Perhaps their only commonality is being placed in a world devoid of meaning—but their approach to life differs in which Mersault is preoccupied with re-visioning his existence by appreciating life’s sensations and not falling prey to secular conventions (including collective morality). However, Ed Crane succumbs to a futile chase to find purpose that not only fails miserably, but has also led to a series of crimes and deaths.
Knowing the “deal” for the better life has failed, leaving him guilt-ridden and responsible for his wife’s trial and subsequent suicide while incarcerated, he attempts to makes some sort of moral reconciliation with the self by becoming a mentor as well as manager to a young pianist, Birdie (Scarlett Johannsson), who is the daughter of a friend. He indulges in the opportunity to help a young innocent whom he feels has a budding talent. “I could afford to charge less than the usual manager, not having to put up a big front like a lot of these phonies. And I could be with her, enough to keep myself feeling ok.” He admits “I have to do it. I can’t stand by and watch more things go down the drain.” He hopes his actions will help make him feel better about himself—because he believes in the irrational to which human beings by the very nature of being mortals are both finite and bounded by time. Then he goes on to tell Birdie the importance of choosing a path in life before it is too late—an experience that has actually plagued him. For instance, he tells Birdie, “my point is you’re young. A kid really, your whole life ahead of you. But it’s not too soon to start thinking . . . to start making opportunities for yourself. Before it all washes away.”
However, his guidance to help Birdie find value or significance ends up disastrous. Birdie attempts to seduce him while driving back from a piano audition, and they get into a car accident. In the midst of the accident, he reflects on how hair continues to grow even after a person dies. For instance, he states, “time slows down right before an accident, and I had time to think about things. I thought about what an undertaker had told me once—that your hair keeps growing, for a while anyway, after you die …” His failure to mentor Birdie is another repetition, a Sisyphus-like cycle, but one that continues as punishment for Ed. The repetitive cycle of a failed identity harkens back to the monotony of being a barber. According to Camus, The growing hair in which Ed Crane’s job is to keep cutting is symbolic of the banality of life in which Crane, the proletariat, acknowledges with great despair. The consciousness of self-tragedy—one that is self-inflicted as he passively accepts early on in his life—prompts him to “change” his life. With Birdie, his obsession “to be” (this time, as a mentor) is part of the cycle of absurdity that leads to destruction or more setbacks in his life. He cannot carve out an existence that is more definitive and purposeful.
Being the “Stranger”
For Mersault, the approach to life is feeling alive on a purely tangible level; Ed Crane’s approach, however, is finding meaning in a chaotic world. When recognizing the meaninglessness of life, there is no anticipation of what life has to offer but rather an understanding of living life and feeling life without conditions, which Mersault becomes conscious of. Therefore, “the absurd frees man from all feelings of responsibility, annihilates the future and leaves only one certainty—the sensation being alive” (Thody 7). But this is not the case for Ed Crane. Ed Crane does not come close to this type of reckoning. As Mersault engages in the necessary and appropriate “strangeness” that ultimately makes him superior to his fate, he reaps in the benefits of the physical world. While Mersualt stays committed to this tenet, Ed Crane continues to defy it hopelessly. He is obsessed with the futility of ambition and meaning almost to an extent where it is somewhat masochistic. Being a man who does not talk a lot, he yearns for communication from soothsayers, as he wallows over his wife’s suicide and guilt. “I was alone, with secrets I didn’t want and no one to tell them to anyway. I visited a woman who was supposed to have powers in communicating with those who had passed across, as she called it. She said that people who passed across were picky about who the’d communicate with, not like most people you run into on this side…” Ed Crane knew that “she was reading [him] like a book.” Then why does he go to her in the first place? Again, he wants to elucidate, to rectify the imbalances in life. Amid the absurd, “Humanity craves clarity, Camus argues in Le Mythe de Sisyphe, and the world appears gratuitous and irrational” (Hughes 5). Although Ed Crane sees the absurdity, he resigns himself to it in a chaotic and fragmented world. This is not the case for Ed Crane. And according to critic Hoffman, “Ed Crane’s dissatisfaction with his life … raise[es] two possibilities for responding to this dissatisfaction: passive acceptance or becoming a new man” (246). The either/or fallacy of reasoning places him in an illogical predicament where he does not quite understand what his new identity or rebirth entails. The creation of a new identity is one that seems to be of continual failure in Ed Crane’s life. Either it is imposed upon him (such as his marriage and his occupation as a barber) or he tries to “become” but fails miserably, which is, again, illustrated in his disastrous mentorship with Birdie. Therefore, “at the heart of the Absurd lay what Camus saw as the confrontation between the human desire for a rational account of the world and a world that resisted any such explanation. Humanity craves clarity, Camus argues in Le Mythe de Sisyphe, and the world appears gratuitous and irrational” (Hughes 5). Despair is unequivocal for Ed Crane—being both an observer and participator in the victimization of his own circumstance.
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The Trials of Identity in a Modern World
Seeking an identity becomes an issue with Ed Crane. When Dave confronts him regarding the blackmail letter, he asks him “What kind of man are you?” Such a question has two implications: it questions Ed Crane’s degree of morality (does Ed Crane follow morality governed and prescribed by the secular world?) and it also implicitly questions Ed Crane’s purpose for blackmail (what does he actually hope to accomplish from becoming a dry-cleaning businessman?) Furthermore, Ed Crane, in the court of law, is brought to trial for the wrong murder—the Pansy—who was actually killed by Dave after discovering he was the actual recipient of the money. Yet, it was actually Ed Crane’s potential business deal with the Pansy that has made him suspect.
However, when taken to trial, his lawyer muddles his identity when it comes to making a defendant appear less guilty. Mersault’s guilt rests on his supposed calloused treatment of his mother whom he has sent to a care home; Ed Crane’s guilt rests on the pursuit of the wrongful identity, potential dry cleaning entrepreneur. The wrong identity leads to a guilty verdict for Mersault, whereas Ed Crane’s verdicts becomes a hung jury at the beginning. This is mainly because of the redefining of Ed Crane’s identity as the “modern” man, which eventually leverages his lawyer’s arguments, evoking sympathy towards Ed Crane’s supposed victimization in a modern world devoid of promises or human destiny. His lawyer imposes another identity on him to make him appear less guilty by declaring he has suffered the pains of being the “modern” man, that is, one whose hapless and insignificant circumstance has made him resort to the lowly life of a barber, resulting in the drive for a desperate ambition. Ed Crane’s drive to become a dry-cleaner entrepreneur is a sad and weak attempt to change his tragic life. Thus, who can actually persecute him for his actions? While Ed Crane reflects on his lawyer’s argument, he feels as if his lawyer was talking about a different man—much like the lawyer in The Stranger who has hoped to win over the jury’s sympathy by talking about Mersault being a well-respected, working-class citizen whose modest income was used to provide care for his aging mother. Both Mersault and Ed Crane are very different from the identities characterized by their lawyers. Ed Crane acts as an observer to his own trial. Like a reporter, he sums up his lawyer’s arguments: “He said I ‘was’ Modern Man, and if they voted to convict me, well they’d be practically cinching the noose around their own necks.” Moreover, the false dilemma (e.g., the dismissal of either-or-positioning) is cinched by his lawyer’s plea to remove the facts in which he assures the jury that “[the facts] ‘had’ no meaning.”
The noir genre also creates the victim of circumstance—and Ed Crane is a victim of his own circumstance. The concept of “modern” coincides with the dramatization of the film’s narrative. Tragicomedy becomes part of the modern approach to film narratives, which stems from twentieth-century drama that are considered “vital to the cinema’s changing structures of feelings” in which “a reversal of fortune [is] a matter of laughter as well as sorrow” and “of comic error and lament,” according to John Orr’s Cinema and Modernity (Orr 16). The Coen brothers’ approach to modernity in a noir genre in The Man who wasn’t There consists of attitudes that are the cause by the ever-evolving civilization, which, in turn, serves as a catalyst to noir characters’ feeling of existential malady such as feelings of loneliness and human disconnect. According to critic Jerold J. Abrams, “the tension at the center of modernity, which all great noir reveals, is this: civilization’s advance, in the name of liberation from the dark ages of the past, bring with it alienation, social fragmentation, and individuation that dissolves first the community, then the family and ultimately even our sense of humanity” (212). He applies this concept to the Coen brother’s previous work Fargo, which can also be applied five years later in The Man who Wasn’t There. Santa Rosa, the film’s setting, although a small town, is a town that lacks any connection—spiritual and physical—among humans. There is the dream of a big city bustling with business—clearly articulated by Frank who likes the idea of the hair continuously growing in order to gain more clients and to obtain a lucrative business, the Pansy who yearns for a dry-cleaning business and a wandering, door-to-door salesperson who hopes to sell the next big product. The people around him are also part of this deterioration and fragmentation. Humans are less human but not in a barbaric or uncivilized way, but rather detached to a point to which the trivial, bizarre or even the pie in the sky takes precedent. Ed Crane is consumed by human ideals but has little understanding of what that means in a milieu of alienation and disconnection from others. Even death has no meaning—as Dave’s widow swears by an alternative reality in regards to her husband’s murder to which grief is replaced by ludicrous conspiracy theories and suspicion without any logical basis becomes the dominant sentiment. For instance, in a trancelike state, she tells Ed Crane that the government is to blame for her husband’s death and the decline of their marriage: “The government knows. I cannot repeat it to you. But this thing goes deep, Ed. This was not your wife. It goes deep, and involves the government. There is a great deal of fear. You know how certain circles would find it—the knowledge—a threat. They try to limit it. Sometimes knowledge is a curse, Ed. After this happened, things changed. Big Dave . . . he never touched me again.” Such twisted logic coincides with Ed Crane’s trial. When it comes to murder, there is no guilt. Rather, the victim is actually the person pulling the trigger and not the actual victims themselves.
Furthermore, Ed Crane’s lawyer capitalizes on the theatrics of convincing a naïve jury in ad hominem fashion that works in tandem with Ed Crane’s own self-effacing identity. From this, Ed Crane acknowledges the failures and the hypocrisies of the law—and surprisingly goes along with it since he is a man of collective morality. “I gotta hand it to him, he tossed a lot of sand in their eyes. He talked about how I’d lost my place in the universe” and “that I wasn’t the kind of guy to kill a guy, that I was barber . . . just like them, an ordinary man, guilty of living in a world that had not place for me, guilty of wanting to be a dry cleaner. . . but not of murder.” It was a mirroring of his grievance—an existential malady that is now excusing him from a crime that he did not actually commit—which is true—yet the Pansy’s death was the result of a chain of events where Ed Crane has been instrumental in its implementation. But that does not matter. Ed Crane is a victim of his own identity. Ed Crane said that the speech was so convincing that it “even had [him] going.” The lawyer’s appeal to sympathy releases Ed Crane from any criminal responsibility. To the jury, the “modern” man becomes the identifiable, misfortunate everyman who is “lost” in a bleak universe. In spite of this, Ed Crane feels a sense of disconnect with the identity his lawyer is trying to portray and capitalize. He never saw himself as the Modern Man victim. It is not Ed Crane’s motivation for murder but rather his motivation for significance, self-worth, and change—with whom every human can identify. Because of this, Ed Crane is the iconized, pitied “everyman” as opposed to a murderer.
Conversely, in The Stranger, Mersault is contemptuous of his lawyers’ ad hominem, making him a less talented lawyer unlike the prosecutor. Mersault agitated by his lawyer’s “plea of provocation” who asks the jury to exploring his soul (Camus, The Stranger 103). From this he asserts that he was an “honest man, a steadily employed, tireless worker, loyal to the firm that employed him, well liked and sympathetic to the misfortunes of others” and a “model son who had supported his mother as long as he could” (Camus, The Stranger 104). The appeal to sympathy and emotions is considered completely irrational for Mersault—and definitely far from the identity he has considered pursuing or becoming. Ironically, he finds the prosecutor’s closing argument plausible. He admits: “I thought his way of viewing the events had a certain consistency. What he was saying was plausible because all the events that has led up to the murder have been intentional (Camus, The Stranger 103). For Mersault, murder and death are exactly what they are—and because of those proclamations, Mersault is guilty without doubt and is sentenced to death. And because of his matter-of-factness, he has no chance of an acquittal. He admits to his moral disconnect in the courtroom after the caretaker reveals a damaging testimony regarding Mersault’s supposed coldness at his mother’s funeral: “It was then I felt a stirring go through the room and for the first time I had realized that I was guilty” and “that is how I explained to myself the strange impression I had of being odd man out, a kind of intruder” (Camus, The Stranger 90). Such a feeling was reminiscent at the time of his mother’s funeral—where he has felt ostracized, literally and figuratively, from his guests. Because of this, “[Mersault] is the outsider who refuses to play the game of society because he sees the emptiness of the rules, and his failures to conform causes society to will his death (Thody 8). He gradually becomes more divorced from meaning. For Ed Crane, a mistrial occurs because he is an “insider”—but this “success” behind it is short-lived. Because he could no longer afford his current lawyer who has conned the jury, he ends up with another lawyer that ends up placing him in jail where capital punishment awaits him.
Incarceration, Rebellion, and Death
Both Mersault and Ed Crane are sentenced to death for a murder they had no intentions of committing. Mersault has never intended to kill the Arab even though he has pulled the trigger. The justice system tries Ed Crane for a murder of a man in which he has indirectly caused. Ed Crane and Mersault’s approach to their incarceration (punishment) and imminent death contrasts greatly. During Mersault’s early stages of incarceration, he realizes how being in prison has halted his immersion in the physical world, especially the feelings that are physically enjoyable such as the warm sun and sex. Furthermore, the philosophy behind the Sisyphus myth can be applied only to Mersault’s predicament in which he overcomes the sufferings of a condemned man. “When I was first imprisoned, the hardest thing was that my thoughts were still those of a free man. For example, I would suddenly have the urge to be on a beach walk down to the water” (Camus, Stranger 70). It became more lucid to him when the prison guard reminds him of his punishment, which is essentially the taking away of his freedom. This is when Mersault identifies with the Sisyphus myth, embodying his rebellion and resistance to the punishment that was set upon him. Like Sisyphus, the absurd frees man from all feelings of responsibility, annihilates the future and leaves only one certainty—the sensation of being alive” (Thody 7). But he deals with the pain of incarceration by sucking on wood chips to stave off his cravings for cigarettes. He overcomes boredom by reading a tragic story of a Czekcholslavkin who ends up killed by his own relatives who fail to recognize him after returning twenty-five years later. His desire for women is satiated when he imagines his jail cell filled with beautiful women. He is able to find solace in his so-called punishment. The comforting sun, sex, and freedom are still part of his “physical” reality—but in an unprecedented way. He states: “So with all the sleep, my memories, reading my crime story, and the alternation of light and darkness, time passed” and “eventually you wind up losing track of time in prison.” (Camus, The Stranger 80). Furthermore, this triumph over his incarceration and justice system is analogous to Sisyphus’s victory. “Camus makes Sisyphus’s lucidity about his condition and his scorn for his tormentors [the gods] indications of his ‘victory’over both, but his victory is individual and psychological, not collective and historical” and his “happiness is a sublime joy” (Carroll 65).
It is no wonder after his sentencing to death Mersault refuses to waste his time on contemplating the afterlife or listening to the magistrate who insists on preparing for salvation and the preservation of his soul. For Mersault, death is an awakening, an epiphany of the inevitability. Most of all, it is the embracing of the meaninglessness of life—and to live fully as an alternative. Such convictions are not in line with the magistrate who tries to convince him otherwise. Thus, in a raging wrath, Mersault scorns the magistrate’s insistence that an afterlife exist. He believes that it will provide the consolation Mersault needs. “But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than [the magistrate] could ever be, sure of my life and sure for the death I had waiting for me” (Camus, The Stranger 120). Unlike those indoctrinated in the absurdity, including the magistrate, Mersault has lived his life—knowing that that death awaits. He mentions “throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind [i.e., death] had been rising towards me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living” (Camus, The Stranger 12). This is why prior to his execution he becomes more congratulatory of his predicament as a condemned man, thereby, feeling elated than ever. He reflects on his mother’s death and her decisions to take on a lover in her final years of life. He reflects on how no one should have cried or grieved over her death at the funeral. He declares: “So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again” (Camus, The Stranger 122). He reconciles with his own condemnation, feeling the same freedom like his mother. “I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again”—mainly because he is free from secular values (Camus, The Stranger 123). Furthermore, he sees no after life but rather an insurmountable achievement when he makes his last wish the moment before his execution: “I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate” (Camus, The Stranger 123). From this, he is the rebellious stranger, demonstrating what was also important to Sisyphus. Thus, “Sisyphus’s joy in what could be called ‘passive resistance’ could thus be considered a step, no matter how small, on the way to active resistance” (Carroll 65). It can also be considered “an expression of scorn for the gods who control Sisyphus’ fate but who have not succeeded in destroying his consciousness, his will or his attachment to life, that is, his freedom, it is perhaps not that difficult to imagine Sisyphus happy after all” (Carroll 66). Similarly, estranged from secularism and conventionality, Mersault feels a sense of freedom that transcends existence. Mersault exhibits this when he looks forward to greeting his spectators with joy on the day of his execution with a triumphant happiness. To triumph one must revolt towards the gods—and in Mersault’s case, the “worldy” chains of humanity. It is Mersault’s ultimate rebellion against the secularism, the conventions, the traditions, the bonds, and so on that make him an absurd hero that Camus endorses and works in accord with the absurd philosophy. This is mainly because “The Myth of Sisyphus, is a manual for living an attempt to describe and to surmount the feeling of dread that comes over us when we face mortality” (Kaplan 60). Mersault’s defiant and provocative declaration encapsulates Sisyphus’ heroism.
On the other hand, Ed Crane approaches his execution through profit and meaning. He is anchored in his own understanding of death by leaving a legacy that is irrational and absurd. He is concerned about the afterlife—but in the form of capitalizing from it by writing about his ordeal while incarcerated. Afterwards, he will go to another “place” (perhaps a heaven) where there is some sort of reconciliation in understanding life’s bewilderments and obscurity. For instance, he confesses: “That’s the funny thing about going away, knowing the date you’re gonna—die and the men’s magazine wanted me to tell how that felt…” Secondly, he creates more meaning to an irrational world by retelling the absurdism. Through this, he reflects on life: “Well, it’s like pulling away from the maze. While you’re in the maze you go through willy-nilly, turning where you think you have to turn, banging into dead ends, one thing after another… But get some distance on it, and all those twists and turns, why, they’re the shape of your life. It’s hard to explain.” He gives credence to the absurdity but does not self-deprecate. Right before being executed, the camera engages in a point of view pan shot that showcases the different types of haircuts from the spectators who are watching his execution. The pan shot signifies Ed Crane’s life, that is, his different attempts to find meaning and worth. He also looks towards an afterlife, which is a far cry from Mersault’s epiphanous understanding of the physical world and death. Ed Crane admits “I don’t know what waits for me, beyond the earth and sky. But I’m not afraid to go … maybe the things I don’t understand will be clear there, like when a fog blows away.” “There” (whether it is an actual geographical place or not) is where he will perhaps meet Doris. He states: Maybe Doris will be there … and maybe there I can tell her…all those things…” He hopes for reconciliation, reprisal, and significance in the afterlife since his life in the world he is about to leave has been a dismal failure. In retrospect, he harbors a disdain for it: “They don’t have words for here.” Even in defeat, there is still the undying hope for meaning even in the afterlife in which Mersault repudiates and rejects. However, Ed Crane makes the decision to remain imprisoned in his hope for meaning—whether it is “here” or “there”—again contributing to the hopeless cycle. He will never be the “man.” Instead, he becomes an illusion—so far removed from Mersault, the heroic rebel who sought freedom. Thus, to become a man, one must become the myth in which Ed Crane, again, fails “to be.”
June 21, 2021
This piece is dedicated to the Film Criticism and Theory’s “Pandemic Class” of 2020 who was compelled to do a standing ovation after appreciating the absurdity in the Coen brothers’ film.
Works Cited
Abrams, Jerold J., “A Homespun Murder Story: Film Noir and the Problem of Modernity in Fargo.” The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers. Mark T. Conrad editor. The University Press of Kentucky, 2009. 211-223.
Axthelm, M. Peter. The Modern Confessional Novel. Yale University Press, 1967.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Justin O’Brien translator. Vintage International, 1991.
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Vintage International 1989.
Carroll, David. “Rethinking the Absurd.” The Cambridge Companion to Camus. Edward J. Hughes editor. Cambridge University Press, 2007. 53-66.
Gaughran, Richard. “What kind of Man are You?”: The Coen Brothers and the Existentialist Role Playing.” The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers. Mark T. Conrad editor. The University Press of Kentucky, 2009. 227-239.
Gloag, Oliver. Albert Camus: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Hoffman, Karen D., “Being the Barber: Kierkegaardian Despair in The Man who wasn’t There.” The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers. Mark T. Conrad editor. The University Press of Kentucky, 2009. 243-265.
Hughes, Edward J. “Introduction.” The Cambridge Companion to Camus. Edward J. Hughes editor. Cambridge University Press, 2007. 1-10.
Kaplan, Alice. Looking for The Stranger. The University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Thody, Philip. Albert Camus: A Study of His Work. Grove Press Inc., 1957.
Orr, John. Cinema and Modernity. Polity Press, 1993.