What Does It Matter?

During his wild epiphany before his execution, Meursault comes to the conclusion that nothing matters because everyone is eventually going to be subject to the exact same fate. He realizes that, despite the thousands of different paths one could take, every life will end in death. With this realization, Meursault begins to question whether or not the events and feelings before that ultimate end even matter.

Camus writes, "What did other people’s deaths or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people chose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate...?" (121).

Meursault realizes that there’s no point in caring about people or being sad when people die because no matter how they try to shape their lives and choose their fate, everyone will eventually meet the same ultimate fate: death. He figures that it doesn't matter if he dies then- at his execution- or if he dies in twenty years, because he's going to die at some point, so why not in the middle of a public square in front of hateful onlookers? He's already had the satisfaction of realizing that he'd been right all along, and he's accepted and embraced the immovable fact that everyone will die, so it would almost be pointless for him to continue living, anyway, except for perhaps the possibility that he could enlighten others to his new realization. This possibility might be the reason he's being executed anyway- because his ideas and attitude towards life are frighteningly different and deemed dangerous enough to warrant the court-mandated end of his life.