A Happy Death

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**The Plague**

Author	Albert Camus
Country	France
Language	Translated from French
Genre(s)	Absurdist, Existentialist
Publisher	Vintage Books
Released	1971

A Happy Death (original title La mort heureuse) was the first novel by French writer-philosopher Albert Camus. The existentialist topic of the book is the "will to happiness", the conscious creation of one's happiness, and the need of time (and money) to do so. It draws on memories of the author including his job at the maritime commission in Algiers, his suffering from tuberculosis, and his travels in Europe.

Camus composed and reworked the novel between 1936 and 1938 but then decided not to publish it. It is clearly the precursor to his most famous work, The Stranger, published in 1942. The main character in both novels is named Mersault. La mort heureuse was eventually published in 1971, more than 10 years after Camus' death. The English translation by Richard Howard appeared in 1972.

[edit] Summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The novel consists of two parts. Part 1, titled "Natural death", describes the monotone and empty life of Patrice Mersault with his boring office job and a meaningless relationship with his girlfriend. Mersault gets to know the rich invalid Roland Zagreus who shows Mersault a way out: "Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time." Mersault decides to kill Zagreus for his money so that he can proceed to create his happiness.

Part 2, titled "Conscious death", follows Mersault's subsequent trip to Europe. Traveling by train from city to city, he is not able to find peace and decides to return to Algiers, to live in a house high above the sea with three young female friends. Everybody here has only one goal: the pursuit of happiness. Yet Mersault needs solitude. He marries a pleasant woman he does not love, buys a house in a village by the sea, and moves in alone. "At this hour of night, his life seemed so remote to him, he was so solitary and indifferent to everything and to himself as well, that Mersault felt he had at last attained what he was seeking, that the peace which filled him now was born of that patient self-abandonment he had pursued and achieved with the help of this warm world so willing to deny him without anger." Severely ill, he dies a happy death: "And stone among the stones, he returned in the joy of his heart to the truth of the motionless worlds."