The purpose of this article is to outline the possible relationships between three central approaches of Nietzsche's philosophy: the death of God, reactive nihilism and the will to power; which in turn correspond, in our opinion, with the three transformations of the spirit that the author presents in his Zarathustra (1995, p. 49): The camel, the lion and the child. The above in order to take a look, based on said conceptual constellation, at some aspects of Albert Camus's novel, The Stranger (1966); in particular, to some acts of its protagonist, Meursault, which could be considered ethically questionable. We propose an analysis that, from the mediation between philosophy and literature, allows some reflections on the ethical position of this disturbing character and the way in which Camus's novel is related to a hopeless historical context in which nihilism as indifference takes over. of the spirit and can link it with evil. © 2023 Universita di Trieste. All rights reserved.