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The Stranger (平装)
by Albert Camus
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Fiction |
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| MSL Pointer Review:
A masterpiece of indifference and alienation, this sad story is about the narrowmindedness of society and the unfortunate individual who gets caught up in it. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 12 items |
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Edward Eveyard (MSL quote), UK
<2007-01-05 00:00>
This is not a long book and, to a young mind, it will not seem like a particularly deep book, except at end. It is worth re-reading to note the attitude to life of the main character, how indifferent he is to whether his girlfriend loves him or not, whether his friend is a pimp or not, which day it was that his mother died on, etc. Some parts in the book seem quite funny at first, but are really saying something serious: for example, when he tells his girlfriend that her question about whether he loves her or not is pointless and when the court treats the fact that he didn't cry at his mother's funeral as evidence that he is a dangerous individual. Although Camus is associated with pessimism, the book gives a feeling that life should be lived pleasurably, for we never know when death or disaster may come, and that looking beyond it for a meaning does not help anything.
Whether the book is a celebration of hedonism or not is hard to say. Camus came from Algeria, where the lives of most young men were not so very dissimilar from this book; was he celebrating this? Also, there is a fairly sexist attitude present in the book - not least in the prostitute who is beat up and has her brother killed by the main character. Perhaps, this was just part of the fiction and not part of Camus' believes, but it does seem a little insensitive to let something like that stand in the plot.
Also, everyone seems to be saying that Camus was an existentialist, which is something that he denied countless times, but no-one listened to him. Camus and Sartre wrote for the same newspaper and both produced dark books, but Sartre believed in phenemology, free will, "hell is others", which all seem to be very different from the attitude in Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus, which everyone should read, sees Camus stating very clearly that he is not existentialist.
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
This French classic strikes a refreshing chord with a new generation. Mr. Mersault encounters the horrors of life with a malaise of the unconscious. Camus brings together the complexities of life with simplicity and crisp language use (now seen by American eyes with recent better trans- lations). The Stranger is an important work for the open, introspective reader. While Mersault comes across as pathetic, empty and lifeless, the listening reader will find himself in its pages. |
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Ludwig (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
I think it would be fair to say that this book is an important work in the world of letters that emerged after World War I. The "Great War to End All Wars" was a watershed in history because as "total war" it involved the civilian population as no previous war had. And because of the many new weapons of mass destruction that were used for the first time, ten million persons died and millions of others were wounded and mutilated.
Albert Camus' father, Lucien, was killed in WWI, and I think it would intuitively be realistic to think that this had a profound effect on the thoughtful youth living in straitened circumstances in Algeria. In most cases, the death of a parent will take some of the glow out of childhood. Thus, we see a man who was personally affected and wounded by WWI and a Europe in the throes of disillusionment and recovery after 1918.
To many, WWI was the straw that broke the camel's back. Why didn't God prevent the war with its enormous suffering? How could a just and good God allow man to be ruined not only by poverty but also by the havoc of the war machine? Why would a civilization governed by the rational ideals that reason and goodwill could work things out fail so miserably? Was the world, and the West in particular, not shaped by the idea that responsible action governed by the moral sense would create and ever-evolving, more perfect world? And was this not all a wretched lie?
Surely then, we can begin to understand how Camus and others began to believe that they were living in an absurd world, a meaningless place, where, nonetheless, one had to go on living, and by one's choices create one's life and, in concert with others, the life of social man.Thus, out of the existential crisis of the moral and economic collapse of WWI, mankind, and European-kind, would rebuild its future out of the welter of lived experience, not on preconceived principles or models provided by religion or "bourgeois morality."
Thus, we see Camus' development of the absurd. In The Stranger, Camus uses the term only one time and seems to pass over it lightly giving it relatively little significance. He says, "What few people were about seemed in an absurd hurry." However, his biographer points out that the entire feeling and mood of the novel really gives us the feeling of the absurd.
"There is an irreducible difference between the notion and the experience of the absurd; indeed, The Myth of Sysiphus might be said to aim at giving us this idea, and The Stranger at giving us the feeling'."
How does the absurd arise? We have already suggested that WWI was the defining event for Camus and many others in bringing meaningless- ness to the forefront of consciousness, but this is not to exclude many other elements.
"The feeling of the absurd can arise in a variety of ways, through, for example, the perception of Nature's indifference to man's values and ideals, through recognition of the finality of death, or through the shock caused by the sudden perception of the pointlessness of life's routine."
Because life has become absurd, and because no eternal principles apply to direct this society, then the ultimate question becomes, "Why live?" And, if we choose to live, then we must reach some conclusion about how to live, how to move forward day-to-day.
"Camus is well-known for his statement that `there is only one really serious philosophical problem, that of suicide. To judge that life is or is not worth the trouble of being lived, this is to reply to the fundamental question of philosophy.'"
However, Camus does not believe that suicide is the answer. He believes that man can devote himself "in a self-sacrificing manner to the welfare of his fellow man....if he does so without hope of reward and conscious that in the long run it makes no difference how he acts... it is possible to be a saint without illusion."
The idea of man in the absurd is only partially revealed in The Stranger, but becomes clearer if one reads, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, and The Plague. In these works, and others,
"Human pride and greatness are shown [not] in surrender... but in living in the consciousness of the absurd and yet revolting against it by man's committing himself and living in the fullest manner possible."
Now, returning to the work The Stranger, we are in a position to answer a number of questions: Has Camus depicted an absurd world? Is the absurd a satisfactory alternative to the world of reason and morals that the absurd seeks to replace? Are any of the characters "living in the fullest manner possible" or on the road to becoming "saint[s] without illusion?"
It is apparent that The Stranger does indeed express the feeling or mood of the absurd. The sense of meaninglessness is palpable, and the pathologies and criminal tendencies expressed in the various characters and relations among the characters are presented without any sense of judgment of their behavior. They are portrayed as though they are "just folks." Indeed, that is the height of the absurd. On the other hand, the justice system with all its preconceived judgments about Meursault, about personality, and about sin or right and wrong is portrayed as expressing just so much hot air. The absurd life for Camus is simply accepting life as it is lived whether or not those lives are or are not being lived according to our preconceived judgments about how life should be lived. Life cannot be judged. It cannot be under-stood "from the outside." Indeed, it remains obscure to those living it, but live it they must!
Thus Camus draws a line in the sand. Which is real life - the lives depicted throughout the book or life seen through the prism of the moralistic magistrate, prosecutor, defense attorney, and prison chaplain? For this writer, although Camus might wish otherwise, Camus has depicted the problem, but not the solution. There is clearly a crisis of meaning in the modern world, and I would even state that I think it has reached to a deeper and more critical mass, so to speak, than when Camus was writing. We have lived through even more horrors than he, and the sense of meaninglessness, even nihilism, is more pervasive than ever. I even saw a young person with a T-shirt that read, "Whoever has the most things when he dies wins." It would be fair to say that he was proclaiming an absurd view of life.
I do not see any affirmation of "saints without illusions" in this particular work, and since Camus drew a line in the sand, it is my considered view that the Algerian court system with its perceived anachronistic morals and values is actually closer to truth and "reality" than Meursault or any of his cohorts.
Camus has not confounded religion with his feeble and spurious unwillingness to repent or believe. In fact, insofar as we have been given the opportunity to get to know Meursault better than the prison chaplain, we can see that Meursault is far more darkened and hardened that the chaplain might have imagined.
Nor has the novel revealed that middle-class values are empty. Indeed, the bourgeois goals of the American and French revolutions to provide every citizen with a fair trial exemplifies the inherent kindness and striving for justice that marks the post-Enlightenment, democratic civilization of Western Europe, and, in a different way, the United States of America.
Yes, the crisis of values truly exists. It existed in 1940, and it exists today. Far too many have rejected the middle way of Aristotle's virtuous man, the "golden mean." Far too many have rejected our institutions as based on lies, and unreal assumptions. Far too many have rejected faith in the true and living God, the redemptive power of the Cross of Christ. Yet, giving in to a tidal wave of meaninglessness is not nor ever can be the answer. The Stranger accurately suggests the parameters for understanding the absurdity of our times, but it does not even begin to suggest an answer that will transform a negative consciousness into a hopeful and happy one.
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
I think it would be fair to say that this book is an important work in the world of letters that emerged after World War I. The "Great War to End All Wars" was a watershed in history because as "total war" it involved the civilian population as no previous war had. And because of the many new weapons of mass destruction that were used for the first time, ten million persons died and millions of others were wounded and mutilated.
Albert Camus' father, Lucien, was killed in WWI, and I think it would intuitively be realistic to think that this had a profound effect on the thoughtful youth living in straitened circumstances in Algeria. In most cases, the death of a parent will take some of the glow out of childhood. Thus, we see a man who was personally affected and wounded by WWI and a Europe in the throes of disillusionment and recovery after 1918.
To many, WWI was the straw that broke the camel's back. Why didn't God prevent the war with its enormous suffering? How could a just and good God allow man to be ruined not only by poverty but also by the havoc of the war machine? Why would a civilization governed by the rational ideals that reason and goodwill could work things out fail so miserably? Was the world, and the West in particular, not shaped by the idea that responsible action governed by the moral sense would create and ever-evolving, more perfect world? And was this not all a wretched lie?
Surely then, we can begin to understand how Camus and others began to believe that they were living in an absurd world, a meaningless place, where, nonetheless, one had to go on living, and by one's choices create one's life and, in concert with others, the life of social man.Thus, out of the existential crisis of the moral and economic collapse of WWI, mankind, and European-kind, would rebuild its future out of the welter of lived experience, not on preconceived principles or models provided by religion or "bourgeois morality."
Thus, we see Camus' development of the absurd. In The Stranger, Camus uses the term only one time and seems to pass over it lightly giving it relatively little significance. He says, "What few people were about seemed in an absurd hurry." However, his biographer points out that the entire feeling and mood of the novel really gives us the feeling of the absurd.
"There is an irreducible difference between the notion and the experience of the absurd; indeed, The Myth of Sysiphus might be said to aim at giving us this idea, and The Stranger at giving us the feeling'."
How does the absurd arise? We have already suggested that WWI was the defining event for Camus and many others in bringing meaningless- ness to the forefront of consciousness, but this is not to exclude many other elements.
"The feeling of the absurd can arise in a variety of ways, through, for example, the perception of Nature's indifference to man's values and ideals, through recognition of the finality of death, or through the shock caused by the sudden perception of the pointlessness of life's routine."
Because life has become absurd, and because no eternal principles apply to direct this society, then the ultimate question becomes, "Why live?" And, if we choose to live, then we must reach some conclusion about how to live, how to move forward day-to-day.
"Camus is well-known for his statement that `there is only one really serious philosophical problem, that of suicide. To judge that life is or is not worth the trouble of being lived, this is to reply to the fundamental question of philosophy.'"
However, Camus does not believe that suicide is the answer. He believes that man can devote himself "in a self-sacrificing manner to the welfare of his fellow man....if he does so without hope of reward and conscious that in the long run it makes no difference how he acts... it is possible to be a saint without illusion." The idea of man in the absurd is only partially revealed in The Stranger, but becomes clearer if one reads, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, and The Plague. In these works, and others,
"Human pride and greatness are shown [not] in surrender...but in living in the consciousness of the absurd and yet revolting against it by man's committing himself and living in the fullest manner possible."
Now, returning to the work The Stranger, we are in a position to answer a number of questions: Has Camus depicted an absurd world? Is the absurd a satisfactory alternative to the world of reason and morals that the absurd seeks to replace? Are any of the characters "living in the fullest manner possible" or on the road to becoming "saint[s] without illusion?"
It is apparent that The Stranger does indeed express the feeling or mood of the absurd. The sense of meaninglessness is palpable, and the pathologies and criminal tendencies expressed in the various characters and relations among the characters are presented without any sense of judgment of their behavior. They are portrayed as though they are "just folks." Indeed, that is the height of the absurd. On the other hand, the justice system with all its preconceived judgments about Meursault, about personality, and about sin or right and wrong is portrayed as expressing just so much hot air. The absurd life for Camus is simply accepting life as it is lived whether or not those lives are or are not being lived according to our preconceived judgments about how life should be lived. Life cannot be judged. It cannot be under-stood "from the outside." Indeed, it remains obscure to those living it, but live it they must!
Thus Camus draws a line in the sand. Which is real life - the lives depicted throughout the book or life seen through the prism of the moralistic magistrate, prosecutor, defense attorney, and prison chaplain? For this writer, although Camus might wish otherwise, Camus has depicted the problem, but not the solution. There is clearly a crisis of meaning in the modern world, and I would even state that I think it has reached to a deeper and more critical mass, so to speak, than when Camus was writing. We have lived through even more horrors than he, and the sense of meaninglessness, even nihilism, is more pervasive than ever. I even saw a young person with a T-shirt that read, "Whoever has the most things when he dies wins." It would be fair to say that he was proclaiming an absurd view of life.
I do not see any affirmation of "saints without illusions" in this particular work, and since Camus drew a line in the sand, it is my considered view that the Algerian court system with its perceived anachronistic morals and values is actually closer to truth and "reality" than Meursault or any of his cohorts.
Camus has not confounded religion with his feeble and spurious un- willingness to repent or believe. In fact, insofar as we have been given the opportunity to get to know Meursault better than the prison chaplain, we can see that Meursault is far more darkened and hardened that the chaplain might have imagined.
Nor has the novel revealed that middle-class values are empty. Indeed, the bourgeois goals of the American and French revolutions to provide every citizen with a fair trial exemplifies the inherent kindness and striving for justice that marks the post-Enlightenment, democratic civilization of Western Europe, and, in a different way, the United States of America.
Yes, the crisis of values truly exists. It existed in 1940, and it exists today. Far too many have rejected the middle way of Aristotle's virtuous man, the "golden mean." Far too many have rejected our institutions as based on lies, and unreal assumptions. Far too many have rejected faith in the true and living God, the redemptive power of the Cross of Christ. Yet, giving in to a tidal wave of meaninglessness is not nor ever can be the answer. The Stranger accurately suggests the parameters for under- standing the absurdity of our times, but it does not even begin to suggest an answer that will transform a negative consciousness into a hopeful and happy one.
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Jones (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
Although Camus' The Stranger completely goes completely against my entire belief structure; it is a simple masterpiece of human indifference. It illustrates how many people in this world think, react, and feel about the purpose of life and whether any of it has meaning. The Stranger explores issues such as irrationality in the universe, the meaninglessness of human life, and how important the physical world is. Camus was himself a proclaimed atheist and these bleak issues shine through in the most haunting way.
The Stranger is told in first person by a character named Meursault. He is attending his mother's funeral. He really doesn't care too much that his mother has just passed away. Merusault has a cold indifference concerning everything around him. He feels nothing most of the time, but he still feels very much like a real human being and not a cardboard narrator. On the day of the funeral, he mostly notices the weather and how hot it is, instead of what he should be focusing on: the death of his mother.
The day after the funeral, life is back to normal again. Nothing has changed for Meursault. He meets a girl, takes her to a movie, and spends the night with her. This is a key sequence describing how logic never seems to grab hold of him. Where did he develop this attitude from? The novel never really explains, but our belief structure can never totally be explained.
Meursault, soon after, develops a friendship with a man named Raymond. Raymond has a furious temper and has been known to assault women. On one occasion he beats up his Arab mistress rather badly. This leads to revenge that is attempted on him and Meursault later on in the novel by the mistress's brother and his friend.
The climax of novel occurs on a sun drenched beach. Raymond has invited Merusault and his girlfriend Marie to spend the day there with a couple of friends. The morning starts out well enough. This small group of people goes swimming, talk, and eat a pleasant lunch together.
After lunch Merusault, Raymond, and another fellow named Masson decide to go out walking. They spot the Arab brother of this mistress Raymond assaulted. He is with a friend, walking towards them. As they grow closer towards one another a fight breaks out, Raymond is stabbed, and the two Arab's flee. It turns out Raymond didn't suffer any major blows, however, and his is patched up at the hospital within a couple of hours.
Later on that afternoon, Merusault and Raymond spot the two Arabs again on the beach. They stare at each other coldly, but no outbreak occurs and the Arabs walk away, Raymond and Merusault continue walking and Raymond decides he needs a rest. Merusault asks him for his gun and heads back in the other direction.
Merusault soon spots one of the Arabs lying down on the beach, and in one of the most explosive and tense scenes in all of literature, guns him down.
Part two of the novel deals with Merusault's time in prison, the trial of his crime, and the delivery of his sentence. This is philosophical section of the novel and possible the finest. Merusault is left alone with his thoughts which become increasingly urgent with impending doom weighing down upon his mind.
The tone of The Stranger is appropriately detached and empty, much like its narrator. Notice how Merusault doesn't acknowledge anything by using judgment or emotion.
He simply points out the "physical" things that people do around him. The weather being hot... the nice skin on a girl... the sand on the beach. He never states emotional things such as: I really loved being with her... I liked the way she made me feel… He had a good personality. Things like this are not noticed. Only the physical aspects of the world around him are. This is an underlying symbol of his detachment with God and the emotional side of the world he lives in. Merusault never breaks character. Camus molds him into the symbol of his own beliefs and never once strays from that path.
It ironic that at the moment Merusault gives up all hope is the moment he is at peace and happy. As long as he clings to hope he is miserable. There is a key sequence at the end of the novel between him and the Chaplin. The Chaplin cannot accept that Merusault will not turn to God in his hour of need, but Merusault cannot understand why the Chaplin can believe in something that is illogical and unreal. When we die, that is all there is. Human life has no greater meaning.
That is the central issue of the novel. There is no logic in the universe. There is no God, no higher being, no fate, destiny, or any outside force acting upon us. We are simply creatures of chance and coincidence. Personally, I feel that is a very bleak way to describe the world, but nevertheless it is a view many people believe in.
The Stranger didn't change any of my beliefs, but it gave me a greater understanding into the minds of others. It unflinchingly went against all that I hold sacred. But it made me think long and hard. It helped shed some light on why people are the way they are, and at the same time strengthened the beliefs that make me who I am. That is one right we all have and no one can take from us: our beliefs and values. I felt like I was right there with Merusault in his hopeless little world he lived in. What makes a novel great is not whether or not you agree with the issues presented by an author, but rather the way the author presents them... and there aren't many greater at doing that then The Stranger. |
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Chavez (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
As other people have stated, this is definitely a powerful book. I love books that really make you re-evaluate your life and what components define you, and this is one of them. As desolate as this sounds, the existentialist pattern of this book entices you to realize how trivial we are in the great scheme of things. How many of us remember stories about or have even heard of the unremarkable "normal" people from 100 years ago? Hardly anyone, I would assume, unless you're into genealogy. The main character's indifference with the world is more honest than I could imagine. When his girlfriend asks for him to marry her, he basically says OKay, and when she asks him if he loves her, he tells her that he doesn't really love her, and then she asks him why he would marry her, and he tells her because that is what she wants. In modern times, how many people can be thought of that get married for that same reason? It's the same thing when he's in jail. He says that it doesn't matter when he dies because he's going to die someday anyway. This is definitely a book that leads the reader to new thoughts about life. Since this is such a short, interesting, and easy read, I highly recommend it to anyone, from the non-reader that wants to experience a new kind of philosophy, to the ardent reader that doesn't have a lot of time on his or her hands. A truly wonderful book. |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
As with most great literary works, there appears to be endless interpretations of this brief but strangely compelling novel. My own reading of it came while listening to a Teaching Company course on Existentialism. My take on the book will undoubtedly reflect my own prejudices and biases. Nevertheless, here it is.
I find I must disagree with the many reviewers who describe Mersault as an "existentialist" character. Far from it; indeed, Mersault seems the opposite of the existentialist ideal. Nietszche would have despised him for his lack of passion. Kierkegaard would have rebuked his unwillingness to take a leap of faith. Even Sartre would have found his inability to take responsibility for his actions despicable.
Existentialism is far more than just "gloominess" or being fashionably depressed. It is an outlook on life that admits the ugliness of the world and still urges us to take hold of ourselves in the face of all the apparent reasons for despair. In this sense it is a very empowering and positive school of thought.
Mersault is the opposite of the existentialist ideal. He eschews passion in all forms. Love, moral discernment, even opportunities for self improvement are nothing to him. He finds an odd sort of comfort in his nihilism. To him life holds no meaning, and this belief shields him from the sting of grief at his mother's death. It enables him to use Marie for his own pleasure while feeling no obligation, no inconvenient emotions, towards her. It allows him to overlook the shady character and misdeeds of his "friends." Even murder is a passionless act to him, one he regards with no more thought than taking a breath.
The only time he displays strong feelings is when confronted by the chaplain. He flies into rage at the priest's compassion and belief in an afterlife. Such ideas threaten the relentless despair that comforts him. In the end he rejects with finality all forms of hope and takes solace is his belief that the world just doesn't give a damn about him or anyone else. It is this atttitude that not only enables him to think about being beheaded but to look forward to it.
Camus, while not a believer in God, nonetheless had faith that life in worth living, that good and evil exist, and that the good is worth fighting for. In all of these things Mersault is his opposite, and is thus a poignant example of what existentialism has to offer. It is by rejecting his nihilism and passionately saying "Yes!" to life that we find the sense of meaning he so fervently dreaded.
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Animie Dork (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
This book is awful. Truly terrible and distructive. It took me years to figure out why and how to explain it and after a nightmare I had last night, I somehow thought of this book and now i know how to put it into words.
Basically, if you liked this book, then I feel bad for you and the rest of society. If you didn't like it, then this is why. In order to like the book, you had to empathize with the main character and think, poor guy, not his fault. That was basically the only way to like it. Disliking it meant you were thinking, what the freak, what the freak is wrong with you. Somethings wrong and I can’t explain it.
What this main character is, is a psychopath. Not the slang term but the medical, murderer term that we use for people like Bundy and Dahmer. Think about it. He doesnt care about anything. He doesnt feel for anything other than a sort of detachment, and when he sort of just kills that guy for no reason, he doesnt even feel bad afterwards. And the only time he shows any emotion is when he's about to be punished and put to death for it.
Good. That’s what you do with psychopaths. You punish them and keep them from hurting little kids. If his type of thinking is okay, "as long as I explain why i killed him and it was me not paying attention (apparently the sun was in his eyes as well and he couldnt find a way to word it), then I shouldnt have to die cause now i'm scared." Why dont we let everyone in teh whole world accept that as a valid excuse. We'll let every single person on earth go around shooting people for no reason and say, well, as long as he wasnt paying attention. No. We call those types of people unstable and crazy.
Now, if the writer had made clear somehow from the very beginning, "I present to you my friends, the innerworkings, of the mind, of a madman" then i would say, amazing. Great. Good book. I was terrified. You win. Instead, the writer spends the entire time trying to say, no, uh, hmm, he's, like, the average joe but he just thinks... kinda... like wierd and stuff... and so i really want to like... justify when he does something... kinda crazy and stuff... you know? And make people... think its okay to do that kind of thing... for no reason... cause it'll cool... just watch.
Like I said, this book is terrible. And it scared people that kind of said, uh oh. There've been times when the sun was in my eyes, and yeah, that really irritated me. Sure I didn't kill anyone but... oh shoot, I'm scared now and I dont know why. And people that thought, huh, sometimes... I guess I feel detached. I mean, I still have emotion and care about people and fall in love and feel all those other human emotions people feel but I mean... is this... something I should have looked into? Cause what if I'm as crazy as this dude here.
Someone that doesnt care about anything. Kills for no reason. Doesnt love or feel and thinks only of simple things and of himself, and only feels fear just as they're about to put him to death, and yet doesnt even regret that he had just ended another's life just as easily and just for the sake of it. A psychopath. So please dont feel bad for him. And as I said, the only way to like this book, is to do just that, because that's what the whole things about. Let's feel bad for the crazy guy cause he just didn't know any better.
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Norm Zurawski (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
Albert Camus himself termed The Stranger, "The nakedness of man faced with the absurd." I'm not sure that's my immediate perception of this book, but it's an accurate enough depiction of one perspective of it. When Camus was in his early 20's, he wrote A Happy Death, which is apparently a precursor to this idea that murder ultimately leads to the murderer's freedom. At face value, the idea is absurd. After thinking about it more, it's still absurd.
Granted, my agreeing with this sentiment neither makes this book better nor worse for it. The book is intriguing, written in a direct & simple style that Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace would do well to copy. There is little which the reader needs to assert for himself, at least regarding what is said and what is meant, since there is little need for interpretation. What lies beneath, namely the main character's fragile and fractured psyche, is another story altogether.
In this we are led through a life, an unfeeling and direct life of mild observation and little action. Observations are made through a pane glass of unfeeling, that nothing matters. Clearly this reflected a lot of Camus' own opinion on life, as his books often explore the theme of life's uselessness. The main character is an epitome of that opinion, which we see flood through in the book's final pages.
This flood is one of pent up emotion, a flood which I did not anticipate. Through this release we see the freedom that Camus refers to elsewhere, that the condemned is the only one who can truly be free. Conversely, he intones that all of us are condemned. Thus the question is begged, are we not all capable of this same freedom which the imminently condemned grasps?
These are questions in a vacuum. Perhaps the Camus scholar has been through these questions and surmises that he or she knows the answers already. Or perhaps Camus suggested the answers in other books. I offer these thoughts in ignorance of alternate studies and sources. I offer these thoughts in my own space of having read this book - not as a scholar nor a Camus expert, but as someone who reads and came across this book through a book store clerk years ago.
The book is good, not great. The themes are dark, mired in the head of the depressed. It's not a book anyone can enjoy. There is no happy ending, and little laughter. It's a morose treatise on the pointlessness of life. Regardless of your agreement with it, it's still a good read so long as you keep a certain perspective.
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Kevin Killian (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
I sometimes wonder, why assign this great novel to high school children? It's a handbook of perversion, in a sense. That's not a bad thing in and of itself, but how many nowadays have read the book? No wonder there are incidents like Columbine every day in the papers. Young boys (sadly, they are always boys) read The Stranger and decide, if Meursault could commit a murder in far off Algeria, why can't I do the same here in snowy Colorado (or wherever).
We all suffer from existential angst, sad to say, and this book cleverly pins down the five points of fear, the points by which a good school psychologist should be able to recognize that a potential Columbine is likely to happen within a year's time. The five points include-look at the way Meursault deals with Marie, his lovely and complaisant girlfriend. Although he says he is attracted to her, he often leaves her for long stretches of time. He is disaffected, as the psychologists say. Camus isn't writing a medical textbook, more like a novel, so much of this ennui is a product of his own literary imagination. A few years later Roland Barthes took pen to hand to compose Writing Degree Zero, in which he famously divided the author's tools into three broad sections-language (for we all must write in language), style (which individuates us from our peers), and what he called "ecriture" in response to Sartre, Camus and other existentialist novelist for whom modernism was a disastrous wrong turn in humanity's social progress toward the Good.
Another of the five points of fear comes in Meursault's interaction with his neighbor, Raymond. Is it me or do these guys seem more French than Algerian? Today we would recognize The Stranger as an example of the colonial system gone berserk. If you are living in occupied territory, you can't expect to feel very stable. Spielberg and Tobe Hooper, telling the story of POLTERGEIST, picked up on some of Camus' themes when they set their poltergeist-rocked suburban home squarely on a forgotten Indian graveyard. What is difficult for Meursault is to make a decision. In this he reminds us of Hamlet, and as we know, the stature of Shakespeare's Hamlet was at an all-time high in the immediate postwar era, what with the Olivier film, etc. His eternally questioning figure rang a bell with veterans and citizens weary of endless war. For Meursault, to act or not to act are pretty much the same. How to detect a difference? Often we look for signs from the outside world, for example, watching a fly cross a table. If it zigzags this way, we pull the trigger. If it flies away, lives are spared. Think of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West as another cinematic analogue to Camus' The Stranger and its five points of fear. Just the fly creeping around Jack Elam's face in the opening sequence gives you the creeps, for violence and terror depend on which way the fly falls.
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