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The Stranger (Paperback)
by Albert Camus
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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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Author: Albert Camus
Publisher: Vintage; Reissue edition
Pub. in: March, 1989
ISBN: 0679720200
Pages: 144
Measurements: 8.0 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00462
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- MSL Picks -
The Stranger, by Albert Camus, focuses on the life of a French office worker named Mersault. Mersault lives in the city of Algiers and enjoys mild popularity. His "best friends" include a pimp and an abusive pet owner. He has what one could call a love interest, but he is not truly interested in her for more than sexual purposes. He is a man living life with a silent apathy, almost detached from the world around him. The story is told through his eyes, and even with his viewpoint, one can see how cold a man he is. In the height of an unusually warm day, he kills an Arab. He is then jailed and put on trial, but the question Camus leaves with readers is whether or not he is being tried for murder or his inability to show feelings? Camus's novel is an exposition on the theme of alienation, but with a twist, the alienation is brought upon by the main character. The Stranger is a worthwhile read that examines what happens when "man is stripped naked in the face of the absurd".
Camus employs several literary techniques to convey his overall themes in the novel. The first, and most noticeable, is the characterization of Mersault. Mersault is a character that most can relate to. He holds a job, has a few friends, lives in an apartment complex, and holds what would seem to be an ordinary life. However, when one looks deeper into his personality, one can see some glaring defects. The book opens with him attending the funeral of his mother (referred to as Maman in the translation). Instead of being struck with grief, he is indifferent. "For now, its almost as if Maman weren't dead. After the funeral, though, the case will be closed, and everything will have a more official feel to it" (3). Rather than be stricken with grief, he is more indifferent to his mother's passing, with no hint of remorse. The oddity of his behavior is further explored when we get a look at his romantic relationship with Marie. Marie is highly interested in Mersault, but it does not seem he wants her for more than pleasure. "A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so" (35). He is reluctant to admit any feeling he may have for her, revealing his immaturity as a human being and the under-development of his emotional skills, this is even further displayed in another discussion with Marie regarding marriage. "Then she pointed out that marriage was a serious thing and I said no. She stopped talking for a minute and looked at me without saying anything. Then she spoke. She wanted to know if I would have accepted the same proposal from another woman with whom as I was involved in the same way. I said sure" (42). Mersault does not know what love is, and is incapable of reaching to Marie or anyone else around him, in a world of humanity, to many, he appears peculiar for this reason. His inability to show remorse will ultimately end up costing him.
The other tool employed by Camus is his use of language and syntax within the novel. In the notes of the translator of the novel, Camus admittedly tried to employ a more American style of writing, trying to adopt the Hemingway tradition of short sentences. He ultimately achieves this goal, as can be seen from the following passage. "We just sat there like that for quite a while. The woman's sighs and sobs were quiting down. She sniffed a lot" (11). Camus uses this "American system" of writing for to reasons. First, he does it to convey the dialect of Mersault. Mersault is a man of few words, and most of his dialogues consist of "yes" or "no" responses. The second is to make the novel more accessible to the public. The text is admittedly simple, but the themes and questions it raises are not. Thus the intent of Camus through his diction is to make his book accessible to all but be understood completely by few.
Overall, Camus does a fine job of introducing themes in the novel, though most truly come to be near the end of the text. One of the first themes is insensitivity used as a crutch to protect oneself. This occurs all through- out the novel, but in particular, the first chapter dealing with Maman's death is the best example. "Then I felt like having a smoke. But I hesitated because I didn't know if I could do it with Maman there. I thought about it; it didn't matter. I offered the caretaker a cigarette, and we smoked"(8). Another theme is the idea of a man's lack of sensitivity costing him his freedom. Most of the basis for the prosecution's argument in Mersault's trial relies on the fact that Mersault is insensitive. Another theme is alienation. Mersault, while awaiting his trial, is seated in the court room and realizes, "I couldn't make out a single face" (83). Mersault begins to realize just how different from everyone else he truly was. In many cases, he is a martyr because of these differences. Immaturity is another theme. When Mersault thinks of women he thinks about women in the sense of sexual pleasure, not in the sense of commitment. Camus hits every theme that could be imaginable when thinking of "man's nakedness when faced with the absurd.
Although a short read, Camus's The Stranger is a simply written text with a complex main character and overall theme. Mersault's immaturity makes one pity him, but his insensitivity is so grossly pronounced in most situations that one cannot help but want him out of existence. In many ways, Mersault is a carbon copy of Scott Peterson. Though their crimes are entirely different, both men suffered a serious mental deficiency when it came to showing emotion. Eventually, for both men, their cold hearts led to their ultimate demise, which begs the question, is emotion the only thing that separates man from monster?
(From quoting an American review named The Mound Pariah)
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From the Publisher:
The Stranger is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camus's compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity (and remains a staple of U.S. high school literature courses) in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt - all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of The Stranger, however, is that it's not mired in period philosophy.
The plot is simple. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. The trial's proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities - that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mother's death and then attended a comic movie the evening after her funeral are two ostensibly damning facts - so that the eventual sentence the jury issues is both ridiculous and inevitable.
Meursault remains a cipher nearly to the story's end - dispassionate, clinical, disengaged from his own emotions. "She wanted to know if I loved her," he says of his girlfriend. "I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." There's a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. It's undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with "the gentle indifference of the world" remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it.
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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. |
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.
|
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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