The Stranger

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. --Ben Guterson

Product Description
Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." First published in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward.

Book Description
Patrick McCarthy places The Stranger in the context of a French and French-Algerian history and culture, examines the way the work undermines traditional concepts of fiction, and explores the parallels (and more importantly the contrasts) between Camus and Sartre.

Basically, Meursault does not care about anything, does not feel anything for anyone (including himself, for the most part). He looks at life objectively and determines that it really doesn't matter whether he does something or not in the overall scheme of things. When Marie expresses her love for him, he tells her he will marry her if it will make her happy but that he cannot say he really loves her. He expresses no remorse for killing the Arab because it just happened; he had no intention of doing it, but the fact is that he did, so there's little point in dwelling on it. He cares about the present and, to a lesser degree, the future, but the past is meaningless for the very reason that it is the past. Meursault sees things as they are; rather than rely on flights of fantasy and imagination (the typical tools of the Romanticists), he deals with facts in the here and now rather than run from them and has no problem admitting the seemingly obvious fact that man is a creature of utter depravity. He rejects religion; since each man must eventually die, what does it matter what he does while on earth. It is a man's hopes and dreams that weigh down his very existence; Marsault can only find happiness by cleansing himself of all such illusory notions.

Needless to say, this is not an uplifting book, but it is an engaging, thought-provoking one. While Camus cannot be called a true existentialist in his own philosophical outlook, his fiction does epitomize many existentialist ideas. Marsault is a protagonist like no other in literature--you cannot like him, he is obviously guilty of killing a man in cold blood, and he is of a cold-hearted nature, yet you do understand some of his thinking, find yourself more and more interested in his dark outlook on life, and have to admit that much of what he believes makes sense.


The Stranger: Slow-paced is better?   March 2, 2000
Geoffrey Golden (Buffalo, NY USA)
25 out of 27 found this review helpful

In sports, to examine the action closely, they do a slow-motion instant replay. The Stranger by Albert Camus is slow paced; there's one scene in the beginning where the main character, Meursault, describes in full detail his day, in which he looked out the window. That was all, Meursault just talked about the people who walked by that day. However, this single fault the book has is necessary in order to understand and accept Camus' existentialist message. Like a slow-motion replay of fast action, only when Camus slows down the life of Meursault does the reader see the entire picture. The famous image of the novel is Meursault shooting an Arab man on the beach. A fast paced action novel would not have given much detail-- which would have missed Camus' message. Saying that Meursault shot an Arab does not tell the reader anything, but having Meursault describe in full detail the unbearable nature of the heat that day, about the sweat running down his forehead and the sun pounding on his back, and by leaving out any thoughts about the morality of his actions, only then do we understand Camus' message. There is no God out there who care, he could shoot or not shoot, it would not matter either way. What drove Meursault to kill the Arab was not distorted morals, that it would be right for him to kill the Arab on a spiritual or vengeful level. Rather, Meursault killed the Arab because it was hot that day. He is driven by honest emotions only, and Meursault will be persecuted for this later on. Slowing down the pace also makes the story seem that much more real and detailed. I imagined the bullets Meursault shoots at the beach in the same slow motion style that was used in The Matrix. Also, the scenes in which he breaks his placid persona, such as the one in which Meursault attacks a visiting chaplain, are heightened dramatically by the slow pace. The outburst of emotion is far more exciting with a low key atmosphere surrounding it. This is important because the scene with the chaplain, where he discovers his own beliefs (existentialism), is one of the key parts of the novel. Normally I do not like a slow paced novel, but I'm willing to make an exception with The Stranger. By slowing down the action, the theme becomes easier to understand and the images become far more absorbing. Oddly enough, it would appear that the book's only inherent flaw makes the novel better on the whole, and therefore I would not be exaggerating if I said The Stranger was flawless.


A powerfully disturbing and bleak novel   February 17, 2004
Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)
20 out of 23 found this review helpful

Although Albert Camus had achieved some fame as a journalist in his native Algiers in the thirties and as a writer for the French resistance during WW II, he first achieved an international critical reputation with the publication of this classic novel in 1946. The portrait of the detached, unfeeling, uncommitted, amoral, perpetually abstracted Meursault is one of the most haunting in 20th century literature. For many, it is the supreme 20th century literary depiction of nihilism. Unquestionably it is one of the premier literary efforts of the century, though Camus managed several other books just as powerful and superb in their own way, in particular THE PLAGUE, THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS, and THE FALL.

Meursault reminds me so much of figures from the paintings of Manet. In painting after painting, Manet depicted individuals alone in crowds, failing or refusing to interact or even acknowledge the others in the frame. In one famous painting, a lower middle class girl sits alone in her own little orb, sitting beside an upper class gentleman, neither acknowledging the existence of the other, both self-contained, seemingly detached from the busy world surrounding them. Behind them, a barmaid drinks a beer, equally oblivious to everyone and everything around her. They might all be on separate desert islands. Manet repeats this in painting after painting. Meursault seems almost as if he had stepped out of one of those paintings. He can at least communicate with others, socialize with them, but he cannot express strong moral sentiments or develop affectionate (as opposed to sexual) attachments.

This is not a happy book. The story deals with Meursault's almost accidental killing of an Arab whose sister had been harmed by one of his acquaintances, but the novel trivializes everything--the killing, his subsequent arrest, his imprisonment, his trial and conviction, and his sentencing. The closest the novel comes to a happy sentiment is near the end when Meursault imagines how much nicer it would be to witness an execution rather than be executed, to have to puke in revulsion than to literally lose one's head to the guillotine.

Camus would never write such a despairing book again. THE PLAGUE the next year would come close, but not close, while THE FALL would seem almost optimistic and upbeat in comparison. But for those who want to find perhaps the quintessential expression of what we like to think of as existentialism, this could stand as the premier literary instance.


Absurd Freedom   January 31, 2003
Nathaniel Avery (Bicton, WA)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

The Stranger is as beautiful as any work of art can hope to be.
It is in the latter parts of the book, where Mersault's words have a lyrical power not seen previous, that the English translation achieves the haunting effect that must be even more prevalent in the French. The first thing readily obvious is that the character has no emotional connection to what he experiences; he simply experiences. Thus, Camus utilizes an American style, terse and detached. Some reviewers were off put by this. "How could he not care that his mother died? " Attaching immorality to Mersault merely shows a total misunderstanding of the book.
Camus believed in "absurd freedom," life has no inner value and is futilely cut short, but it is up to us to determine our life in such uncertainty. If one doesn't interpret life, emotion doesn't exist. But the values that society has incriminate you if you don't conform. They make you strange. They take no account of individuality.
That is the peril of the main character after a bizarre series of events on a sun drenched beach.
The power of Camus is that even though he creates such a bleak, hopeless human situation the characters still go on as best they can, perhaps even attaining happiness. "One must imagine Sisyphus happy," to quote The Myth of Sisyphus.
That is also the power and beauty of mankind.


Hello   November 14, 2000
Yevgeny Bazarov (Yev)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful

The Stranger was the first novel of Camus' labeled "absurd," and it defines Camus for most Americans. The plot is quite simple, with none of the diversions common in popular literature. The main character is not a hero, has no "true" love affair and the pursuit of money and power never enters the story. The Stranger is an honest atheist, waiting for life to happen.

The title l'Etranger, has been poorly translated. The U.S. title, The Stranger, implies that the main character, Meursault, has been viewed as a "strange" or "odd" person for some time. The other possible meaning is that no one knows him. Meursault is a stranger even to those who think they know him. These definitions do not seem adequate. The U.K. title, The Outsider, only serves to confuse readers even more.

Meursault is the archetype of a middle-class man. He works as a clerk, rents an apartment and draws no attention to himself. He is, if anything, very ordinary. Meusault might even be boring. He lacks deep convictions and passion. If he is estranged from any aspect of French society, it is religion--he does not believe in the symbols and the rituals of faith.

Estranged? "Cela m'est egal."

Along with the title, Camus took care in naming the main character. Meursault's name is symbolic of the Mediteranean sea. Mer mean "sea" and soliel is French for "sun." The sea and the sun meet at the beach, where Meursault's defining actions occur.

Meusault is an anti-hero. His only redeeming quality is his honesty, no matter how absurd. In existential terms, he is "authentic" to himself. Meusault does not believe in God, but he cannot lie because he is true to himself. This inability to falsify empathy ultimately condemns him. Meursault has faith only in what he, himself, can see or experience with his other senses. He is not a philosopher, a theologian or a deep thinker. Meursault exists as he is, not trying to be anything more or less than himself.

Why did Camus' readers recognize Meursault as a plausible character? After two World Wars and much suffering, many people came to live life much as Meursault does. Or at least they tried to do so. These people lost the will to do more than exist. There was no hope and no desire. The only goal for many people was simple survival. Even then, the survival seemed empty and hollow. We learn how empty Meursault's existence is through his relationships. He is not close to his mother; we learn he does not cry at her funeral. He does not seem close to his lover, Marie Cardona. Of her, Meursault states, "To me, she was only Marie." There is no passion is Meursault's words or in his life.

What sets Camus apart from many existentialists and modern philosophers in general is his acceptance of contradiction. Yes, Camus wrote, life is absurd and death renders life meaningless--for the individual. But mankind and its societies are larger than any one individual person.