Albert Camus and The Stranger

The Stranger did one thing for me that made it the perfect book for my current situation: it got me thinking about myself, my life and even my existence but saved me the trouble of having to see a character with whom I felt connected to die or fall into a bottomless pit of despair. It’s not that I absolutely hate forcing myself through stories where a likable person meet a horrible ending. In fact, I find torturing myself is at times, very interesting and in many cases, very educational, especially when the author is eloquent and make a interesting argument through the situation that he or she proposes. Nevertheless, for the sake my sanity, I thank Camus for writing The Stranger so concise and making Meursault so honest but hard to feel for.

The Stranger is divided into two very distinctive parts: before and after Meursault’s murder of the Arab. Part one provides us with all the seemingly unrelated information and details that when put together by the prosecutor in part two will be the death of Meursault. Written in short sentences, this first half of the novel includes multiple passages of the many things Meursault does as well as the very few things he keeps in his mind, showing us how passive he is and how little he cares about the people, the events and the world around him. He responds to the questions and demands of the others, not actively moving the story or the plot forward. He rarely answers people’s offers in the negative without any fear of or more precisely, any care for the consequences. When he does reject a suggestion, it’s because he deems that proposal unnecessary, even when it’s conventionally considered to be the more sensible or rational action to take.

Meursault just couldn’t be any less concerned about quite literally, most things. He has no qualms about smoking in the same room as the coffin of his dead mother. He can spend the night with Marie and go see a comedy at the cinema just days after his mother’s funeral, which he attended mostly out of obligation. He doesn’t mind befriending Raymond, a morally questionable man and listens to Raymond’s tales of violence with no intention of rebuking. I never feel any actual contempt towards Meursault; in fact, I find his isolated sense of self and way of distancing his existence from the norms shocking and baffling but also weirdly intriguing. At the same time, his indifferent position in life also make it easier for me to not connect with emotionally. The death of his mother in the novel opening and his reaction always feel like a foreshowing of his ultimate fate, but even with that in mind, I know that when his moment finally comes, I won’t find myself crying for him.

In the second part of the novel, the tone of the story shifted. With murder charges hanging over his head, Meursault begins to show some signs of a man worrying for his life. With that said, Meursault is Meursault still. He with his unique way of dealing with all the troubles thrown in his way remains unchanged as he moves from his place to a prison cell. Meursault doesn’t disprove of being in prison that much and learns to get used to his new surrounding with remarkable grace. We could even say that he is quite content with it. On another hand, we could argue that he’s probably going insane, given the fact that he talks to himself in his cell and smiles at his reflection in a tin plate. For my part, I never think of Meursault as a mad man. If anything, he is an extraordinarily honest man, who sees and interprets everything with a filter unaffected by his environment. The trial he goes through and his meeting with the chaplain, the climax of the story, don’t turn Meursault into a different human being. Instead, they accentuate and bring out more the person that the Meursault has always been: a men completely indifferent to the world.

The Stranger is a wonderful piece of literature. If you ever in need of a short but thought-provoking argument about the way the world can be seen, this may by the perfect read for you. In about less than three hours, there’s a chance that Camus may persuade you to try to look at all around you from a slightly different view point.