The Stranger | Albert Camus | Dispassionately Compelling

The Stranger | Albert Camus | Surreal Classic

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The Stranger

	The Stranger Albert Camus Vintage, 1989 - 144 pages average customer review:based on 530 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Dispassionately Compelling

Like most of Camus' works, The Stranger's plot is simple but the meaning is trivially existentialist and compelling. The Stranger begins with the death of narrator Meursault's mother. After napping on the bus to her retirement home, Meursault is disengaged and unmoved by the vigil and funeral procession, and continues to be until the finale of his trial.

Meursault appears insensitive throughout The Stranger and lives for pleasure in the moment. When asked by ladyfriend Marie if he loves her, he responds nonchalantly, "...it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." Meursault, however, does have feelings for her, but chooses not to acknowledge them.

When faced with the conflict of killing a man for being a threat to his friend, Meursault's "live in the moment" persona erupts inside of him enough to pull the trigger five times and not panic. Throughout the lengthy period of time Meursault spent in prison, he continued to be indifferent, unmoved, and dispassionate. Though he did not feel like a criminal, he still struggled to come to terms with his disposition.

The end of the novel is disconcertingly troubling. Meursault fights to disengage his feelings from Marie as she sits in the visiting room of the prison, and struggles to choke back words of defense for himself during the trial. He listens to the prosecutor demean his image and is powerless over it. Finally, Meursault feels like a criminal, but convinces himself that he will be spared despite his murderous crime. However, Meursault is sentenced to a public execution and consequently becomes even more dispassionate than he had been. His final thoughts of resignation were impersonal and repugnant, due to the fact that Meursault had become entirely convinced that his world was truly a physical one and he had reached the inevitable end.

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Surreal Classic

This book is a true classic. It is very well written, concise, and accessible. It is a first person narrative of a seemingly ordinary Frenchman living in Algeria who finds himself involved in a murder. It is amazing and disturbing how easy the reader can be drawn in and caught up in the protagonist's detached view of the world.

Wait, the book's over?

This is one of my favorite books. I got really into existentialism back in highschool before reading this (and it helps to know a little about that) and I just fell in love with the book. Not much happens really, plot wise. And, its almost impossible to view the main character in a good light, so it's really not like many books out there. But because of these facts, and not in spite of them, the book is able to hold your entire attention for its terribly short duration.

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Brilliant

This was an amazing book, as well as an amazing translation. I loved it and I would wholeheartedly recommend it.

The Stranger

Traditionally this is considered a book about alienation. To me it tells the tragedy of having feelings considered alien by the society in which you live.

After killing a man, Meursault is taken before people who shamelessly express their desire to judge him by his personality rather than by what he did or didn't. Even the fact that he was not seen to cry at his mother's funeral becomes an evidence of his guilt. At the same time when all society turns against him in repulsion for his diversity, we start to see the honesty and naivety inherent in his thoughts and decisions. His realization at the end is genial.

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