“Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure.”

The Stranger, a 1942 novel by Albert Camus, is widely regarded as a quintessential example of Camus' philosophy of the absurd and existentialism. The story's protagonist, Meursault, is an indifferent French Algerian who seems to stand apart from the traditional Mediterranean culture. His initial musings at the start of the story lay the foundation for the plot, as his lack of emotion at his mother's funeral confounds all those present.



In fact, Meursault's lack of emotional response is the very core of the novel.

\\"In our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.\\" -Albert Camus on L’Étranger

The story reveals a world where a person who refuses to play the game (i.e., does not conform to social norms) is likely to be ostracized by society and even punished for their choices. The Meursaults of the world are strangers to society, met with incredulous stares even when they are being honest.

\\"When she laughed I wanted her again. 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. She looked sad.\\"

The novel delves deep into the absurd world as we witness Meursault's tragic end in a realm of apathy and alienation. Meursault's thoughts and actions lack a rational order, yet society attempts to rationalize them in its own way. I found this book to be short yet profoundly mind-bending. The character of Meursault and how his persona seals his fate are aspects that I have often contemplated in relation to the story.

“Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness.”

It is a very short book, but one that will linger in your mind and haunt you for a long time.

On a plot level, reading The Stranger is as exciting as watching your grandmother eat potatoes.

It presents a simple narrative about a nondescript man who engages in random and routine actions. Eventually, he finds himself on trial for an incident that is seemingly caused by the heat.

Although I didn't have a strong emotional connection to the characters or the plot, The Stranger did manage to stimulate my intellect. Thematically, it is a profound book that poses a wide range of questions. These questions span from whether society conditions our emotions to how we grapple with the distinction between absurdity and existentialism.

The last few pages of the book contain the majority of the intellectual "meat" (doesn't that sound rather delicious?). Therefore, I highly recommend not giving up halfway through, even if the plot doesn't initially captivate your interest.

Overall, The Stranger is not the best book I've read for school. However, it functions extremely well in a Socratic seminar or any form of discussion. I will likely return to it in the future when I have a more comprehensive understanding of philosophy.

*This review has also been cross-posted on my blog, the quiet voice.

As a conclusion, I am charmed in the literary aspect and skeptical in the philosophical one.

More than a literary work, which it is, "The Stranger" is a philosophical treatise on how to live, how to overcome the meaninglessness of life and how to face the absurdity of death. I do not share its passive existentialism, the accepting conformism of what there is. Perhaps there are those who can come to live that conformity far from everyone and in a satisfactory and even happy way, but for me, beyond the egoism and the lack of solidarity it implies, it seems impossible.

However, apart from philosophies, the writing has seemed magnificent to me. The personality of the character fits perfectly with the sobriety of the text, its economy of means, the cold neutrality that is maintained almost until the end. Only the essential must be said. There is a meticulous care for the detail, for the precise word, for transmitting the hedonism of the tiniest pleasures; the descriptions are contained, very visual, always referring to the physical sensations. And that fantastic final outburst, fast, implosive, followed by a reflective, happy calm. Brilliant.

I associate this work with the famous Kafkaesque novel of the insect. It would seem as if Camus had wanted to rewrite the end of that one.

Let's see if not (be careful, from here I dissect the plot of the novel):

Before the event that changes everything, the lives of the protagonists of both novels unfold in a peaceful monotony, nothing exciting but not unpleasant either, even pleasant in its small things. After the event, the two protagonists discover themselves as inhuman beings in the eyes of those who surround them, one in appearance and progressively in all his being and the other because of his absolute lack of desires, feelings, morality, because of his absolute indifference towards others and life. In both cases, bug and stranger, they produce repulsion in those who judge them, in a society that sees them as individuals of another species, different and disturbing and, therefore, dangerous. In both cases, the verdict is the death sentence.

In both works the event that initiates the change is foreign to them. In the case of "The Stranger" it is less evident. Although Meursault shoots, at least the first of the shots he undertakes as if it were going, as if the thing were not with him, as if, in the same way that it occurs, it could not have happened, without any motivation, as something that happens to him.

After the event, in his cell, Meursault awakens to the absurd in the same way that Sansa did in her room. But that discovery is not instantaneous in the stranger. At first he maintains his comfortable, passive habits, in conformity with the circumstances in a world where nothing matters much and everything is the same.

“If they had made me live in the trunk of a dry tree without any other occupation than looking at the flower of the sky above my head, I would have gradually got used to it. I would have expected the passing of the birds and the meeting of the clouds.”

As the trial progresses, Meursault discovers the gaze of others (a fact that had already begun to occur at the mother's funeral) and with it his life, which had consisted of a quiet and peaceful day to day, sensitive only to physical sensations, without any kind of reflection but without being subject to norms foreign to him, changes with the confrontation with himself, with him in the middle of others, with him in life and, above all, with him before death. He discovers the meaninglessness, the absurdity. All hope only creates pain. Changing life is a complete illusion. Nothing matters, human relationships are ghosts without transcendence, nothing is relevant, one thing is the same as another.

But, and here is the great change, Meursault's response to his newly discovered "inhumanity" could not be more different from that of Kafka's insect. If Sansa lets herself die, feeling separated from the world, unhappy, Camus' character reveals himself, explodes before the imminent death, his indifference disappears and his first reaction to the absurd is one of anger.

“What did the death of others, the love of a mother matter to me! What did their God, the lives one chooses, the destinies one chooses matter to me, since a single destiny had to choose me and with me thousands of privileged people who, like him, called themselves my brothers! Did he understand, did he understand then? Everyone was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would also be condemned one day. He would also be condemned. What did it matter if accused of a death he was executed for not having cried at his mother's funeral?”

And after the storm, the calm returns, a calm that is already very different from the one that had characterized his life until that moment; in these last moments the calm becomes reflective, proper in a deep sense. For the first time, he had taken the reins.

“As if that great anger had purged me of evil, emptied me of hope, in front of this night full of signs and stars, I opened myself for the first time to the tender indifference of the world. Finding it so similar to me, so brotherly after all, I felt that I had been happy and that I was still happy.”

After all, he had eaten when he felt hungry, he had drunk when he felt thirsty, he had had sex when he felt desire. And now, in his final moment, Meursault presents himself proud, strong enough not to need the consoling lies that man has invented to face his life and his death (Meursault's atheism is the most perfect possible: he does not rebel against the idea of the existence of God, he does not deny it, he simply does not consider it, it is a non-existent, irrelevant, unimportant problem), and repudiating this blind and ignorant society from which he feels proudly distant, he faces his end.

“So that everything is consummated, so that I feel less alone, I still had to wait for the day of my execution to have many spectators and that they receive me with shouts of hatred.”

**"LA DOLCE INDIFFERENZA DEL MONDO"**

The film by Visconti dates back to 1967, with Marcello Mastroianni as Mersault. The opening is already memorable: "Today mother died. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I received a telegram from the home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Distinct greetings.' This says nothing: it may have been yesterday."

The entire novella continues in this vein, never missing a beat. "The Stranger" is so captivating that it could be quoted in its entirety and committed to memory. It lingers in the mind, resurfaces over time, even after years, and is hypnotic. But it's also a thorn.

I first read it twenty-five years ago. For years, I've wanted to pick it up again, and its atmosphere and mood keep resurfacing for me. The recent reading of "Atti osceni in luogo pubblico" finally pushed me to do so.

The protagonist, Mersault, never attempts to describe his own sensations or explain his actions. His lucid honesty is disconcerting. He is incapable of defending himself or saying what others would like to hear from him, such as that he is sorry or repentant. Mersault would say that "in one way or another, one is always a bit guilty," so why repent and be sorry?

It would take very little to avoid the death sentence. Even a simple confession of anguish would suffice. Just say, "I fired, but I didn't want to. The Arab was armed, he scared me, I just wanted to defend myself." After all, Mersault is white, he killed an Arab, and the judge and jurors are ready to welcome him back into the human fold if only he shows a trace of remorse, anything that would restore him to humanity, to presumed normality, and bring him closer to Christ on the cross (the scene with the examining magistrate and the final one with the priest in prison!).

But Mersault doesn't know how to pretend. He can't even falsify his emotional truth to save his life. Mersault refuses the rules of that game called life, and precisely for this reason, he is unbearable to those who must judge him. He will not be so much punished for his crime (which, I repeat, in the end is simply that of a white man who, almost in self-defense, kills an Arab in Algeria in the early 1940s - but I have no intention of attributing racist traits to Camus) - Mersault will be sentenced to death for who he is, because his guilt is that of not being a man like the others.

Was it really Mersault who pulled the trigger? Is he really responsible? Isn't it perhaps a chain reaction produced by nature itself, by destiny? This seems to be the doubt that Camus wants to insinuate in us. The taciturn Mersault explodes: first with the shots against the Arab on the beach scorched by the blinding light of the sun, and then with screams in the cell against the priest. Just as after the shots, just as after the screams, at the end of the first part and at the end of the book, Mersault, "liberated from hope," returns to live "the nameless hours," regains his calm, and rediscovers "the sweet indifference of the world."

The indifference that has made the character of Mersault famous: that absence of feelings that stems from the awareness of the senselessness, the absurdity, the void that characterize the human condition (existentialism).

"I replied that one never changes one's life, that in any case all lives are equivalent and that mine, as it was, didn't displease me at all. He seemed dissatisfied with my answer and told me that I always answered halfway, that I had no ambition and that this was disastrous in business. Then I went back to work. I would have preferred not to displease him, but I couldn't see a reason to change my life. Thinking about it, I wasn't unhappy. As a student, I had many ambitions of that kind. But after I had to abandon my studies, I understood very quickly that all these things didn't have real importance."

"In the evening, Marie came to pick me up and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I told her that it was a matter of indifference to me and that we could do it if she wanted."

Mersault doesn't know. This is often his answer, "I don't know": he doesn't know exactly when his mother died, how old she was, he doesn't know why he killed the Arab on the beach...

Mersault's not knowing stems from his unassailable distance from life, his estrangement from the world, the being a stranger of the title. Things happen without the human mind being able to grasp their motives and logical meanings, and even human behaviors fail to have rationality and therefore justification. Therefore, one can even kill without being able to say why one did it.

Therefore, one can live through one's trial and one's condemnation in an inert and detached way, with atony, without participating, as if everything were happening to someone else, because what happens has no sense, and if it did have sense, we would not be able to understand it.

And so Mersault reminds me of Bartleby's "I would prefer not to" much more than Joseph K or Raskolnikov, whom I think have been too hastily associated with him, more for the sake of similarity in sound than for a valid reason.

In this book, the external world is more important than the internal world, the world of things matters more than the world of thoughts. It is a book immersed in silence and in light.

The 1967 film is surely a minor work of Visconti, a failure, already from its genesis: because Camus' widow stipulated in the contract that the book had to be respected to the letter, and to be sure that this was the case, she imposed a trusted supervisor on the screenplay, Emmanuel Roblès. Visconti wanted to refuse, but was forced by the producer Dino De Laurentiis to make the film respecting the agreement with Mme Camus. The result is a film that is too faithful to the text, a literal adaptation, rigid, embalmed, that ends up betraying both the atmosphere and the meaning of the novel.

In the film, Mersault is not a man who seeks shade and silence, he is not annihilated by the intensity of the light (this only happens in the clumsy scene of the murder), he is not indifferent, distant, apathetic. He seems rather a victim of the heat, a slacker and a sloth, perhaps also because of Mastroianni's unconvincing interpretation. He was already too old to play Mersault.

Although Visconti was a master of costume film, this one instead has an uncertain setting, sometimes too modern. The actors are often dressed with excessive elegance for the role they are playing and the situations they are going through, and the quality of the acting leaves much to be desired.

There is also another adaptation from 2001, "Yazgi," by the Turkish director Zeki Demirkubuz, but I haven't been able to see it yet.

If every single word of praise I've witnessed for "The Stranger" throughout my life were to transform into tiny fragments of rock floating in space, there would be an overwhelming amount of debris, enough to perhaps form something like the Oort Cloud. Just as this distant assemblage of rubble at the outer reaches of the solar system is difficult for me to truly understand, so too is the excessive acclaim bestowed upon this story. Fortunately, much like the Oort Cloud which is usually out of sight and out of mind, and has no perceivable impact on my daily life at present.

However, just as the Oort Cloud can, on rare occasions, send a chunk of debris hurtling towards the earth and cause devastation to all life upon it, I too can be jolted into a state of frenzy when I hear or read people paying lip service to "The Stranger". This often leads to me reacting in an extreme way, like slapping someone in the face, usually someone I'll have to encounter again at some point in the future (maybe even in a courtroom).

Personally, I fail to see what all the fuss is about. With a limited vocabulary of perhaps only 100 words, a meager 123 pages that manage to bore the reader to tears, and a protagonist who seems to have little regard for anything, Camus somehow managed to shake the literary world with this inane drivel. I haven't bothered to sit down and conduct a detailed analysis, but using some reasonable estimates, I would say that the average sentence in this book is approximately eight words long. I'm not demanding that every sentence in a book should be as long as a page, but the end result, as seen in Camus' work, gives the impression that either a twelve-year-old or a malfunctioning robot wrote it. (Imagine a robotic voice saying) It seemed strange to me. The sentences were so short. It was very peculiar. This could be read extremely fast. I started reading this on the train on my way to work and finished it on my way back home.

Who on earth writes like that? More importantly, who in their right mind reads a book like this and thinks there's some hidden complexity within? Every time I noticed how condensed everything was, it occurred to me that somehow the literary elite had spent all this time adoring what was essentially the published equivalent of a commercial.

Let's take a closer look at the character we're supposed to care about. He doesn't easily conform to or accept the conventional norms that everyone else seems to be accustomed to. He's not overly worried, but he seems to be aware that there's some sort of disconnection. He's also not out to deliberately disrupt the system just for the sake of it or to make a statement. He's pretty emotionless, shows some genuine concern for himself at times, but even those closest to him don't seem to be very significant in his overall scheme of things. Oh, and by the way, his testicles are extremely small and sterile, and he fondles them often.

Not long after the death of his mother, our so-called hero is lounging on the beach when some Arabs come along looking for trouble with an acquaintance of his. After a minor scuffle earlier in the day, our man goes back down to the beach and shoots an Arab. He gets arrested and pretty much just goes with the flow, allowing the prosecution to have their way with his scrawny white body. The whole time, he pretty much just thinks it's all rather ridiculous and isn't overly concerned about the legal proceedings.

I wasn't overly concerned about the book either. In fact, more than anything, I was just bored to death with it. There was no build-up, no action, no climax. There was nothing funny, nothing exciting, nothing interesting, and nothing really to take away from the book; just the same words repeating over and over again, grouped in strings of seven or eight. The longest sentence in the book, which was also the only thing I found even remotely amusing, was: "Finally I realized that some of the old people were sucking at the insides of their cheeks and making these weird smacking noises". That's not particularly funny, but compared to the rest of the book, it was like a gem of comedy.

"The Stranger" is some seriously weak stuff. I've derived more enjoyment from simply looking at a map of Kentucky.

A strange and emotionally damaged man, who lacks affect and has an ambiguous attitude towards religion, unfortunately falls into bad company. Eventually, for reasons that are not even clear to himself, he ends up shooting an Arab. It was an extremely hot day, and perhaps the heat and his state of mind caused him to not think straight.

Now, here comes a rather curious question. Why would George W Bush not only read this account shortly after the Iraq War but also go to great lengths to make the world aware that he had done so? This presents a minor literary mystery that will perhaps never be fully resolved. In my personal opinion, I suspect that Laura might have had something to do with it. Maybe she influenced him in some way or perhaps there was some hidden significance that only they knew.

The whole situation remains somewhat puzzling and open to speculation. We can only wonder about the true motives behind George W Bush's actions and the possible role that Laura played in this strange literary episode.

I can't believe it took me such a long time to finally pick up and read this one. It's truly a classic. I devoured the pages, racing through it with great speed. However, due to its density and the many layers it contains, I found myself having to go back and reread whole sections. But despite its complexity, it was also extremely readable. The story and the writing just pulled me in and wouldn't let go. I was completely immersed in it. I can definitely envision myself coming back to this book again in the future. It's one of those rare books that you know will have something new to offer each time you read it. It's a book that will stay with me for a long time.

“Mama died today. Or yesterday. I can’t be sure when”—Meursault

“I opened myself up to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself”—Meursault

I first read The Stranger during my teen years, likely in the late sixties. It was a time when I might also have read The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. I also taught the book in a high school World Literature class in the seventies. This was an era of hippies, outsiders to mainstream society, similar to how beatniks were in the fifties and punks would be in the eighties. Growing up, I recall seeing James Dean in Rebel without a Cause and loving that image of inarticulate resistance. The idea of sociopathic youth was in the media, and from a kid's perspective, there was something romantic about the alienated, the outsider, the rebel. Timothy Leary's "Tune in, Drop Out" was cool. "Don't trust anyone over thirty." I sure didn't.

Camus denied being an existentialist, yet The Stranger is seen as a central text of that philosophical movement, along with Sartre's Nausea and others. Camus critiqued existentialist and nihilist thinking through this book.

“Everything is true, and nothing is true!”—Meursault

My notes from my teenaged reading of this 1942 paperback copy, probably purchased in 1969 at a used bookstore, reflect my romanticizing the existentialist philosophy of the time. This philosophy emphasized individualism and freedom but also a sense of disorientation, confusion, or dread in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Each individual is responsible for making meaning in their own life. There is no “human essence,” or given meaning or spiritual truth; you create truth in the living of your life.

“If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there”—Meursault

In Camus's short novel, Meursault tells the story of his mother's funeral, after which he starts a relationship with Marie, a friendship with thug/pimp Raymond, senselessly kills a man, goes through a trial, and argues angrily in his cell with a priest about the existence of God, finally asserting his beliefs.

“It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe”—Meursault

Meursault is an atheist and possibly a nihilist. He refuses to say whether it matters if he loves or marries Marie.

“A moment later she asked me if I loved her. I said that sort of question had no meaning, really; but I supposed I didn’t”—Meursault

He also isn't sure it makes a difference if he uses Raymond's gun or not:

“And just then it crossed my mind that one might fire, or not fire—and it would come to absolutely the same thing”—Meursault

I once tried hard to be empathetic to Meursault in the angst he displays through most of the book. But even then, with the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, and the protests on college campuses, I couldn't stand apart and think that the world was ultimately meaningless. And neither could Camus, finally. I think this is also why Camus tried to separate himself from existentialism. He was an activist who struggled to figure out how to live ethically. The Plague is in a way his answer to Meursault. In the end, Meursault turns against existentialism to absurdism, wherein, as he sees it, people should embrace the absurd as the basic nature of human existence while also defiantly searching for meaning. Meursault, even facing death, is defiant, while embracing hope and acceptance.

Today, decades later, I realize Camus was writing this book as the Nazis occupied his beloved Paris. This movement of absurdism (as in some ways were some dimensions of dada and surrealism) I see as a kind of protest against fascism. That I read it today with the rise of fascism in the US and in other places, I think of it as a kind of psychological touchstone for a kind of rage and despair many feel about their helplessness about so much on the planet.

There are echoes of Kafka and Dostoevsky and maybe Melville's Bartleby in The Stranger. It's still a great novel, one of the great works of literature.

Thugnotes on The Stranger is both amusing and enlightening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyb1n...

Thanks to Manny who reminds me that Bush read this book after the Iraq war. Very strange.

Thanks to Karen for providing a link to a related Cure song.

No. Non.

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It came as a truly shocking revelation that left me in a daze for days on end.

I don't deem myself worthy enough to pen a review of this book as I feel I would not be able to do it justice at all. This remarkable work has left me in a state of distress, bombarded with numerous questions that demand deep contemplation.

And at times, I find myself wondering if this book can even be reviewed in a satisfactory manner.

The prose of Camus is not only simple but also incredibly eloquent, making it an absolute pleasure to read.

Beneath the surface of his beautifully crafted novella, he raises several philosophical questions that have the power to make you think deeply.

It's a book that doesn't offer easy answers. Instead, it delves into profound inquiries about The Nature of Truth, through the eyes of a man who, despite all his imperfections and innocence, becomes an Outsider, a stranger in this world, simply because he speaks nothing but the truth.

It forces us to confront our own beliefs and perceptions, and challenges us to look beyond the obvious.

Camus' work is a masterpiece that continues to resonate with readers long after the final page has been turned.

It is a book that demands to be read, re-read, and dissected, for it holds within its pages the key to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

I wonder sometimes if it takes a man of extreme sensitivity to imagine a man with no conscience?

There is simply no room in my heart for indifference. I find myself struggling to envision writing about Meursault without, at some point, erupting in a torrent of invectives. Albert Camus, with the utmost elegance,描绘s the protagonist's carelessness in his caring prose. His prose is of such stylistic perfection that it almost physically hurts to combine the beautiful words with their ugly meaning in his classic story.

Few people knew humanity as intimately as Camus did, and even fewer dared to describe it as honestly and accurately as he did. Where most people would employ their pseudo-Christian self-righteousness to condemn fully and without mercy, there is pity in his voice. In his account of humanity's most undignified flaw – its lack of emotional connection to its habitat and fellow earth dwellers – there is a profound love for humanity.

The stranger is within all of us. It is our human duty to keep him at bay or to ensure that we know him well enough not to let him loose on others. That is the absurdity of Camus' universe. And because it is so absurd, it offers a strange sort of soothing in its bleak outlook.

The Stranger by Camus - which I randomly picked up from my library - is a 20th-century classic that I had never read before. Why? I don't know. Just as I had no idea, or even knew nothing precisely, about what this masterpiece of contemporary literature concealed.

The discovery was thus complete. And that's what I love when I engage in real work. To know nothing about it, expect nothing, be guided solely by its author, and experience only my own feelings without being influenced by outside opinions beforehand.

I was astonished by these short, abrupt, and cold sentences that didn't betray any emotion from the very first pages. How perceptive of Camus! Because, through his pen, it is his Meursault who expresses himself, tells his own story, and tells us.

Camus cleverly stepped back, leaving me alone with Meursault. And, there's nothing I can do. I can't feel sympathy, empathy, or even antipathy for this guy. He is inscrutable. He keeps me at a distance. The wall he has erected between him and me is insurmountable, and even worse, between him and everything else.

As Meursault relates, I learned that alexithymia is a term that has long existed in specific circumstances. Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by the inability to identify and describe emotions in oneself. Individuals suffering from this disorder also have difficulty distinguishing and appreciating the feelings of others, leading to a hopeless and ineffective psychological response.

Here lies the drama of Meursault. He is a stranger. A stranger to himself. A stranger to others. A stranger to life. A stranger to everything. He passes by and does pass. He walks past us, beside himself. Like a breath. Neither hot nor cold, intangible, inconsistent, and without much consciousness.

Bravo, Camus!