International Baccalaureate



VSA Victoria Shanghai Academy

International Baccalaureate DP

English A: Literature

Part 1: The Outsider

Context

Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913, in French colonial Algeria. In 1914, his father was killed in World War I, at the Battle of the Marne. Albert, his mother, and his brother shared a two-bedroom apartment with the family’s maternal grandmother and a paralyzed uncle. Despite his family’s extreme poverty, Camus attended the University of Algiers, supporting his education by working a series of odd jobs. However, one of several severe attacks of tuberculosis forced him to drop out of school. The poverty and illness Camus experienced as a youth greatly influenced his writing.

After dropping out of the university, Camus eventually entered the world of political journalism. While working for an anti-colonialist newspaper, he wrote extensively about poverty in Algeria. From 1935 to 1938, Camus ran the Théâtre de l’Equipe, an organization that attempted to attract working-class audiences to performances of great dramatic works. During World War II, Camus went to Paris and became a leading writer for the anti-German resistance movement. He was also the editor of Combat, an important underground newspaper.

While in wartime Paris, Camus developed his philosophy of the absurd. A major component of this philosophy was Camus’s assertion that life has no rational or redeeming meaning. The experience of World War II led many other intellectuals to similar conclusions. Faced with the horrors of Hitler’s Nazi regime and the unprecedented slaughter of the War, many could no longer accept that human existence had any purpose or discernible meaning. Existence seemed simply, to use Camus’s term, absurd.

The Stranger, Camus’s first novel, is both a brilliantly crafted story and an illustration of Camus’s absurdist world view. Published in 1942, the novel tells the story of an emotionally detached, amoral young man named Meursault. He does not cry at his mother’s funeral, does not believe in God, and kills a man he barely knows without any discernible motive. For his crime, Meursault is deemed a threat to society and sentenced to death. When he comes to accept the “gentle indifference of the world,” he finds peace with himself and with the society that persecutes him.

Camus’s absurdist philosophy implies that moral orders have no rational or natural basis. Yet Camus did not approach the world with moral indifference, and he believed that life’s lack of a “higher” meaning should not necessarily lead one to despair. On the contrary, Camus was a persistent humanist. He is noted for his faith in man’s dignity in the face of what he saw as a cold, indifferent universe.

In 1942, the same year that The Stranger was published, Camus also published The Myth of Sisyphus, his famous philosophical essay on the absurd. These two works helped establish Camus’s reputation as an important and brilliant literary figure. Over the course of his career he produced numerous novels, plays, and essays that further developed his philosophy. Among his most notable novels are The Plague, published in 1947, and The Fall, published in 1956. Along with The Myth of Sisyphus,The Rebel stands as his best-known philosophical essay. In recognition of his contribution to French and world literature, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Tragically, he died in an automobile accident just three years later.

In the midst of the widespread intellectual and moral bewilderment that followed World War II, Camus’s was a voice advocating the values of justice and human dignity. Though his career was cut short, he remains one of the most influential authors of the twentieth century, regarded both for the quality of his fiction and for the depth and insightfulness of his philosophy.

Camus, Existentialism & The Stranger

The Stranger is often referred to as an “existential” novel, but this description is not necessarily accurate. The term “existentialism” is a broad and far-reaching classification that means many different things to many different people, and is often misapplied or overapplied. As it is most commonly used, existentialism refers to the idea that there is no “higher” meaning to the universe or to man’s existence, and no rational order to the events of the world. According to this common definition of existentialism, human life is not invested with a redemptive or affirming purpose—there is nothing beyond man’s physical existence.

Some ideas in The Stranger clearly resemble this working definition of existentialism, but the broader philosophy of existentialism includes aspects far beyond this definition that are not present in The Stranger. Moreover, Camus himself rejected the application of the “existential” label to The Stranger. Hence, this SparkNote approaches The Stranger from the philosophical perspective of the absurd. “The absurd” is a term Camus himself coined, and a philosophy that he himself developed. Reading The Stranger with Camus’s philosophy of the absurd in mind sheds a good deal of light on the text.

Although Camus’s philosophical ideas resonate strongly within the text, it is important to keep in mind that The Stranger is a novel, not a philosophical essay. When reading the novel, character development, plot, and prose style demand just as much attention as the specifics of the absurd. This SparkNote only discusses the absurd when such discussion provides insight on the text. Otherwise, the focus of this SparkNote remains on the text itself, as with any great work of literature.

Camus’ Philosophy

Albert Camus was not what we would usually consider a philosopher- a person who

sets forth views in a systematic, orderly fashion. Camus was, however, very concerned

with some of the same questions as philosophers. Since he did not state his ideas

systematically and unambiguously, it is difficult to summarize them, and there have been conflicting interpretations of his outlook.

The Outsider was published early in Camus’s career, in 1942, when he was primarily

concerned with what he called the “absurdity” of the human condition. People want, and need, a basis for their lives and values, but the world offers them none, Camus believed.

Because there is no overarching value system, a person can’t make everyday value

judgments, but is adrift in a meaningless world. The inevitability and finality of death

adds to the absurdity of life, in Camus’s view. Camus’s outlook was in part a reflection of

his inability to accept the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church (a major underpinning

of French culture), which provided a firm support for life on earth. Nonreligious in

a traditional sense, Camus, like many others, was cast adrift, feeling that life had no

significance as well as no meaning.

Meursault may be seen as an embodiment of Camus’s outlook. Life for him has little

meaning on a deeper level, and he is not concerned about making value judgments or

assessing right and wrong. Yet at the end of The Outsider, Meursault draws some order

out of life. In an impassioned speech to a chaplain, who has been trying to convince

him of the validity of the traditional Christian out-look, Meursault says life may

have no deeper meaning but he indicates that he feels close to others who share life’s

predicament. Through this feeling of solidarity, Meursault seems to gain strength, and

seems to come to terms, at least partially, with the absurdity of life.

The Life and Work of Albert Camus

Albert Camus was born in Monrovia, Algeria on November 7, 1913. His father, a soldier in World War I, died fighting for France during the first Battle of Marne in 1914. Although Camus never really knew his father, while he was growing up, and later as an adult, Camus was keenly aware of the circumstances of his father’s death. At an early age Camus was made painfully aware of the tragic effects of war, experiencing the consequences of political strife on a highly personal level.

Following the publication of The Stranger and several other important works, Albert Camus gained wide recognition as one of the leading French writers of his day. As he continued to produce critically acclaimed and controversial novels, plays, and essays, Camus would earn a reputation equal to other preeminent French authors of the time such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Andre Malraux. Camus’ work had a significant and lasting influence on a post-war generation concerned with political and philosophical issues that dealt with human alienation and the search for meaning in a troubled world.

After his father’s death, Camus, his mother, and older brother moved to Belcourt, a suburb of Algiers where they lived in poverty for many years. In 1930, while a high school student, Camus contracted tuberculosis and barely survived. When he recovered, Camus’ excellent grades in school helped get him admitted to the University of Algiers where he studied theater and wrote plays, essays, and fiction. Camus’ illness, however, was another significant event in his life and it gave him a new perspective on death and awareness of his own existence. While he also began to develop the political outlook and personal philosophy that would form the basis of all of his later work, the inevitability of death would become an important theme in Camus’ work, one he would explore in much of his writing.

While he was attending the University of Algiers, Camus supported himself by working at a number of odd, part-time jobs, including one with the French Algerian civil service where he processed auto registrations and driver’s licenses. This dull, routine job made an impression on Camus; later he would incorporate elements of the experience in his writing of The Stranger.

In 1937, Camus’ first book The Wrong Side and the Right Side (L’Envers et l’endroit) was published in Algiers. It described his life growing up in Belcourt. In 1938, Camus was hired by Alge-Republicain, an anti-colonialist newspaper, where he took on a variety of editorial tasks, wrote literary reviews, covered local meetings, and wrote articles concerning the desperate conditions of impoverished Arabs living under French rule in Algeria. Of particular note was his description of the famine in Kabylia. In his article, Camus described the devastation within some Arab families where only two out of 10 children survived.

With the outbreak of World War II, Camus joined an underground anti-Nazi group based in Paris and became editor of the group’s resistance newspaperCombat. It was during this time that Camus wrote some of his most important work, including The Stranger (1942), and developed his theory of the absurd, which declared that life is essentially meaningless because of the inevitability of death. Camus, however, was never satisfied with the absurdist attitude of moral indifference. His experiences in occupied France, and other political events he witnessed, caused him to develop opinions on moral responsibility. Some of these ideas are contained in his Letters to a German Friend (1945), and in the essays included in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1960).

The Stranger is a striking example of Camus’ belief that “a novel is a philosophy put into images.” He believed that the highest art should contain elements of diversity and complexity, while maintaining a style that is balanced, uniform, and straightforward. Sartre immediately recognized the existential quality of The Stranger, although his opinion about the novel and its relation to existentialism would later prove to be controversial.

Other works by Camus that explore his philosophical and political ideas includeCaligula (1944); The Plague (1947), a novel; the long, controversial essay, The Rebel (1951); and a third novel, The Fall published in 1957. His famous essay The Myth of Sisyphus, published in 1942, concerns Sisyphus, a Greek mythological figure who was condemned by the gods to spend an eternal, meaningless existence pushing a huge boulder up and over a hill, and then back again from the other side.

Following the publication of The Fall, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. During his career, Camus became well known for his political views and activism. Although an anti-communist, he was an outspoken critic of capitalism, and he remained a proponent of democratic socialism and nonviolent confrontation. He believed in the principle of le juste milieu which recognized that the solution to human problems is not usually found in absolute strategies or ideas.

In 1960, Camus died suddenly in an automobile accident. Camus’ work, and the political, religious, and ethical issues it deals with, remains controversial, but his writing endures because it expresses Camus’ profound concern for human suffering and the philosophical and moral dilemmas faced by all individuals.

The Stranger – Historical Context

Algeria

Resuming a policy of imperialist expansion after the Napoleonic era, France invaded Algeria in 1830. The French soon controlled the city of Algiers and some coastal areas, but not until 1857 did they subdue the whole region. France sent settlers to colonize the conquered region, but even as late as 1940 the French in Algeria were outnumbered 9 to 1. During World War II the Algerians fought on the side of Germany, which occupied France. However, they were not too keen on resisting the Americans, and when General Eisenhower landed in November of 1942, he met little resistance. That invasion prevented Camus from leaving France and joining his wife in Algeria until the liberation of France in 1944. Throughout the rest of the war, the Algerian independence movement grew due to contact with other Westerners—British and American soldiers.

The independence movement continued to grow after the war but was violently put down by French troops. The struggle escalated when the National Liberation Front (FLN) wrote a new constitution in 1947. Unable to deliver on the promise of the new constitution, the FLN began a war of independence with France in 1954. By 1962, Charles de Gaulle agreed to grant the country independence.

World War II

World War II was in full swing in 1942, since America had declared war on Japan and Germany in response to the Pearl Harbor attack. However, the Allied cause did not look good. France had fallen to the Germans, and British troops were pushed from their holdings in the Pacific to India by the Japanese. On the Russian front, the Germans seemed to be on the verge of capturing Stalingrad when they attacked in February. This attack took the form of a gruesome siege. There was still hope, however, because both the British and the Russians refused to give in. Geography aided the Russians and the superiority of the Royal Air Force made the siege of Britain hazardous.

Summer began and the Allies started to gain against the Axis Powers. American troops were more successful than not in flooding the Allies with needed supplies through their base in Iceland. June brought real progress when the American Navy met the Japanese in the Battle of Midway. This decisive victory ended Japanese expansion in the Pacific and irreparably crippled their naval strength. In November, Eisenhower led a joint British-U.S. force in a landing in Algeria. In Russia, the Germans were still unable to claim victory since the Russian army was refusing to give way. In the end Russia lost 750,000 soldiers throughout the year. The Germans gained against the Russians only to lose all but eighty thousand men, who survived by cannibalism, and surrendered by February of 1943. Slowly the tide was turning against the Germans.

Plot Overview

Meursault, the narrator, is a young man living in Algiers. After receiving a telegram informing him of his mother’s death, he takes a bus to Marengo, where his mother had been living in an old persons’ home. He sleeps for almost the entire trip. When he arrives, he speaks to the director of the home. The director allows Meursault to see his mother, but Meursault finds that her body has already been sealed in the coffin. He declines the caretaker’s offer to open the coffin.

That night, Meursault keeps vigil over his mother’s body. Much to his displeasure, the talkative caretaker stays with him the whole time. Meursault smokes a cigarette, drinks coffee, and dozes off. The next morning, before the funeral, he meets with the director again. The director informs him that Thomas Perez, an old man who had grown very close to Meursault’s mother, will be attending the funeral service. The funeral procession heads for the small local village, but Perez has difficulty keeping up and eventually faints from the heat. Meursault reports that he remembers little of the funeral. That night, he happily arrives back in Algiers.

The next day, Meursault goes to the public beach for a swim. There, he runs into Marie Cardona, his former co-worker. The two make a date to see a comedy at the movie theater that evening. After the movie they spend the night together. When Meursault wakes up, Marie is gone. He stays in bed until noon and then sits on his balcony until evening, watching the people pass on the street.

The following day, Monday, Meursault returns to work. He has lunch with his friend Emmanuel and then works all afternoon. While walking upstairs to his apartment that night, Meursault runs into Salamano, an old man who lives in his building and owns a mangy dog. Meursault also runs into his neighbor, Raymond Sintes, who is widely rumored to be a pimp. Raymond invites Meursault over for dinner. Over the meal, Raymond recounts how he beat up his mistress after he discovered that she had been cheating on him. As a result, he got into a fight with her brother. Raymond now wants to torment his mistress even more, but he needs Meursault to write a letter to lure his mistress back to him. Meursault agrees and writes the letter that night.

The following Saturday, Marie visits Meursault at his apartment. She asks Meursault if he loves her, and he replies that “it didn’t mean anything,” but probably not. The two then hear shouting coming from Raymond’s apartment. They go out into the hall and watch as a policeman arrives. The policeman slaps Raymond and says that he will be summoned to the police station for beating up his mistress. Later, Raymond asks Meursault to testify on his behalf, and Meursault agrees. That night, Raymond runs into Salamano, who laments that his dog has run away.

Marie asks Meursault if he wants to marry her. He replies indifferently but says that they can get married if she wants to, so they become engaged. The following Sunday, Meursault, Marie, and Raymond go to a beach house owned by Masson, one of Raymond’s friends. They swim happily in the ocean and then have lunch. That afternoon, Masson, Raymond, and Meursault run into two Arabs on the beach, one of whom is the brother of Raymond’s mistress. A fight breaks out and Raymond is stabbed. After tending to his wounds, Raymond returns to the beach with Meursault. They find the Arabs at a spring. Raymond considers shooting them with his gun, but Meursault talks him out of it and takes the gun away. Later, however, Meursault returns to the spring to cool off, and, for no apparent reason, he shoots Raymond’s mistress’s brother.

Meursault is arrested and thrown into jail. His lawyer seems disgusted at Meursault’s lack of remorse over his crime, and, in particular, at Meursault’s lack of grief at his mother’s funeral. Later, Meursault meets with the examining magistrate, who cannot understand Meursault’s actions. The magistrate brandishes a crucifix and demands that Meursault put his faith in God. Meursault refuses, insisting that he does not believe in God. The magistrate cannot accept Meursault’s lack of belief, and eventually dubs him “Monsieur Antichrist.”

One day, Marie visits Meursault in prison. She forces herself to smile during the visit, and she expresses hope that Meursault will be acquitted and that they will get married. As he awaits his trial, Meursault slowly adapts to prison life. His isolation from nature, women, and cigarettes torments him at first, but he eventually adjusts to living without them, and soon does not even notice their absence. He manages to keep his mind occupied, and he sleeps for most of each day.

Meursault is taken to the courthouse early on the morning of his trial. Spectators and members of the press fill the courtroom. The subject of the trial quickly shifts away from the murder to a general discussion of Meursault’s character, and of his reaction to his mother’s death in particular. The director and several other people who attended the vigil and the funeral are called to testify, and they all attest to Meursault’s lack of grief or tears. Marie reluctantly testifies that the day after his mother’s funeral she and Meursault went on a date and saw a comedic movie. During his summation the following day, the prosecutor calls Meursault a monster and says that his lack of moral feeling threatens all of society. Meursault is found guilty and is sentenced to death by beheading.

Meursault returns to prison to await his execution. He struggles to come to terms with his situation, and he has trouble accepting the certainty and inevitability of his fate. He imagines escaping and he dreams of filing a successful legal appeal. One day, the chaplain comes to visit against Meursault’s wishes. He urges Meursault to renounce his atheism and turn to God, but Meursault refuses. Like the magistrate, the chaplain cannot believe that Meursault does not long for faith and the afterlife. Meursault suddenly becomes enraged, grabs the chaplain, and begins shouting at him. He declares that he is correct in believing in a meaningless, purely physical world. For the first time, Meursault truly embraces the idea that human existence holds no greater meaning. He abandons all hope for the future and accepts the “gentle indifference of the world.” This acceptance makes Meursault feel happy.

Characters

Meursault -  The protagonist and narrator of The Stranger, to whom the novel’s title refers. Meursault is a detached figure who views and describes much of what occurs around him from a removed position. He is emotionally indifferent to others, even to his mother and his lover, Marie. He also refuses to adhere to the accepted moral order of society. After Meursault kills a man, “the Arab,” for no apparent reason, he is put on trial. However, the focus of Meursault’s murder trial quickly shifts away from the murder itself to Meursault’s attitudes and beliefs. Meursault’s atheism and his lack of outward grief at his mother’s funeral represent a serious challenge to the morals of the society in which he lives. Consequently, society brands him an outsider.

Meursault is psychologically detached from the world around him. Events that would be very significant for most people, such as a marriage proposal or a parent’s death, do not matter to him, at least not on a sentimental level. He simply does not care that his mother is dead, or that Marie loves him.

Meursault is also honest, which means that he does not think of hiding his lack of feeling by shedding false tears over his mother’s death. In displaying his indifference, Meursault implicitly challenges society’s accepted moral standards, which dictate that one should grieve over death. Because Meursault does not grieve, society sees him as an outsider, a threat, even a monster. At his trial, the fact that he had no reaction to his mother’s death damages his reputation far more than his taking of another person’s life.

Meursault is neither moral nor immoral. Rather, he is amoral—he simply does not make the distinction between good and bad in his own mind. When Raymond asks him to write a letter that will help Raymond torment his mistress, Meursault indifferently agrees because he “didn’t have any reason not to.” He does not place any value judgment on his act, and writes the letter mainly because he has the time and the ability to do so.

At the novel’s outset, Meursault’s indifference seems to apply solely to his understanding of himself. Aside from his atheism, Meursault makes few assumptions about the nature of the world around him. However, his thinking begins to broaden once he is sentenced to death. After his encounter with the chaplain, Meursault concludes that the universe is, like him, totally indifferent to human life. He decides that people’s lives have no grand meaning or importance, and that their actions, their comings and goings, have no effect on the world. This realization is the culmination of all the events of the novel. When Meursault accepts “the gentle indifference of the world,” he finds peace with himself and with the society around him, and his development as a character is complete.

Marie Cardona -  A former co-worker of Meursault who begins an affair with him the day after his mother’s funeral. Marie is young and high-spirited, and delights in swimming and the outdoors. Meursault’s interest in Marie seems primarily the result of her physical beauty. Marie does not seem to understand Meursault, but she feels drawn to Meursault’s peculiarities nevertheless. Even when Meursault expresses indifference toward marrying her, she still wants to be his wife, and she tries to support him during his arrest and trial.

Like Meursault, Marie delights in physical contact. She kisses Meursault frequently in public and enjoys the act of sex. However, unlike Meursault’s physical affection for Marie, Marie’s physical affection for Meursault signals a deeper sentimental and emotional attachment. Though Marie is disappointed when Meursault expresses his indifference toward love and marriage, she does not end the relationship or rethink her desire to marry him. In fact, Meursault’s strange behavior seems part of his appeal for her. She says that she probably loves him because he is so peculiar. There also may be an element of pragmatism in Marie’s decision to marry Meursault. She enjoys a good deal of freedom within the relationship because he does not take any interest in her life when they are not together.

Whatever her motivations for entering into the relationship, Marie remains loyal to Meursault when he is arrested and put on trial. In the context of Camus’s absurdist philosophy, Marie’s loyalty represents a mixed blessing, because her feelings of faith and hope prevent her from reaching the understanding that Meursault attains at the end of the novel. Marie never grasps the indifference of the universe, and she never comes to understand the redemptive value of abandoning hope. Camus implies that Marie, lacking the deeper understanding of the universe that Meursault has attained, is less “enlightened” than Meursault.

Raymond Sintes -  A local pimp and Meursault’s neighbor. Raymond becomes angry when he suspects his mistress is cheating on him, and in his plan to punish her, he enlists Meursault’s help. In contrast to Meursault’s calm detachment, Raymond behaves with emotion and initiative. He is also violent, and beats his mistress as well as the two Arabs on the beach, one of whom is his mistress’s brother. Raymond seems to be using Meursault, whom he can easily convince to help him in his schemes. However, that Raymond tries to help Meursault with his testimony during the trial shows that Raymond does possess some capacity for loyalty.

Raymond acts as a catalyst to The Stranger’s plot. After Raymond beats and abuses his mistress, he comes into conflict with her brother, an Arab. Raymond draws Meursault into conflict with “the Arab,” and eventually Meursault kills the Arab in cold blood. By drawing Meursault into the conflict that eventually results in Meursault’s death sentence, Raymond, in a sense, causes Meursault’s downfall. This responsibility on Raymond’s part is symbolized by the fact that he gives Meursault the gun that Meursault later uses to kill the Arab. However, because the murder and subsequent trial bring about Meursault’s realization of the indifference of the universe, Raymond can also be seen as a catalyst of Meursault’s “enlightenment.”

Because Raymond’s character traits contrast greatly with Meursault’s, he also functions as a foil for Meursault. Whereas Meursault is simply amoral, Raymond is clearly immoral. Raymond’s treatment of his mistress is violent and cruel, and he nearly kills the Arab himself before Meursault talks him out of it. Additionally, whereas Meursault passively reacts to the events around him, Raymond initiates action. He invites Meursault to dinner and to the beach, and he seeks out the Arabs after his first fight with them.

A good deal of ambiguity exists in Raymond’s relationship with Meursault. On the one hand, Raymond uses Meursault. He easily convinces Meursault to help him in his schemes to punish his mistress, and to testify on his behalf at the police station. On the other hand, Raymond seems to feel some loyalty toward Meursault. He asserts Meursault’s innocence at the murder trial, attributing the events leading up to the killing to “chance.” It is possible that Raymond begins his relationship with Meursault intending only to use him, and then, like Marie, becomes drawn to Meursault’s peculiarities.

Meursault’s Mother -  Madame Meursault’s death begins the action of the novel. Three years prior, Meursault sent her to an old persons’ home. Meursault identifies with his mother and believes that she shared many of his attitudes about life, including a love of nature and the capacity to become accustomed to virtually any situation or occurrence. Most important, Meursault decides that, toward the end of her life, his mother must have embraced a meaningless universe and lived for the moment, just as he does.

The Chaplain  -  A priest who attends to the religious needs of condemned men, the chaplain acts as a catalyst for Meursault’s psychological and philosophical development. After Meursault is found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to death, he repeatedly refuses to see the chaplain. The chaplain visits Meursault anyway, and nearly demands that he take comfort in God. The chaplain seems threatened by Meursault’s stubborn atheism. Eventually, Meursault becomes enraged and angrily asserts that life is meaningless and that all men are condemned to die. This argument triggers Meursault’s final acceptance of the meaninglessness of the universe.

Thomas Perez  -  One of the elderly residents at the old persons’ home where Meursault’s mother lived. Before Madame Meursault’s death, she and Perez had become so inseparable that the other residents joked that he was her fiancé. Perez’s relationship with Madame Meursault is one of the few genuine emotional attachments the novel depicts. Perez, as someone who expresses his love for Madame Meursault, serves as a foil the indifferent narrator

The Examining Magistrate -  The magistrate questions Meursault several times after his arrest. Deeply disturbed by Meursault’s apparent lack of grief over his mother’s death, the magistrate brandishes a crucifix at Meursault and demands to know whether he believes in God. When Meursault reasserts his atheism, the magistrate states that the meaning of his own life is threatened by Meursault’s lack of belief. The magistrate represents society at large in that he is threatened by Meursault’s unusual, amoral beliefs.

The Caretaker -  A worker at the old persons’ home where Meursault’s mother spent the three years prior to her death. During the vigil Meursault holds before his mother’s funeral, the caretaker chats with Meursault in the mortuary. They drink coffee and smoke cigarettes next to the coffin, gestures that later weigh heavily against Meursault as evidence of his monstrous indifference to his mother’s death. It is peculiar that the court does not consider the caretaker’s smoking and coffee drinking in the presence of the coffin to be similarly monstrous acts.

The Director -  The manager of the old persons’ home where Meursault’s mother spent her final three years. When Meursault arrives to keep vigil before his mother’s funeral, the director assures him that he should not feel guilty for having sent her to the home. However, by raising the issue, the director implies that perhaps Meursault has done something wrong. When Meursault goes on trial, the director becomes suddenly judgmental. During his testimony, he casts Meursault’s actions in a negative light.

Celeste -  The proprietor of a café where Meursault frequently eats lunch. Celeste remains loyal to Meursault during his murder trial. He testifies that Meursault is an honest, decent man, and he states that bad luck led Meursault to kill the Arab. Celeste’s assertion that the murder had no rational cause and was simply a case of bad luck reveals a worldview similar to Meursault’s.

Masson -  One of Raymond’s friends, who invites Raymond, Meursault, and Marie to spend a Sunday at his beach house with him and his wife. It is during this ill-fated trip to Masson’s beach house that Meursault kills the Arab. Masson is a vigorous, seemingly contented figure, and he testifies to Meursault’s good character during Meursault’s trial.

The Prosecutor -  The lawyer who argues against Meursault at the trial. During his closing arguments, the prosecutor characterizes Meursault as a cool, calculating monster, using Meursault’s lack of an emotional attachment to his mother as his primary evidence. He demands the death penalty for Meursault, arguing that Meursault’s moral indifference threatens all of society and therefore must be stamped out.

Salamano -  One of Meursault’s neighbors. Salamano owns an old dog that suffers from mange, and he frequently curses at and beats his pet. However, after Salamano loses his dog, he weeps and longs for its return. His strong grief over losing his dog contrasts with Meursault’s indifference at losing his mother.

The Arab  -  The brother of Raymond’s mistress. On the Sunday that Raymond, Meursault, and Marie spend at Masson’s beach house, Meursault kills the Arab with Raymond’s gun. The crime is apparently motiveless—the Arab has done nothing to Meursault. The Arab’s mysteriousness as a character makes Meursault’s crime all the more strange and difficult to understand.

Themes, Motifs and Symbols

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Stranger, with the Myth of Sisyphus(1955; Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 1942), is Camus's great apology for the absurd. Camus himself described it as an "exercise in objectivity, the impersonal working out of the logical results of the philosophy of the absurd." According to Camus's philosophy at this time, life has no meaning; there is no hope for it ever to have meaning. There is no eternity; therefore, all must be done in this life. Indeed, this very thought brings happiness to Meursault at the end of his trial. Passive and indifferent to the forces of life, Meursault exemplifies a life without meaning, an idea that was to attract a world at war, and especially the French people, victims of a humiliating Occupation.

In the midst of this hopeless universe, Camus nevertheless shows a poetic appreciation of the Mediterranean atmosphere in which he grew up. Camus's evocation of the sun at the moment of the murder is lyrical, although it has been judged by some critics as a contradiction to the absurd and indifferent universe created up until this moment. The sea likewise appears in all its sensuality as Meursault and Marie bathe, the symbol also of life, and of evasion. Camus ends the book on a lyrical note, as Meursault, facing a starry night, would be willing to begin life again, and finally feels happiness in his acceptance of the absurd, like Sisyphus, whom, says Camus, one must imagine as happy in the futility of rolling his rock endlessly uphill.

The Irrationality of the Universe

Though The Stranger is a work of fiction, it contains a strong resonance of Camus’s philosophical notion of absurdity. In his essays, Camus asserts that individual lives and human existence in general have no rational meaning or order. However, because people have difficulty accepting this notion, they constantly attempt to identify or create rational structure and meaning in their lives. The term “absurdity” describes humanity’s futile attempt to find rational order where none exists.

Though Camus does not explicitly refer to the notion of absurdity in The Stranger, the tenets of absurdity operate within the novel. Neither the external world in which Meursault lives nor the internal world of his thoughts and attitudes possesses any rational order. Meursault has no discernable reason for his actions, such as his decision to marry Marie and his decision to kill the Arab.

Society nonetheless attempts to fabricate or impose rational explanations for Meursault’s irrational actions. The idea that things sometimes happen for no reason, and that events sometimes have no meaning is disruptive and threatening to society. The trial sequence in Part Two of the novel represents society’s attempt to manufacture rational order. The prosecutor and Meursault’s lawyer both offer explanations for Meursault’s crime that are based on logic, reason, and the concept of cause and effect. Yet these explanations have no basis in fact and serve only as attempts to defuse the frightening idea that the universe is irrational. The entire trial is therefore an example of absurdity—an instance of humankind’s futile attempt to impose rationality on an irrational universe.

The Meaninglessness of Human Life

A second major component of Camus’s absurdist philosophy is the idea that human life has no redeeming meaning or purpose. Camus argues that the only certain thing in life is the inevitability of death, and, because all humans will eventually meet death, all lives are all equally meaningless. Meursault gradually moves toward this realization throughout the novel, but he does not fully grasp it until after his argument with the chaplain in the final chapter. Meursault realizes that, just as he is indifferent to much of the universe, so is the universe indifferent to him. Like all people, Meursault has been born, will die, and will have no further importance.

Paradoxically, only after Meursault reaches this seemingly dismal realization is he able to attain happiness. When he fully comes to terms with the inevitability of death, he understands that it does not matter whether he dies by execution or lives to die a natural death at an old age. This understanding enables Meursault to put aside his fantasies of escaping execution by filing a successful legal appeal. He realizes that these illusory hopes, which had previously preoccupied his mind, would do little more than create in him a false sense that death is avoidable. Meursault sees that his hope for sustained life has been a burden. His liberation from this false hope means he is free to live life for what it is, and to make the most of his remaining days.

The Importance of the Physical World

The Stranger shows Meursault to be interested far more in the physical aspects of the world around him than in its social or emotional aspects. This focus on the sensate world results from the novel’s assertion that there exists no higher meaning or order to human life. Throughout The Stranger, Meursault’s attention centers on his own body, on his physical relationship with Marie, on the weather, and on other physical elements of his surroundings. For example, the heat during the funeral procession causes Meursault far more pain than the thought of burying his mother. The sun on the beach torments Meursault, and during his trial Meursault even identifies his suffering under the sun as the reason he killed the Arab. The style of Meursault’s narration also reflects his interest in the physical. Though he offers terse, plain descriptions when glossing over emotional or social situations, his descriptions become vivid and ornate when he discusses topics such as nature and the weather.

Verdict of Death

The conflict between the desire to live and the fact of death is a dominant theme in The Outsider. Most people, Camus is saying, accept the day-today events that make up existence without asking themselves: Why am I doing this? The only answer, he says, is that nothing we do has any long-lasting meaning. We die, the universe goes on. Nothing fundamental has changed. Later in his life Camus changed his thinking to add that within this framework, our actions can still be important because we can affect the lives of other persons. We must behave as if life has meaning.

Benign Indifference of the Universe

Our lives are brief compared to the permanence of the universe. Images of sun, water,

earth, and sky give pleasure to fleeting moments of our lives. But they can turn dangerous and destructive. The natural forces do not have empathy for us or care. They are neither good nor evil; they are simply there, and they go on being there long after we are gone.

To accept this philosophy is to live in a world without God. Meursault can accept this and lives with the sensations, both pleasurable and painful, of sun and wind, of caresses, of smells and sights. Yet his incapacity to look beyond the sensation of the moment leads him into a pattern of action that changes his relationship to all these sensations, and in prison he is deprived of all that has made his life enjoyable.

Irrelevance of Social, Religious or Philosophical Values

a) Ritual. Meursault is viewed as an outcast because he doesn’t weep at his mother’s

funeral or feel guilty because he put her into a nursing home. Society has developed

patterns of behavior for given moments in our lives, whether or not we have the requisite feelings. Meursault could have lied about his feelings at any time and made his ordeal easier.

b) Religion. Society also turns against Meursault because he doesn’t believe in God or

the possibility of an afterlife. This attitude leaves him open to the charge that he has no basis to deter him from wrong action; it also leaves him without conventional hope.

c) Love. Meursault says that he was “fond” of his mother. He loved her the way people

love their mothers. He says to Marie that he does not really love her but will marry her if she wants. Love isn’t important to him. Love, Camus is saying, and its institutionalized symbol, marriage, have been created by society and have nothing to do with how people really feel. Some readers argue that Meursault is incapable of loving anyone, while others claim that Camus is attempting to define love as the physical pleasure one experiences with another person.

There are several kinds of love in this book. Note Salamano’s love for his dog. Look,

too, at Raymond’s love for his girlfriend. Are these relationships involved with negative as well as positive feelings? Some readers feel that Meursault refuses to accept the possibility of feeling love because he recognizes the pain involved in such a relationship.

(Raymond’s relationship with his girlfriend and Salamano’s with his dog seem to involve more pain than pleasure.) Camus poses the question whether or not a relationship that involves pain as well as pleasure is worth the trouble. Do you feel that this is an accurate interpretation of love?

d) Justice. During the trial scene in Part Two, everyone participates in some sort of game, except Meursault. He is just a spectator at his trial. We first meet the idea of justice in Part One, as Raymond seeks revenge on his girlfriend for being unfaithful to him. And again, when the Arabs attack Raymond, it is to punish him for beating her up. But during the trial, no one makes any real effort to discover why Meursault has acted the way he did. Ask yourself whether Meursault would have been found guilty of killing the Arab if he’d cried at his mother’s funeral. In his summing up, the prosecutor says that he doesn’t blame Meursault, because he has no soul. But

as a pathological killer, he’s a danger to society and must be removed. The fact is that

Meursault has killed a man with apparent ease and without remorse. Is the prosecutor right? Is Meursault a dangerous man and is justice served in this trial?

Commitment

Meursault is characterized as a person who has no commitment to anyone or to anything except his own small pleasures and the necessities of the moment. He drifts without thought into minor activities- his affair with Marie, his friendship with

Raymond, his comforting of Salamano. He finds it easier to say yes than no. Yet, when pushed, he will not lie about his motives, even though to say what is expected of him would clearly make people more sympathetic to his ordeal. As you read, keep in mind these questions: What is the purpose of acting when you know you will die? Are you responsible for anyone’s actions other than your own? How committed are you to your own ideals and to what extent would you defend your feelings and beliefs?

Absurdity

Absurdity is a philosophical view at which one arrives when one is forced out of a very repetitive existence. As Camus says in “An Absurd Reasoning” from his essay collection The Myth of Sisyphus:

It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm—this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.

This description characterizes Meursault perfectly. The essay collection explained the philosophy of the absurd, and the novel demonstrated the theory.

Meursault’s repetitive life runs smoothly. Then, little by little, Meursault’s happy stasis is pulled apart by the rest of the world’s movement and collapse begins. His mother dies, and with her, a sense of stability he has had his whole life. He becomes involved with Marie, who asks him whether he cares for her and in asking nearly breaches his safe isolation. Raymond insists upon being his friend. Salamano’s dog just disappears, thus disrupting a parallel repetitive rhythm. He shoots a man, and the law demands that he die. Each subtle disruption of Meursault’s desire to be indifferently static brings him to a mental crisis. This crisis is resolved when he comes to understand the utter meaninglessness of his individual life within the mystery of the collective society. The events of his story only make sense that way. Any other explanation leads him to theology—represented by the priest—or fate.

In an expression of Camus’s humanist logic, neither theology nor fate can offer men of intelligence (men like Meursault, willing to use only bare logic to consider the question of life) an explanation for the absolutely senseless things that humans do—war, murder, and other heinous acts. The alternative, therefore, is absurdity. Meursault recognizes the “truth” that life is meaningless. That means life is just what one makes of it while being conscious of two certainties—life and death. In doing so, Camus argues, one would uphold traditional human values because they safeguard one’s life. In other words, human values (what we understand today as “human rights”) lead to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. When one is truly willing to face this Truth, one can be happy. Unfortunately, Meursault is executed before he can live in this fashion.

Colonialism

There are no hints which suggest that the novel takes place in a colonized country. There are, however, hints that racial tensions exist between French-Algerians and “Arabs.” From the first page the reader knows that the novel is set in Algeria and that the date of publication is 1942. Therefore, it can be guessed that the novel occurs in a colonized setting. In addition, the narrator hints at the racial tension by telling the story as if it took place solely among some French people who happened to live in Algeria. Meursault only associates with French-Algerians, and the only people he names are French-Algerians. Then, for no apparent reason, he shoots an Arab.

While it could be argued, and usually is, that the issue of race and colonialism is not an important theme to the novel (because the novel is about the larger concern of absurd individuality), it is still important to note its existence. First, none of the Arabs in the book, including the murder victim, receive a name. In fact, the nurse at the nursing home is given no other attribute aside from having an abscess that requires her to wear bandaging on her face. The reader sees her as marked by this condition, and she is described as an “Arab.” The reader gains little information about her. Another Arab woman is Raymond’s girlfriend. She accuses him of being a pimp, and he beats her. She has no name. In fact, Meursault comments on her name, saying, “[W]hen he told me the woman’s name I realized she was Moorish.” It does not bother him that his “friend” is having relations with an “Arab,” nor does it bother him that Raymond wants to mark her for cheating on him. He wants to cut her nose off in the traditional manner of marking a prostitute. Finally, her brothers and his friends begin to follow Raymond. It is this nameless group of Arabs who Meursault, Masson, and Raymond encounter at the beach. One member of the group is found by Meursault alone and is shot.

The issue of race is the most troubling and unresolved issue of the novel. If one reads the novel solely in terms of the theme of absurdity, the action of the story makes sense—in a meaningless sort of way. However, read in terms of a lesson on human morality and the ethics of the Western tradition wherein a white man goes through a struggle— or agon—in the land of the “Other,” then the story is very contradictory and highly problematic. Meursault certainly does arrive at a “truth,” but that arrival was at the cost of a man’s life as well as a ruined love.

Free Will

Though the possession of a free will is taken for granted by most people, the presentation of its “freeness” in The Stranger is rather unsettling. Meursault consistently expresses his awareness of his own will as free. In some instances, this might be interpreted as indifference, but Meursault is decidedly, perhaps starkly, free. He does not feel the temptation to encumber his reasoning with considerations or dogmas. For example, he is never worried and is repeatedly doing a systems check on his body—he declares states of hunger, whether he feels well, and that the temperature is good or the sun is too hot. These are important considerations to Meursault, and they pass the time. Conversely, the magistrate is frustrated, tired, and clings to his belief in God. Meursault discerns that the magistrate finds life’s meaning only through this belief. But when the magistrate asks if Meursault is suggesting he should be without belief, Meursault replies that it has nothing to do with him one way or the other. This is because the only things that should concern Mersault, he decides, are elemental factors, such as keeping his body comfortably cool.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Decay and Death

The different characters in The Stranger hold widely varying attitudes toward decay and death. Salamano loves his decaying, scab-covered dog and he values its companionship, even though most people find it disgusting. Meursault does not show much emotion in response to his mother’s death, but the society in which he lives believes that he should be distraught with grief. Additionally, whereas Meursault is content to believe that physical death represents the complete and final end of life, the chaplain holds fast to the idea of an afterlife.

An essential part of Meursault’s character development in the novel is his coming to terms with his own attitudes about death. At the end of the novel, he has finally embraced the idea that death is the one inevitable fact of human life, and is able to accept the reality of his impending execution without despair.

Watching and Observation

Throughout the novel there are instances of characters watching Meursault, or of his watching them. This motif recalls several components of Camus’s absurdist philosophy. The constant watching in The Stranger suggests humanity’s endless search for purpose, and emphasizes the importance of the tangible, visible details of the physical world in a universe where there is no grander meaning.

When Meursault watches people on the street from his balcony, he does so passively, absorbing details but not judging what he sees. By contrast, the people in the courtroom watch Meursault as part of the process of judgment and condemnation. In the courtroom, we learn that many of Meursault’s previous actions were being watched without his—or our—knowledge. The Arabs watch Raymond and his friends with implicit antagonism as they walk to the bus. Raymond’s neighbors act as spectators to his dispute with his mistress and the police officer, watching with concern or petty curiosity. At times, watching is a mysterious activity, such as when Meursault watches the woman at Celeste’s, and later when she watches him in court. The novel’s moments of watching and observation reflect humanity’s endless search for meaning, which Camus found absurd.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Courtroom

In the courtroom drama that comprises the second half of The Stranger, the court symbolizes society as a whole. The law functions as the will of the people, and the jury sits in judgment on behalf of the entire community. In The Stranger, Camus strengthens this court-as-society symbolism by having nearly every one of the minor characters from the first half of the novel reappear as a witness in the courtroom. Also, the court’s attempts to construct a logical explanation for Meursault’s crime symbolize humanity’s attempts to find rational explanations for the irrational events of the universe. These attempts, which Camus believed futile, exemplify the absurdity Camus outlined in his philosophy.

The Crucifix

The crucifix that the examining magistrate waves at Meursault symbolizes Christianity, which stands in opposition to Camus’s absurdist world view. Whereas absurdism is based on the idea that human life is irrational and purposeless, Christianity conceives of a rational order for the universe based on God’s creation and direction of the world, and it invests human life with higher metaphysical meaning.

The crucifix also symbolizes rational belief structures in general. The chaplain’s insistence that Meursault turn to God does not necessarily represent a desire that Meursault accept specifically Christian beliefs so much as a desire that he embrace the principle of a meaningful universe in general. When Meursault defies the magistrate by rejecting Christianity, he implicitly rejects all systems that seek to define a rational order within human existence. This defiance causes Meursault to be branded a threat to social order.

Summary and Analysis – Part One

Chapter One

Summary

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.

(See Important Quotations Explained)

Meursault, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, receives a telegram telling him that his mother has died. She had been living in an old persons’ home in Marengo, outside of Algiers. Meursault asks his boss for two days’ leave from work to attend the funeral. His boss grudgingly grants the request, and makes Meursault feel almost guilty for asking. Meursault catches the two o’clock bus to Marengo, and sleeps for nearly the entire trip.

When Meursault arrives, he meets with the director of the old persons’ home, who assures Meursault that he should not feel bad for having sent his mother there. The director asserts that it was the best decision Meursault could have made, given his modest salary. He tells Meursault that a religious funeral has been planned for his mother, but Meursault knows that his mother never cared about religion. After the brief conversation, the director takes Meursault to the small mortuary where his mother’s coffin has been placed.

Alone, Meursault sees that the coffin has already been sealed. The caretaker rushes in and offers to open the casket, but Meursault tells him not to bother. To Meursault’s annoyance, the caretaker then stays in the room, chatting idly about his life and about how funeral vigils are shorter in the countryside because bodies decompose more quickly in the heat. Meursault thinks this information is “interesting and [makes] sense.”

Meursault spends the night keeping vigil over his mother’s body. The caretaker offers him a cup of coffee, and, in turn, Meursault gives the caretaker a cigarette. Meursault finds the atmosphere in the mortuary pleasant and he dozes off. He is awakened by the sound of his mother’s friends from the old persons’ home shuffling into the mortuary. One of the women cries mournfully, annoying Meursault. Eventually he falls back asleep, as do nearly all of his mother’s friends.

The next morning, the day of the funeral, Meursault again meets with the director of the old persons’ home. The director asks Meursault if he wants to see his mother one last time before the coffin is sealed permanently, but Meursault declines. The director tells Meursault about Thomas Perez, the only resident of the home who will be allowed to attend the funeral. Perez and Meursault’s mother had become nearly inseparable before she died. Other residents had joked that he was her fiancé.

The funeral procession slowly makes its way toward the village. When one of the undertaker’s assistants asks Meursault if his mother was old, Meursault responds vaguely because he does not know her exact age. The oppressive heat weighs heavily on him during the long walk. He notices that Thomas Perez cannot keep up, and keeps falling behind the procession. A nurse tells Meursault that he will get sunstroke if he walks too slowly, but will work up a sweat and catch a chill in church if he walks too quickly. Meursault agrees, thinking, “There was no way out.” He remembers little of the funeral, aside from Perez’s tear-soaked face and the fact that the old man fainted from the heat. As he rides home on the bus to Algiers, Meursault is filled with joy at the prospect of a good night’s sleep.

Analysis

She was right. There was no way out.

(See Important Quotations Explained)

Meursault immediately reveals himself to be indifferent toward emotion and interaction with others. Instead of grieving at the news of his mother’s death, he is cold, detached, and indifferent. When he receives the telegram, his primary concern is figuring out on which day his mother died. The fact that he has no emotional reaction at all makes Meursault difficult to categorize. If he were happy that his mother died, he could be cast simply as immoral or a monster. But Meursault is neither happy nor unhappy—he is indifferent.

Though Meursault tends to ignore the emotional, social, and interpersonal content of situations, he is far from indifferent when it comes to the realm of the physical and practical. In this chapter, Meursault focuses on the practical details surrounding his mother’s death. He worries about borrowing appropriate funeral clothing from a friend, and he is interested in the caretaker’s anecdote about how the length of a vigil depends on how long it takes before the body begins to decompose.

Meursault takes particular interest in nature and the weather. Just before the funeral, he is able to enjoy the beautiful weather and scenery, despite the sad occasion. Similarly, during the funeral procession, Meursault feels no grief or sadness, but he finds the heat of the day nearly unbearable.

Meursault’s narration varies in a way that reflects his attitudes toward the world around him. When describing social or emotional situations, his sentences are short, precise, and offer minimal detail. He tells only the essentials of what he sees or does, rarely using metaphors or other rhetorical flourishes. These meager descriptions display Meursault’s indifference to society and to the people around him. Meursault’s narrative expands greatly when he talks about topics, such as the weather, that directly relate to his physical condition. When describing the effects of the heat during the funeral procession, for instance, he employs metaphor, personification, and other literary devices.

Meursault’s belief that the world is meaningless and purposeless becomes apparent in this chapter through Camus’s use of irony. Thomas Perez, the one person who actually cares about Madame Meursault, cannot keep up with her funeral procession because of his ailing physical condition. This sad detail is incompatible with any sentimental or humanistic interpretation of Madame Meursault’s death. Perez’s slowness is simply the result of his old age, and no grand or comforting meaning can be assigned to it or drawn from it. We frequently see such irony undercutting any notions of a higher, controlling order operating within The Stranger.

Summary: Chapter 2

Meursault suddenly realizes why his boss was annoyed at his request for two days’ leave from work. Because his mother’s funeral was on a Friday, counting the weekend, Meursault essentially received four days off rather than two. Meursault goes swimming at a public beach, where he runs into Marie Cardona, a former co-worker of his. He helps her onto a float, and after admiring her beauty, he climbs up next to her on the float. He rests his head on her body, and they lie together for a while, looking at the sky. They swim happily together and flirt over the course of the afternoon, and Marie accepts Meursault’s invitation to see a movie. She is somewhat surprised to learn that Meursault’s mother was buried just a day earlier, but she quickly forgets it. After the movie, Marie spends the night with Meursault.

Marie is gone when Meursault awakes. He decides against having his usual lunch at Celeste’s because he wants to avoid the inevitable questions about his mother. He stays in bed until noon, then spends the entire afternoon on his balcony, smoking, eating, and observing the assorted people on the street as they come and go. The weather is beautiful. As evening approaches, Meursault buys some food and cooks dinner. After his meal he muses that yet another Sunday is over. His mother is buried, and he must return to work in the morning. He concludes that nothing has changed after all.

Summary: Chapter 3

The next day, Meursault goes to work. His boss is friendly and asks Meursault about his mother. Meursault and his co-worker, Emmanuel, go to Celeste’s for lunch. Celeste asks Meursault if everything is alright, but Meursault changes the subject after only a brief response. He takes a nap and then returns to work for the rest of the afternoon. After work, Meursault runs into his neighbor, Salamano, who is on the stairs with his dog. The dog suffers from mange, so its skin has the same scabby appearance as its elderly master’s. Salamano walks the dog twice a day, beating it and swearing at it all the while.

Raymond Sintes, another neighbor, invites Meursault to dinner. Raymond is widely believed to be a pimp, but when anyone asks about his occupation he replies that he is a “warehouse guard.” Over dinner, Raymond requests Meursault’s advice about something, and then asks Meursault whether he would like to be “pals.” Meursault offers no objection, so Raymond launches into his story.

Raymond tells Meursault that when he suspected that his mistress was cheating on him, he beat her, and she left him. This altercation led Raymond into a fight with his mistress’s brother, an Arab. Raymond is still attracted to his mistress, but wants to punish her for her infidelity. His idea is to write a letter to incite her guilt and make her return to him. He plans to sleep with her, and “right at the last minute,” spit in her face. Raymond then asks Meursault to write the letter, and Meursault responds that he would not mind doing it. Raymond is pleased with Meursault’s effort, so he tells Meursault that they are now “pals.” In his narrative, Meursault reflects that he “didn’t mind” being pals with Raymond. As Meursault returns to his room, he hears Salamano’s dog crying softly.

Analysis: Chapters 2–3

Meursault appears heartless for failing to express grief or even to care about his mother’s death. Yet to condemn and dismiss him risks missing much of the meaning of the novel. The Stranger, though it explores Camus’s philosophy of the absurd, is not meant to be read as a tale containing a lesson for our moral improvement. Camus’s philosophy of the absurd characterizes the world and human existence as having no rational purpose or meaning. According to Camus’s philosophy, the universe is indifferent to human struggles, and Meursault’s indifferent personality embodies this philosophy. He does not attempt to assign a rational order to the events around him, and he is largely indifferent to human activity. Because Meursault does not see his mother’s death as part of a larger structure of human existence, he can easily make a date, go to a comedy, and have sex the day after his mother’s funeral. Meursault is Camus’s example of someone who does not need a rational world view to function.

Meursault’s interactions with Marie on the beach show the importance he places on the physical aspects of existence. He reports to us almost nothing about Marie’s personality, but he carefully describes their physical interactions. The prose in his description of lying on the float with Marie and looking up at the sky is unusually warm and heartfelt. In this passage, it even seems that Meursault is happy. When he describes watching people from his balcony the following day, he again seems content.

While watching from his balcony, Meursault does not express any sort of judgment about the people he sees—he simply notices their primary characteristics. While the people he watches obviously attach great importance to their own activities, Meursault sees them as just part of another Sunday, like any other. Throughout the novel, Meursault plays this role of the detached observer. Just as he does not pass judgment on those he sees from far above on his balcony, so too does he refrain from judging the more significant characters with whom he interacts throughout the novel. Meursault will not commit to either condemning or defending Salamano’s treatment of his dog. Likewise, while he does not expressly condone Raymond’s treatment of his mistress, neither does Meursault refuse to participate in Raymond’s scheme.

Meursault and Raymond seem to display similarly indifferent responses to the world around them, but Raymond in fact serves as a foil for Meursault. In contrast with Meursault, who is amoral, meaning he does not make moral distinctions, Raymond is clearly immoral: he beats up his mistress and he fights with her brother. Moreover, Raymond’s manner of convincing Meursault to assist him in his scheme to take further revenge on his mistress seems somewhat manipulative. Raymond’s plan for revenge crystallizes the distinction between Meursault and Raymond. Raymond plans to make love to his mistress and then spit in her face. He uses the physical act of sex as a tool for humiliation and revenge. Meursault, conversely, sees his sexual affair with Marie as a source of delight, in much the same way that he responds positively to other physical aspects of life.

Summary: Chapter 4

[S]he asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so.

(See Important Quotations Explained)

The following Saturday, Meursault goes swimming again with Marie. He is intensely aroused from the first moment he sees her. After the swim, they hurry back to Meursault’s apartment to have sex. Marie spends the night and stays for lunch the following day. Meursault tells her the story of Salamano and his dog, and she laughs. Then Marie asks Meursault if he loves her. He replies that, though “it [doesn’t] mean anything, he [doesn’t] think so.” Meursault’s response makes Marie look sad.

Marie and Meursault can hear an argument in Raymond’s apartment. The tenants of the building gather on the landing and listen outside the door to the sounds of Raymond beating his mistress. A police officer arrives. Raymond’s mistress informs the officer that Raymond beat her and the cop slaps Raymond in the face. He then orders Raymond to wait in his apartment until he is summoned to the police station. Later that afternoon, Raymond visits Meursault in his apartment. He asks Meursault to go to the police station to testify that his mistress had cheated on him. Meursault agrees. After an evening out, the two men return to their apartment building to find Salamano desperately searching for his dog, who ran away from him at the Parade Ground. Meursault says that if the dog is at the pound, he can pay a fee to have it returned. Salamano curses the dog when he hears this, but later that night, Meursault hears Salamano crying in his room.

Summary: Chapter 5

I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn’t dissatisfied with mine here at all.

(See Important Quotations Explained)

Raymond’s friend Masson invites Meursault and Marie to spend the following Sunday at his beach house with him, his wife, and Raymond. Meursault’s boss offers him a position in a new office he plans to open in Paris. Meursault replies that it is all the same to him, and his boss becomes angry at his lack of ambition. Meursault muses that he used to have ambition as a student, but then realized that none of it really mattered.

Marie asks Meursault if he wants to marry her. Meursault replies that it makes no difference to him. When she asks Meursault if he loves her, he again replies that though it does not mean anything, he probably does not love her. Marie thinks he is peculiar, but decides that she wants to marry him nonetheless. She tells Meursault that she cannot have dinner with him that night, and when he does not ask why she laughs. Meursault eats dinner alone at Celeste’s, where he notices a strange woman obsessively checking off radio programs listed in a magazine. He follows her briefly when she leaves.

Meursault returns home and finds Salamano waiting outside his door. Salamano says that he bought his dog in an effort to overcome the loneliness he felt after his wife died, and that he does not want to get a new dog because he is used to the old one. Salamano then expresses his condolences for the death of Madame Meursault. He mentions that some people in the neighborhood thought badly of Meursault for sending her to the home, but he himself knew that Meursault must have loved her very much. He returns to his own loss, saying that he does not know what he will do without his dog. Its loss has changed his life dramatically.

Analysis: Chapters 4–5

On the surface, Meursault appears to be an ordinary, lower middle-class French colonial in Algeria, living a typical day-to-day routine. He eats lunch in small cafés, attends films, and swims during his free time. He is diligent but not exceptional at his perfectly ordinary job. As of yet, he challenges nothing this society hands him, and it challenges nothing in him. Meursault lives his life almost unconsciously, nearly sleepwalking through a ready-made structure that his society provides him.

By attempting to assign meaning to the meaningless events of Meursault’s life, the people in Meursault’s social circle succumb to the same temptation that confronts us as we read The Stranger. Salamano, for example, states that he is sure that Meursault loved his mother deeply, despite the fact that Meursault offers no evidence to support such an assertion. Salamano is himself supplying the rational order that he desires to find in the world. His statement about Meursault’s love for his mother seems intended to comfort himself more than to comfort Meursault. Further, the way Salamano turns to the subject of Meursault’s love for his mother in the midst of his own discussion of his missing dog suggests that Salamano uses his discussion of Meursault and Madame Meursault to displace his own guilt. Salamano assumes that Meursault really loved his mother despite sending her to a nursing home, just as he loved his dog even though he beat it.

Raymond’s encounter with the policeman implies a lack of rational order in human life. Society deems Raymond’s slapping of his mistress for a perceived injustice an immoral act. But when the cop slaps Raymond, society in effect condones the action of slapping. Physically, both slaps are nearly identical, yet one is considered wrong, and the other, just and good. Through the policeman’s actions, Camus implicitly challenges the truth of society’s accepted moral order.

Salamano’s description of life with his dog highlights the inevitability of physical decay. Salamano says that he initially had human companionship in his wife, but she died and he had to settle for the animal companionship of his dog. As time has passed, Salamano’s dog has become increasingly ugly and sick, until the point where it, too, has left him. Physical decay represents a marker and reminder of Camus’s philosophy of the absurd, which asserts that humans are thrust into a life that inevitably ends in death.

Meursault narrates the events of his life as they occur without interpreting them as a coherent narrative. He does not relate the events of earlier chapters to the events that take place in these chapters. It becomes clear that Meursault concentrates largely on the moment in which he finds himself, with little reference to past occurrences or future consequences. This outlook perhaps explains his ambivalent attitude toward marriage with Marie. Because he does not think about what married life would be like, Meursault does not particularly care whether or not he and Marie marry. Characteristically, the emotional and sentimental aspects of marriage never enter into his mind.

Summary

The following Sunday, Meursault has difficulty waking up. Marie has to shake him and shout at him. He finally awakens and the two go downstairs. On the way down they call Raymond out of his room, and the three of them prepare to take a bus to Masson’s beach house. As they head for the bus, they notice a group of Arabs, including Raymond’s mistress’s brother—whom Meursault refers to as “the Arab”—staring at them. Raymond is relieved when the Arabs do not board the bus. As the bus leaves, Meursault looks back and sees that the Arabs are still staring blankly at the same spot.

Masson’s beach house is a small wooden bungalow. Meursault meets Masson’s wife, and for the first time thinks about what marrying Marie will be like. Masson, Meursault, and Marie swim until lunchtime. Marie and Meursault swim in tandem, enjoying themselves greatly. After lunch, Masson, Raymond, and Meursault take a walk while the two women clean the dishes. The heat on the beach is nearly unbearable for Meursault. The three men notice two Arabs, one of whom is the brother of Raymond’s mistress, following them. A fight quickly breaks out. Raymond and Masson have the advantage until Raymond’s adversary produces a knife. Meursault tries to warn Raymond, but it is too late. The Arab slashes Raymond’s arm and mouth before retreating with his friend. Masson and Meursault help the wounded Raymond back to the bungalow. Marie looks very frightened, and Madame Masson cries when she sees Raymond’s injuries. Masson takes Raymond to a nearby doctor. Meursault does not feel like explaining what happened, so he smokes cigarettes and watches the sea.

Raymond returns to the bungalow later that afternoon, wrapped in bandages. He descends to the beach, and, against Raymond’s wishes, Meursault follows along. Raymond finds the two Arabs lying down beside a spring. Raymond has a gun in his pocket, which he fingers nervously as the two Arabs stare at him. Meursault tries to convince Raymond not to shoot, and eventually talks him into handing over the gun. The Arabs then sneak away behind a rock, so Meursault and Raymond leave.

Meursault accompanies Raymond back to the beach house. The intense heat has worn Meursault out, so the prospect of walking up the stairs to face the women seems just as tiring as continuing to walk on the hot beach. Meursault chooses to stay on the beach. The heat is oppressive and Meursault has a headache, so he walks back to the spring to cool off. When Meursault reaches the spring, he sees that the brother of Raymond’s mistress has returned as well. Meursault puts his hand on the gun. When Meursault steps toward the cool water of the spring, the Arab draws his knife. The sunlight reflects off the blade and directly into Meursault’s eyes, which are already stinging with sweat and heat. Meursault fires the gun once. He pauses and then fires four more times into the Arab’s motionless body. Meursault has killed the Arab.

Analysis: Chapter 6

At the beginning of the novel, the indifference Meursault feels is located exclusively within himself, in his own heart and mind. By this point, however, Meursault has come to realize how similar the universe—or at least Camus’s conception of it—is to his own personality. He begins to understand that not only does he not care what happens, but that the world does not care either. Reflecting on the moment when Raymond gave him the gun, Meursault says, “It was then that I realized you could either shoot or not shoot.” His comment implies that no difference exists between the two alternatives.

This chapter represents the climax of the first part of the book. Since his return from his mother’s funeral, everything that Meursault has done in the narrative up to this point—meeting Marie, meeting Raymond, and becoming involved in the affair with Raymond’s mistress—has led him to the beach house. Yet Meursault’s murder of the Arab comes as a complete surprise—nothing in The Stranger has prepared us for it. The feeling of abruptness that accompanies this shift in the plot is intentional on Camus’s part. He wants the murder to happen unexpectedly and to strike us as bizarre.

Inevitably, the first question that the killing provokes is, “Why?” But nothing in Meursault’s narrative answers this question. Camus’s philosophy of absurdism emphasizes the futility of man’s inevitable attempts to find order and meaning in life. The “absurd” refers to the feeling man experiences when he tries to find or fabricate order in an irrational universe. Cleverly, Camus coaxes us into just such an attempt—he lures us into trying to determine the reason for Meursault’s killing of the Arab, when in fact Meursault has no reason. Camus forces us to confront the fact that any rational explanation we try to offer would be based on a consciousness that we create for Meursault, an order that we impose onto his mind.

In this chapter, we once again see the profound effect nature has on Meursault. Early in the chapter, Meursault notes nature’s benefits. The sun soothes his headache, and the cool water provides an opportunity for him and Marie to swim and play happily together. Later in the chapter, however, nature becomes a negative force on Meursault. As at his mother’s funeral, the heat oppresses him. Camus’s language intensifies to describe the sun’s harshness, particularly in the passages just before Meursault commits the murder. His prose becomes increasingly ornate, featuring such rhetorical devices as personification and metaphor, and contrasting strongly with the spare, simple descriptions that Meursault usually offers.

Summary and Analysis: Part Two

Summary: Chapter 1

Meursault has been arrested and thrown into jail for murdering the Arab. Meursault’s young, court-appointed lawyer visits him in his cell and informs him that investigators have checked into Meursault’s private life and learned that he “show[ed] insensitivity” on the day of Madame Meursault’s funeral. The lawyer asks if Meursault was sad at his mother’s burial, and Meursault responds that he does not usually analyze himself. He says that though he probably did love his mother, “that didn’t mean anything.” The lawyer departs, disgusted by Meursault’s indifference to his mother’s death. Meursault says, “I felt the urge to reassure [the lawyer] that I was . . . just like everybody else.”

That afternoon, Meursault is taken to meet with the examining magistrate. The magistrate asks Meursault whether he loved his mother, and Meursault replies that he loved her as much as anyone. The magistrate asks why Meursault paused between the first shot at the Arab and other four shots. Nothing about the crime bothers the magistrate aside from this detail. When Meursault does not answer, the magistrate waves a crucifix at him and asks if he believes in God. Meursault says no. The magistrate states that his own life would be meaningless if he doubted the existence of God, and concludes that Meursault has an irrevocably hardened soul. During the course of the eleven-month investigation that ensues, the magistrate takes to calling Meursault “Monsieur Antichrist,” with an almost cordial air.

Summary: Chapter 2

Meursault describes his first few days in prison. The authorities initially put him in a cell with a number of other people, including several Arabs. Eventually, Meursault is taken to a private cell. One day, Marie comes to visit him. The visiting room is noisy and crowded with prisoners and their visitors. Marie wears a forced smile, and tells Meursault that he needs to have hope. She says she believes that he will be acquitted, and that they will get married and go swimming. Meursault, however, seems more interested in the mournful prisoner sitting beside him, whose mother is visiting. Marie leaves, and later sends a letter stating that the authorities will not allow her to visit Meursault anymore because she is not his wife.

Meursault’s desires to go swimming, to smoke cigarettes, and to have sex torment him in jail. He becomes accustomed to his confinement, however, so it ceases to be a terrible punishment. Only the early evenings seem to trouble him. He sleeps as many hours as possible, and kills time by recalling the tiniest details of his apartment and thinking about a story on an old scrap of newspaper he has found in his cell. The story involves a Czechoslovakian man who left his village at a young age. After making his fortune, he returned to his village in disguise to see his mother and sister, who were running a hotel. He planned to surprise them by revealing his identity after showing off his wealth. Unfortunately, his mother and sister killed him and robbed him before he could reveal himself. When they discovered their mistake, the two women both committed suicide.

Analysis: Chapters 1–2

The magistrate, when he waves a crucifix at Meursault, introduces the notion that Meursault and his attitudes represent a threat to society. Meursault’s atheism and indifference to his mother’s death implicitly challenge the magistrate’s belief in a rational universe controlled by God—the belief that gives his life meaning. By associating Meursault with the devil and calling him “Monsieur Antichrist,” the magistrate attempts to categorize Meursault in terms of Christianity, the magistrate’s own belief system. The magistrate incorporates Meursault into his ordered world view and then dismisses him as evil, thereby preventing Meursault from undermining his rational structure of belief.

For the most part, Meursault reacts to his confinement in prison with characteristic indifference. Most important, his imprisonment does not incite any guilt or regret over what he has done. As at his mother’s funeral, Meursault focuses on the practical details of his life in prison rather than on its emotional elements. For instance, he thinks the fact that the court will appoint an attorney for him is “very convenient.” He also enjoys the examining magistrate’s friendly demeanor in their subsequent meetings, and does not treat him as an adversary. Not surprisingly, the physical aspects of confinement weigh most heavily on Meursault’s mind. His unsatisfied longings for nature, the ocean, cigarettes, and sex constitute, in his mind, his punishment. He notes that though he thinks about women, he does not think about Marie in particular. This statement underscores the physical, nonemotional character of their relationship.

At the end of Part Two, Chapter2, Meursault, staring at his reflection in the window, notes the seriousness of his face and suddenly realizes that he has been talking to himself. Meursault’s actions signal his emerging self-awareness and self-consciousness. In prison, he is growing to understand himself and his beliefs more and more. He decides that he could get used to any living situation, even living in a tree trunk, for example.

Most important, Meursault begins to gain insight into the irrational universe around him. In his mind echo the words of the nurse who speaks to him in Part One, Chapter 1, during the funeral procession. She told Meursault that he would get sunstroke if he walked too slowly, but would work up a sweat and catch a chill in church if he walked too quickly. At the time, Meursault agreed that “there was no way out,” but now he understands for the first time the full implications of these words: there is no way out of prison, and there is no way out of a life that inevitably and purposelessly ends in death. When Marie comes to visit Meursault, her hope that Meursault’s trial will end happily contrasts strongly with Meursault’s growing affirmation of an irrational universe.

The news article that Meursault studies about the Czechoslovakian man serves to comment and expand upon the themes of absurdism that Camus illustrates in The Stranger. Camus’s absurdist philosophy asserts that the events of the world have no rational order or discernible meaning. The story of the returning son murdered by his mother and sister fits perfectly into such a belief system. There is no reason for the son to have died. His terrible, ironic fate is not compatible with any logical or ordered system governing human existence. Like Meursault’s killing of the Arab, the son’s death is a purposeless, meaningless tragedy that defies rationalization or justification.

Summary: Chapter 3

The following summer, Meursault’s trial begins. Meursault is surprised to find the courtroom packed with people. Even the woman he saw checking off radio programs at Celeste’s is there. The press has given his case a great deal of publicity because the summer is a slow season for news.

The judge asks Meursault why he put his mother in a home. Meursault replies that he did not have enough money to care for her. When the judge asks Meursault if the decision tormented him, Meursault explains that both he and his mother became used to their new situations because they did not expect anything from one another.

The director of the home confirms that Madame Meursault complained about Meursault’s decision to put her in the home. The director says that he was surprised by Meursault’s “calm” during his mother’s funeral. He remembers that Meursault declined to see his mother’s body and did not cry once. One of the undertaker’s assistants reported that Meursault did not even know how old his mother was. Meursault realizes that the people in the courtroom hate him.

The caretaker testifies that Meursault smoked a cigarette and drank coffee during his vigil. Meursault’s lawyer insists the jury take note that the caretaker had likewise smoked during the vigil, accepting Meursault’s offer of a cigarette. After the caretaker admits to offering Meursault coffee in the first place, the prosecutor derides Meursault as a disloyal son for not refusing the coffee. Thomas Perez takes the stand and recalls being too overcome with sadness during the funeral to notice whether or not Meursault cried. Celeste, claiming Meursault as his friend, attributes Meursault’s killing of the Arab to bad luck. Marie’s testimony reveals Meursault’s plan to marry her. The prosecutor stresses that Marie and Meursault’s sexual relationship began the weekend after the funeral and that they went to see a comedy at the movie theater that day. Favorable accounts—of Meursault’s honesty and decency from Masson, and of Meursault’s kindness to Salamano’s dog from Salamano—counter the prosecutor’s accusations. Raymond testifies that it was just by chance that Meursault became involved in his dispute with his mistress’s brother. The prosecutor retorts by asking if it was just chance that Meursault wrote the letter to Raymond’s mistress, testified on Raymond’s behalf at the police station, and went to the beach the day of the crime.

Summary: Chapter 4

In his closing argument, the prosecutor cites Meursault’s obvious intelligence and lack of remorse as evidence of premeditated murder. Reminding the jury that the next trial on the court’s schedule involves parricide (the murder of a close relative), the prosecutor alleges that Meursault’s lack of grief over his mother’s death threatens the moral basis of society. In a moral sense, the prosecutor argues, Meursault is just as guilty as the man who killed his own father. Calling for the death penalty, the prosecutor elaborates that Meursault’s actions have paved the way for the man who killed his father, so Meursault must be considered guilty of the other man’s crime as well.

Meursault denies having returned to the beach with the intention of killing the Arab. When the judge asks him to clarify his motivation for the crime, Meursault blurts out that he did it “because of the sun.” Meursault’s lawyer claims that Meursault did a noble thing by sending his mother to a home because he could not afford to care for her. Making Meursault feel further excluded from his own case, Meursault’s lawyer offers an interpretation of the events that led up to the crime, speaking in the first person, as though he were Meursault. Meursault’s mind drifts again during his lawyer’s interminable argument. Meursault is found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to death by guillotine.

Analysis: Chapters 3–4

In The Stranger, Camus seeks to undermine the sense of reassurance that courtroom dramas typically provide. Such narratives reassure us not only that truth will always prevail, but that truth actually exists. They uphold our judicial system as just, despite its flaws. Ultimately, these narratives reassure us that we live in a world governed by reason and order. Camus sees such reassurance as a silly and false illusion. Because there is no rational explanation for Meursault’s murder of the Arab, the authorities seek to construct an explanation of their own, which they base on false assumptions. By imposing a rational order on logically unrelated events, the authorities make Meursault appear to be a worse character than he is.

Camus portrays the process of accusation and judgment as hopeless, false, and irrational. Society demands that a rational interpretation be imposed on the facts and events of Meursault’s life, whether or not such an interpretation is possible. Meursault’s lawyer and the prosecutor both offer false explanations, leaving the jury with a choice between two lies. The prosecutor manufactures a meaningful, rational connection between Meursault’s trial and the upcoming parricide trial, even though no actual link exists between the two cases. However, the prosecutor has no trouble imposing enough meaning to convince the jury that a link does in fact exist, and that Meursault deserves a death sentence.

During his trial, Meursault comes to understand that his failure to interpret or find meaning in his own life has left him vulnerable to others, who will impose such meaning for him. Until this point, Meursault has unthinkingly drifted from moment to moment, lacking the motivation or ability to examine his life as a narrative with a past, present, and future. Even during the early part of trial he watches as if everything were happening to someone else. Only well into the trial does Meursault suddenly realize that the prosecutor has successfully manufactured an interpretation of Meursault’s life, and that, in the jury’s eyes, he likely appears guilty. Meursault’s own lawyer not only imposes yet another manufactured interpretation of Meursault’s life, but even goes so far as to deliver this interpretation in the first person, effectively stealing Meursault’s own point of view when making the argument.

The trial forces Meursault to confront his existence consciously because he is suddenly being held accountable for it. As he hears positive, negative, and neutral interpretations of his character, he recognizes that part of his being evades his control, because it exists only in the minds of others. All the witnesses discuss the same man, Meursault, but they offer differing interpretations of his character. In each testimony, meaning is constructed exclusively by the witness—Meursault has nothing to do with it.

Summary

[F]or the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. . . . For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

(See Important Quotations Explained)

After his trial, Meursault only cares about escaping the “machinery of justice” that has condemned him to death. The newspapers characterize the situation of a condemned man in terms of a “debt owed to society,” but Meursault believes the only thing that matters is the possibility of an escape to freedom. He remembers his mother telling him how his father once forced himself to watch an execution. Afterward, Meursault’s father vomited several times. Now, Meursault thinks an execution is really the only thing of interest for a man. He only wishes he could be a spectator instead of the victim. He fantasizes about a combination of chemicals that would kill the condemned only nine times out of ten, because then at least he would have a chance of surviving.

Meursault also dislikes the fact that the guillotine forces the condemned to hope that the execution works on the first try. If the first attempt fails, the execution will be painful. Hence, the prisoner is forced into “moral collaboration” with the execution process, by hoping for its success. He further objects to the fact that the guillotine is mounted on the ground, not on a scaffold. The condemned is killed “with a little shame and with great precision.” Meursault counts himself lucky every time dawn passes without the sound of footsteps approaching his cell, because he knows that such footsteps would signal the arrival of the men who will take him to his execution. When he considers the option of filing a legal appeal, Meursault initially assumes the worst, believing any appeal would be denied. Only after considering the fact that everyone dies eventually does he allow himself to consider the possibility of a pardon and freedom. Whenever he thinks of this possibility, he feels delirious joy.

Against Meursault’s wishes, the chaplain visits and asks why Meursault has refused to see him. Meursault reasserts his denial of God’s existence. When the chaplain states that Meursault’s attitude results from “extreme despair,” Meursault says he is afraid, not desperate. The chaplain insists that all the condemned men he has known have eventually turned to God for comfort. Meursault becomes irritated by the chaplain’s insistence that he spend the rest of his life thinking about God. He feels he has no time to waste with God. The chaplain tells Meursault that his “heart is blind.”

Meursault suddenly becomes enraged. He shouts that nothing matters, and that nothing in the chaplain’s beliefs is as certain as the chaplain thinks. The only certainty Meursault perceives in the whole of human existence is death. In the course of his outburst, Meursault grabs the chaplain. After the guards separate them, Meursault realizes why his mother started her little romance with Thomas Perez. She lived in the midst of fading lives, so she chose to play at living life over again. He believes crying over her would simply be an insult to her. Meursault has finally shed any glimmer of hope, so he opens himself to the “gentle indifference of the world.” His only hope is that there will be a crowd of angry spectators at his execution who will greet him “with cries of hate.”

Analysis

While awaiting his execution, Meursault takes the final step in the development of his consciousness. Whereas during his trial Meursault passively observed the judgments leveled against him, in prison he begins to ponder the fact of his inevitable death. He begins to see his life as having a past, present, and future, and concludes that there is no difference between dying soon by execution and dying decades later of natural causes. This capacity for self-analysis is a new development for Meursault, and it contrasts greatly with his level of self-awareness earlier in the novel.

Once Meursault dismisses his perceived difference between execution and natural death, he must deal with the concept of hope. Hope only tortures him, because it creates the false illusion that he can change the fact of his death. The leap of hope he feels at the idea of having another twenty years of life prevents him from making the most of his final days or hours. Hope disturbs his calm and understanding, and prevents him from fully coming to grips with his situation.

After speaking with the chaplain, Meursault no longer views his impending execution with hope or despair. He accepts death as an inevitable fact and looks forward to it with peace. This realization of death’s inevitability constitutes Meursault’s triumph over society. Expressing remorse over his crime would implicitly acknowledge the murder as wrong, and Meursault’s punishment as justified. However, Meursault’s lack of concern about his death sentence implies that his trial and conviction were pointless exercises. Moreover, Meursault accepts that his views make him an enemy and stranger to society. Meursault anticipates that his position in relation to society will be affirmed when crowds cheer hatefully at him as he is beheaded. Meursault’s eager anticipation of this moment shows he is content being an outsider.

In his heightened state of consciousness prior to his execution, Meursault says that he comes to recognize the “gentle indifference of the world.” Meursault decides that, like him, the world does not pass judgment, nor does it rationally order or control the events of human existence. Yet Meursault does not despair at this fact. Instead, he draws from it a kind of freedom. Without the need for false hope or illusions of order and meaning, Meursault feels free to live a simpler, less burdened life.

Important Quotations Explained

1.

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.” That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

Spoken by Meursault, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, these are the opening lines of the novel. They introduce Meursault’s emotional indifference, one his most important character traits. Meursault does not express any remorse upon learning of his mother’s death—he merely reports the fact in a plain and straightforward manner. His chief concern is the precise day of his mother’s death—a seemingly trivial detail.

Mersault’s comment, “That doesn’t mean anything,” has at least two possible meanings. It could be taken as part of his discussion about which day Madame Meursault died. That is, Meursault could mean that the telegram does not reveal any meaningful information about the date of his mother’s death. However, the comment could also be read more broadly, with a significance that perhaps Meursault does not consciously intend; Meursault might be implying that it does not matter that his mother died at all. This possible reading introduces the idea of the meaninglessness of human existence, a theme that resounds throughout the novel.

2.

She said, “If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church.” She was right. There was no way out.

The nurse speaks these words to Meursault during the long, hot funeral procession in Part One, Chapter 1. On a literal level, the nurse’s words describe the dilemma the weather presents: the heat’s influence is inescapable. But Meursault’s comment, “There was no way out,” broadens the implications of the nurse’s words. As Meursault eventually realizes, the nurse’s words describe the human condition: man is born into a life that can only end in death. Death, like the harsh effects of the sun, is unavoidable. This idea is central to Camus’s philosophy in The Stranger, which posits death as the one central, inescapable fact of life.

3.

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.

In this passage from Part One, Chapter 4, Meursault relates an exchange he has with Marie. With characteristic emotional indifference and detachment, Meursault answers Marie’s question completely and honestly. Always blunt, he never alters what he says to be tactful or to conform to societal expectations. However, Meursault’s honesty reflects his ignorance. His blunt words suggest that he does not understand fully the emotional stakes in Marie’s question. Also, in Meursault’s assertion that love “didn’t mean anything,” we see an early form of a central idea Meursault later comes to understand—the meaninglessness of human life.

4.

I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn’t dissatisfied with mine here at all.

This quotation is Meursault’s response in Part One, Chapter 5, to his boss’s offer of a position in Paris. Meursault’s statement shows his belief in a certain rigidity or inertia to human existence. His comment that “one life was as good as another” maintains that although details may change, one’s life remains essentially constant. The comment also implies that each person’s life is essentially equal to everyone else’s.

At this point in the novel, Meursault offers no explanation for his belief in the equality of human lives. In the novel’s final chapter, he identifies death as the force responsible for the constant and unchangeable nature of human life. A comparison of this quotation to Meursault’s ideas following his death sentence highlights Meursault’s development as a character whose understanding of the human condition deepens as a result of his experiences.

5.

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

These are the last lines of the novel. After his meeting with the chaplain, whose insistence that Meursault turn to God in the wake of his death sentence puts Meursault into a “blind rage,” Meursault fully accepts the absurdist idea that the universe is indifferent to human affairs and that life lacks rational order and meaning. He moves toward this revelation through the course of the novel, but does not fully grasp it until he accepts the impossibility of avoiding his death. Meursault realizes that the universe’s indifference to human affairs echoes his own personal indifference to human affairs, and the similarity evokes a feeling of companionship in him that leads him to label the world “a brother.”

As opposed to earlier in the novel, when Meursault was passively content at best, here Meursault finds that he is actively happy once he opens himself to the reality of human existence. Meursault finds that he is also happy with his position in society. He does not mind being a loathed criminal. He only wishes for companionship, “to feel less alone.” He accepts that this companionship will take the form of an angry mob on his execution day. He sees his impending execution as the “consummation” of his new understanding.

Key Facts

FULL TITLE  ·  The Stranger or L’étranger

AUTHOR  · Albert Camus

TYPE OF WORK  · Novel

GENRE  · Existential novel; crime drama

LANGUAGE  · French

TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN  · Early 1940s, France

DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION  ·  1942

PUBLISHER  · Librairie Gallimard, France

NARRATOR  · In Part One, Meursault narrates the events of the story almost as they happen. In Part Two, he narrates the events of his trial from jail, then moves into a more immediate narration in Chapter 5.

POINT OF VIEW  · Meursault narrates in the first person and limits his account to his own thoughts and perceptions. His description of the other characters is entirely subjective—that is, he does not attempt to portray them in a neutral light or to understand their thoughts and feelings.

TONE  · Detached, sober, plain, at times subtly ironic

TENSE  · Shifts between immediate past (or real-time narration) and more distant past, with occasional instances where Meursault speaks in the present tense.

SETTING (TIME)  · Slightly before World War II

SETTING (PLACE)  · Algeria

PROTAGONIST  · Meursault

MAJOR CONFLICT  · After committing murder, Meursault struggles against society’s attempts to manufacture and impose rational explanations for his attitudes and actions. This struggle is embodied by Meursault’s battle with the legal system that prosecutes him.

RISING ACTION  · Meursault relationship with Marie, his involvement in Raymond’s affairs, his trip to Masson’s beach house, and his taking of Raymond’s gun are the choices Meursault makes that lead up to his killing of the Arab.

CLIMAX  · Meursault shoots a man, known as “the Arab,” for no apparent reason.

FALLING ACTION  · Meursault is arrested for murder, jailed, tried in court, and sentenced to death. He then has an epiphany about “the gentle indifference of the world” after arguing with the chaplain about God’s existence.

THEMES  · The irrationality of the universe; the meaninglessness of human life; the importance of the physical world

MOTIFS  · Decay and death; watching and observation

SYMBOLS  · The courtroom; the crucifix

FORESHADOWING  · Madame Meursault’s friends watching Meursault foreshadows the jury’s watching him in judgment.

Study Questions and Essay Topics

Study Questions

1.

How do we know the world of The Stranger is irrational? How do different characters react to this irrationality?

Camus demonstrates that the world of The Stranger is irrational by excluding from the text any logical explanation for the events of the novel. Meursault’s murder of the Arab is the most obvious example of an event that occurs for no apparent reason. Meursault has no reason to kill the Arab, nor does he construct one. His action is completely random and purposeless. Another occurrence that holds no rational meaning is Thomas Perez’s exhaustion at the funeral. Perez, possibly the only person who really cares about Madame Meursault’s death, ironically cannot move quickly enough to stay with her coffin. His inability to keep up with the funeral procession—to act in accordance with his feelings—frustrates him to the point of tears. A third inexplicable occurrence is the scheduling of Meursault’s trial just before the trial of a son who killed his father. The prosecutor argues that Meursault’s crime opened the door for the crime of parricide, using the random circumstance of the trial schedule to help secure Meursault’s death sentence. Had the two cases not been scheduled back-to-back, Meursault might have received a lighter sentence. Camus seems to use the extent to which each character accepts or attempts to defy the irrationality of the universe as a signal of his or her personal worth.

2.

How do Meursault’s and Marie’s views of their relationship differ?

Meursault’s continual focus on Marie’s body and his lack of interest in her personality show that he sees his relationship with her as purely physical. Meursault repeatedly makes comments about Marie’s figure, usually noting how beautiful she looks. He describes little about their interaction other than their physical contact. The emotional aspects of their relationship are clearly secondary to Meursault. When she asks, he tells Marie that he probably does not love her, and he answers her questions about marriage with similar indifference. The fact that Marie asks these questions shows that she feels at least some emotional attachment to Meursault. At one point, she explicitly states that she loves Meursault for his peculiarities. After Meursault goes to jail, the differences between his and Marie’s attitudes about their relationship become even more obvious. Whereas Marie visits Meursault and genuinely misses his companionship, Meursault only misses Marie because he misses sex. Otherwise, he hardly thinks of her.

3.

Compare Meursault to Raymond Sintes. How are the two neighbors different? How are they similar?

At first, it seems that Raymond and Meursault could not be more different. Whereas Raymond is active and possesses a violent temper, Meursault is passive and always calm. Raymond treats his mistress cruelly, beating and abusing her, while Meursault does not seem capable of such behavior toward women. However, Raymond holds genuine feelings for his mistress and is truly hurt when he learns that she is cheating on him. Meursault, on the contrary, seems to have very little affection for Marie, whose appeal to him is predominantly physical.

Despite their differences, Meursault and Raymond hold similar positions in relation to society. Meursault’s detached attitudes make him an outsider, a stranger to “normal” society. Raymond’s work as a pimp brings him a similar societal stigma. Like Meursault, Raymond is on the outside of society looking in. Perhaps this similarity forms the foundation of their friendship.

Suggested Essay Topics

1. Trace the development of Meursault’s philosophy. How does he come to open himself to “the gentle indifference of the world”? What spurs his revelation? How do earlier events in the novel prepare us to expect it?

2. We see characters in the book solely through Meursault’s eyes, but Meursault typically tells us very little. Using the information that Meursault provides, analyze a character such as Marie and Raymond. What level of insight does Meursault provide into these characters’ personalities?

3. Compare and contrast the relationship between Salamano and his dog with the relationship between Meursault and his mother. What are the similarities? Which is more loving?

4. Discuss the style of The Stranger. How does Meursault’s language correspond to the subjects he describes? Does it evolve or change as the novel goes on? Does the stripped-down prose of the novel’s first half limit its expressive power?

5. Is Meursault really a threat to his society? Does he deserve the death penalty? Is he more or less dangerous than a criminal who commits a crime with clear motive?

6. In his jail cell, Meursault finds an old newspaper article about a Czechoslovakian man who is murdered by his mother and sister. How does this article relate to Meursault’s own trial for murder? How does this article expand the themes in The Stranger? How does it support Camus’s philosophy of the absurd?

7. Analyze the passages describing Meursault’s walk down the beach before he kills the Arab. How does Camus build tension in the passage? How is it different from the passages preceding it? Meursault says at his trial that he killed the Arab because of the sun. Is this explanation at all valid?

Setting

The city of Algiers, the principal setting of The Outsider, almost seems an active

participant in the novel. The city is described as bathed in sunlight so intense at times

that it makes Meursault feel dizzy; it is surrounded by white-hot beaches and endless

expanses of sky and water. The street where Meursault lived was modeled after the

Rue de Lyon- the main artery of Belcourt, the Algerian suburb where Camus grew up.

Meursault’s observations from his balcony (Part One, Chapter II) will give you a good

sense of the atmosphere in Algiers during the late 193Os- the time when The Outsider

was written, and the time that the action in the book, according to most critics, takes

place.

Algiers is a city of crowded apartment buildings, where the neighbors and shopkeepers

all know one another. The streets are lined with bars and restaurants. Arabs, Europeans, and pieds-noirs- people of European descent born, as Camus himself

was, in Algeria- live side by side, but not without tensions and conflicts.

The story should be seen against this background of racial mix and unrest. Algiers is

also a port city, where ships come and go constantly, leaving fragments of many cultures

(the city has been described as a “marriage” of East and West) in their wakes. Camus

has depicted the Algerians as a people with “a distaste for stability and a lack of regard

for the future, people in a hurry to live.” You can imagine the streets teeming with life,

twenty-four hours a day. More than the city, even, the natural climate of North Africa

forms a powerful backdrop to events and shifts of mood- the sun, the heat, the vastness of space and sky have much influence.

Algiers

*Algiers. Coastal capital of Algeria, a country in North Africa. Although not specifically described, Algiers serves as a general backdrop not only to the main action but above all to Meursault’s struggle with the collective forces of nature arrayed against him.

Beach

Beach. Outside Algiers, where Raymond, Meursault’s friend, has a bungalow. When the sun beats down on Meursault, the reflecting light gouges into his eyes, the lazy sea waves turn him lethargic, the fiery beach presses him forward, and the cloudless sky pours a sheet of flame on him. Under this onslaught, he has no other choice but to react in self-defense, first, by erasing the source of the attack (the Arab and his shining knife) and then by firing four additional shots for the four elements of nature.

Prison

Prison. Tiny cell in which Meursault awaits his execution. Only a confined space can allow him to concentrate on the essential and to think philosophical thoughts, unmolested by outside distractions and pointless discussions. After his final metaphysical revolt he is ultimately at peace, as evidenced by the stars shining on his face like a celestial projector, instead of the relentless and punishing sun, and by the heat now being replaced by the refreshingly cool night breeze on his cheeks. This Meursault calls “the benign indifference of the universe.”

Marengo

*Marengo. Retirement home and cemetery located some fifty miles west of Algiers. Before and during his mother’s funeral Meursault shows a strange callousness and lack of sorrow about her death. The unbearable heat and the blinding glare of the sun further aggravate this insensitivity, as he matter-of-factly attends the ceremony. Apparently unmoved by the occasion, he also observes the arid landscape around him, noting the green cypresses, the red soil, the humming insects, the rustling grass, and the various smells.

Swimming pool

Swimming pool. Part of the harbor complex. Rather than mourn over his mother’s death, he spends the next day with a female former coworker at the pool. The two then go to a movie theater to see a comedy and lastly to his apartment, where they spend the night together.

Detention center

Detention center. Jail in which Meursault is held before his trial. He and his court-appointed lawyer discuss his defense, which given his general apathy, does not look promising. Progressively, as he understands the purpose of his imprisonment, he adapts to his new environment by killing time and by sleeping.

Courtroom

Courtroom. Room in which Meursault’s trial takes place. Again, the heat is stifling, increased by the hour of the day and the large crowd of spectators and reporters. Again he responds and reacts in an all-too-aloof and unconcerned manner. This is why he is considered a “stranger,” quickly found guilty, and sentenced to death.

Examining magistrate’s office

Examining magistrate’s office. The first time Meursault is formally interrogated, the nondescript, ordinary room is so hot, with flies buzzing around, that he nods to any statement, from accepting Christ as his personal savior to being vexed over having shot a man.

Style

Camus’s style is simple, clear, and direct. He’s not writing an intellectual essay on a philosophical theme (as he did in The Myth of Sisyphus) but a novel that deals with his philosophical preoccupations. In order to do this, he has created recognizable characters and placed them in realistic situations. The clarity of style is the perfect instrument to convey the thoughts of the narrator (Meursault), who is attempting to find order and

understanding in a confused and confusing world.

Some readers point out the overall subdued quality of Camus’s style. Others compare his vocabulary to that of a child. Notice, also, the brevity of most of the sentences- which are also childlike- and the absence of complicated grammatical constructions. Camus describes objects and people but makes no attempt to analyze them. His attention is always fixed on the concrete nature of things. He uses words cautiously as if he were somehow suspicious of abstract terms. He also makes no attempt to analyze concepts such as love and religion, but reveals his thoughts about them by telling us Meursault’s responses. (Note the conversations between Meursault and Marie about marriage and the exchange between Meursault and the chaplain about God.) Occasionally, Camus’s style and use of vocabulary become more complex, more vivid. Notice the scene where Meursault kills the Arab. The stillness of the natural world suddenly explodes; it’s as if the universe has split in two or some other major catastrophe has just taken place. The heat is “pressing” against Meursault’s back and the “cymbals of the sun” are “clashing” on Meursault’s skull.

The world begins to vibrate and change, in the same way that Meursault’s own life will change now that he’s finally performed an act for which he must take responsibility.

Camus’s language is often repetitive; the same phrases and images reoccur throughout the novel. Natural images- the sun, sea, and wind- appear in different guises at different times. Before killing the Arab, for instance, Meursault acts as if he’s waging a battle with the sun- the same sun that gave him such pleasure earlier in the day. Phrases like “Having nothing better to do” and “I had nothing to do” are used frequently to establish Meursault’s indifference toward his own experience. As you read, pick out other words and phrases that appear regularly and try to figure out their significance.

The Outsider was originally written in French. The widely read American edition, translated by Stuart Gilbert, is faithful for the most part to the tone of the first-person narrator. Be aware, however, that the translator makes many changes in the original text.

For example, in the nursing home scene in the opening chapter, Meursault asks the doorkeeper if he would turn off one of the lamps in the mortuary. Gilbert translates the answer, “Il m’a dit que ce n’etait pas possible” (“He told me it wasn’t possible.”) as “’Nothing doing,’” indicating a direct quote from the doorkeeper, which, however, is not in Camus’s original version. At the end of Part One, while describing Meursault’s reaction to the sun before he kills the Arab, Camus writes, “Tout mon etre s’est tendu” (“My entire being became tense”), which Gilbert translates with considerable latitude as “Every nerve in my body was a steel spring.” In the second paragraph of Part Two, Chapter II, Gilbert translates “...j’ai senti que j’etais chez moi dans ma cellule et que ma vie s’y arretait” as “I realized that this cell was my last home, a dead end, so to speak.” A more literal translation would read, “I felt that my cell was my home and that my life had stopped there.” Gilbert also takes considerable liberty with Camus’s sentence structure and paragraphing.

The Stranger Literary Style

Narrative

Psychological self-examinations are common in French first-person narratives, but Camus’sThe Stranger gave the technique of psychological depth a new twist at the time it was published. Instead of allowing the protagonist to detail a static psychology for the reader, the action and behavior were given to the reader to decipher. Camus did this because he felt that “psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.” The protagonist, along with a failure to explain everything to the reader, refuses to justify himself to other characters. He tells only what he is thinking and perceiving, he does not interrupt with commentary. By narrating the story this way, through the most indifferent person, the reader is also drawn into Meursault’s perspective. The audience feels the absurdity of the events. However, other characters, who do not even have the benefit of hearing the whole of Meursault’s story as the book’s readers do, prefer their ideas of him. They are only too ready to make their judgments at the trial. Moreover, they readily condemn him to death as a heartless killer without regret.

Structure and Language

Camus’s narration was immediately recognized as extremely innovative. His language, while recognized as similar to the American “Hemingway style,” was seen as so appropriate to the task as to be hardly borrowed. The style that Camus uses is one of direct speech that does not allow much description. He chose that style because it backed up his narrative technique. The reader is focused on the characters’ reactions and behavior as they are related through Meursault.

Camus also divided the story at the murder. Part one opens with the death of Maman and ends with the murder of the Arab. In part two of the novel, Meursault is in prison and at the end is awaiting his execution. The division reinforces the importance of Meursault in the universe of the story. Normality is jarred throughout the first part until it dissolves into chaos because of the murder. The second half shows the force of law entering to reestablish meaning and therefore bring back order through the death of Meursault. The structure and the language, then, are technically at one with the greater theme of absurdity.

Setting

Environment is a very important element to Meursault. He reports the heat of rooms, the way that the sun affects him, and all the other conditions of the habitat he lives in. The story itself is set around the city of Algiers and the beach. It is always daytime and the sun is always out. Curiously, in the universe of The Stranger there is no night, no darkness outside of mental obscurity. Things happen overnight, but no plot action occurs in the dark. The only moment when darkness does threaten is at the start of the vigil, but the caretaker dispels the darkness with the electric light. Other things that happen overnight include private encounters with Marie (we assume) and the verdict, which is read at eight o’clock at night. However, the novel’s events occur during the day, long days that are hardly differentiated from each other. Such facts of time emphasize the absurdity of Meursault; everything is meaningless except for the current state of the body in the environment.

Foreshadowing

This technique is used to indicate a happening before it occurs, and this foretelling can be foreboding. A disturbing moment for Meursault, as well as the unsuspecting reader, occurs while Meursault is sitting near his Maman’s coffin. “It was then that I realized they were all sitting across from me, nodding their heads, grouped around the caretaker. For a second I had the ridiculous feeling that they were there to judge me.” Later, in part two, it is precisely his behavior at this funeral with which the state prosecution is concerned. The way in which Meursault honors his mother has everything to do with his guilt. In other words, the sense of judgement he felt from those sitting across from him at the funeral vigil foreshadowed the solitary condemnation at the trial.

The Stranger Literary Techniques

The Stranger is probably the most original of all of Camus's works. A narrative rather than a novel, it was really executed in the spirit of a "new novel," that writers of the 1960s, influenced by Camus, were to discover. Actually the story is the fragment of a tale, with many pieces left to the reader's imagination. The very fragmentation suggests the lack of coherence in the world of the absurd. The choice of language and style conveys Meursault's indifference and apathy. The absence of the passe simple, the past tense traditionally used in literature and present, is here replaced by the passe compose, or conversational past. The author makes free use of indirect speech, and thus accentuates the gulf between what is happening and what Meursault is thinking.

The novel is divided into two parts, with parallel structure. Critics generally consider the first part as superior and more original. It is here that Meursault describes the lack of relationship between the world and himself. The second part deals with his trial, and contains more irony and lyricism, with particular emphasis on solar imagery and poetry. In both parts, however, Camus shows his skill in narration as well as in lyricism.

View

All the events of The Outsider are seen through the eyes of the narrator, Meursault.

The story is told in the first person and traces the evolution of the narrator’s attitude toward both himself and the rest of the world. At first, Meursault makes references to his inability to understand what’s happening around him, but often what he tells us seems the result of his own laziness or indifference. He’s frequently inattentive to his surroundings.

His mind wanders in the middle of conversations. Only rarely does he make value judgments or express opinions about what he or the other characters are doing. You learn that he doesn’t like police-men or brothels, but otherwise he seems to accept experiences without differentiating among them.

At the trial, in Part Two, you learn what the other characters think of Meursault. Yet even these testimonies are filtered through Meursault’s observations, and sometimes you have the impression that he’s barely listening.

Some readers think the book would have been more successful if it had been told in the third person by an omniscient narrator. The characters, they argue, are merely fragments of what people are really like, and it’s difficult for readers to sympathize or identify with people about whose past they know so little. (Of the characters whom Meursault encounters, only Salamano’s past is revealed in some depth.) Other critics feel that the past of the characters are irrelevant and that Camus’s main purpose would be lost if the story were told in any other way. The Outsider, they argue, is the unfolding of one person’s way of viewing his surroundings, more than a study in relationships between people.

As you read, ask yourself whether it was wise for Camus to tell the story through Meursault’s eyes and why he chose to do so. Don’t assume that Camus and Meursault are interchangeable; remember that Meursault- though he sometimes seems to be the mouthpiece of the author’s view of the world- is a fictional character and must be interpreted accordingly.

Structure

The Outsider consists of two parts. Part One deals with approximately three weeks in Meursault’s life, and ends with his killing of an Arab. In this part, we see Meursault at his mother’s funeral, at his job, puttering around his small apartment. He begins an affair with Marie and drifts into a relationship with his neighbor, Raymond Sintes. Then he commits the murder that will result in a sentence of death.

Part Two picks up directly following the murder and ends eleven months later. We see Meursault in his prison cell and during his trial, and are introduced to the various functionaries of the state: the lawyer, the magistrate, the prosecutor, and the chaplain.

Meursault compares his life in prison with his former life, and we watch how his attitudes evolve. Does he change? Or does he simply become crystalized in his old pattern? If the climax of Part One is the murder of the Arab, what do you think is the climax of Part Two? Is it the verdict at the end of the trial or Meursault’s outburst when the chaplain visits him in jail? Are there other possibilities? The two parts of The Outsider can be seen as forming a kind of duality. Part One is principally a narrative, while Part Two is mainly Meursault’s commentary on his life in which he attempts to understand the reasons for existence. In Part One, Meursault walks through the world largely unaware of the effect of his actions on others; in Part Two he is conscious of every aspect of his experience, both past and present.

Critical Readings

A STEP BEYOND:

1. Water and sunlight are symbols of the real world, the world of the present. You can describe the pleasure Meursault takes in swimming and in feeling the sun on his face, and how the same sun later is harsh and blinding. He says he killed the Arab “because of the sun.” Discuss Meursault’s relationship to waterswimming and washing

his hands. You might feel that Meursault’s relationship to water and sunlight is a form of religion; if so, explain why. You can point out that all the other characters in the book are so engrossed in playing the games- religion, justice, love that society has created for them that, except for Marie, these people have little relation to the natural world. Describe Meursault’s devotion to the natural universe, and tell whether his way of seeing the world is more, or less, valid than any other.

2. Camus’s memories of his early childhood had important influence on his writings

(see “The Author and His Times” section in this guide). Being born in North Africa

exposed him to a culture that was in sharp contrast to the European culture with

which he’s also usually associated. Explain how the blend of the two cultures gave his

writing an added dimension and allowed him to view European thought from a unique

perspective. Discuss the North African setting and how the intense physical environment may have affected Camus’s idea of living solely for the present moment. Write about how the sensuality of the environment- and the natural beauty- probably influenced his sense of love and freedom. You might point out that, for Camus, the beauty of the natural environment was always viewed in direct contrast to the poverty of the North African people.

3. If you feel Meursault’s personality changes in the course of the novel, you might

note the following points. In Part One, Meursault is seen as a relatively passive person

who cares about little else than the pleasures of the moment. He doesn’t care whether he does one thing or another; and everything that happens to him- meeting Marie, becoming involved with Raymond, killing the Arab- is the result of “chance”. In Part Two, however, Meursault gains perspective on his old life and experiences feelings of deprivation. Before, it didn’t seem to matter to him whether he lived or died, but now he realizes that all his former pleasures were truly important to him. You can still take pleasure in life and seek happiness, he decides, even though you know that ultimately you’re going to die. You may want to say that in prison Meursault finds solidarity with others who share the predicament of life’s absurdity.

If you feel Meursault’s personality remains constant during the novel, you should note

similarities in his behavior in Parts One and Two. You may want to argue that Meursault may undergo superficial change, but that in essence his personality remains the same.

4. According to Camus, justice is one of the games society plays. Neither the lawyer

nor the magistrate seems to be particularly interested in the truth or in justice; what they want is to convince Meursault that he has to conform to society’s rules. Write about the methods of Meursault’s lawyer in handling the case.

Justice, on Camus’s terms, seems to depend principally on the skillfulness of the party

putting forth the argument; it has little to do with the truth. You can explain how the

prosecutor develops his case and how he interprets the testimony of the witnesses to get his point across. Compare the closing speeches of both the prosecutor and Meursault’s lawyer. Write about the judge’s description of himself as an “umpire” and how that relates to the notion that the participants in the trial are merely involved in playing a game. Discuss whether you think Meursault should be allowed to defend himself, or whether he’s right to take the lawyer’s advice and say nothing.

5. The “games” of society, according to Camus, are the social institutions people adhere to blindly, without questioning their true worth. The chaplain’s “game” is religion. Write about whether you think his argument with Meursault is sincere, and whether he believes what he says. The lawyer’s “game” is law. He advises Meursault to remain silent during the trial for fear that he might say something to antagonize the jury. He makes no attempt to plead self-defense, on Meursault’s behalf, and seems resigned to the fact that

Meursault will be found guilty unless he shows some emotion on the death of his mother. Meursault’s explanation of his relationship to his mother makes no sense to him. The magistrate, the final dispenser of justice, is playing two “games”: law and religion. He seems to need reassurance from Meursault in order to confirm his own religious beliefs; he acts as if Meursault is letting him down, in a personal way, by refusing to believe in God. All three men claim they believe, with absolute certainty, in their ideals; yet they seem threatened by Meursault’s belief in himself.

6. After the emotional scene with the chaplain, Meursault experiences a wave of calmness and serenity. He falls asleep, then wakes to the siren of a steamer in the distance. He realizes that the outside world no longer concerns him. Discuss how his physical separation from the world (as a prisoner) is similar to the way he felt as a free

man, and how his beliefs and sense of honesty tended to isolate him from society. He

identifies with his mother and understands why she took on a “fiance” shortly before her death. At this point, Meursault realizes he wants to begin his life anew. He’s accepted the fact that life is meaningless and that the universe is benign and indifferent. He has remained true to himself and to his own ideals, and that has allowed him to reach a point of ultimate freedom. He hopes that at his execution, he will be greeted with “howls of execration”- or denunciation. You might discuss this last wish as a desire for recognition on Meursault’s part, a sign of repentance, or a last act of defiance by Meursault.

GLOSSARY

ACOLYTE Person who assists a priest in the celebration of the Mass.

ASSIZE COURT Superior court in Europe and England in which sessions are held

periodically for the purpose of administering civil and criminal justice.

AU REVOIR French for good-bye.

BABEL Confusion of sounds, voices, or languages.

BIER Platform or portable framework on which a coffin is placed.

BILL OF LADING Document listing and acknowledging receipt of goods for shipment.

BLACK PUDDING Sausage made of blood and suet, sometimes with the addition of

flour or meal.

CAFE AU LAIT Coffee served with hot milk; also called “white” coffee.

DE TROP French phrase meaning “in excess” and, thus, unnecessary.

FACTOTUM Employee or assistant who serves in a wide range of capacities.

FERNANDEL (1903-1971) French comic actor and movie star.

FLAT Apartment or suite of rooms on one floor of a building.

FRANC Monetary unit of France and its dependencies.

GRILLE Metal grating used as a screen, divider, or decorative element in a window or

gateway.

GUILLOTINE Instrument for beheading, consisting of a heavy blade dropped between

two grooved uprights. Named after Joseph Guillotin, who urged its use during the French Revolution.

HORS D’OEUVRE Appetizer served before a meal.

MAGISTRATE Civil officer empowered to enforce the law.

MOOR Member of a Muslim people of mixed Arab and Berber descent, living in north

Africa.

PANAMA Straw hat.

PANNIKIN Small pan or metal cup.

PARRICIDE Person who murders either or both of his or her parents; the act itself.

REFECTORY Dining hall in an institution, particularly in a monastery or convent.

ROSETTE Ribboned ornament in the shape of a rose. Worn in the buttonhole by

veterans to indicate the possession of medals such as the Legion of Honor.

SPIRIT LAMP Lamp using alcohol or other liquid fuel.

TO TRENCH To dig into a subject and cover it thoroughly.

TRESTLE Frame consisting of a horizontal beam fastened to two pairs of spreading

legs, used to form a table.

VENDETTA Blood feud in which the relatives of a murdered or injured person seek

revenge on the murderer or members of his or her family.

CRITICS’ REACTIONS TO THE OUTSIDER:

The Outsider was wholly the product of Camus’ experiences, and the Parisian reader

could not have shared them. All he could do was to recognize that a new dimension was being added to his literature, ushered in by a frightening gong: “four short blows that I struck at the gate of misfortune.” In the first major review of The Outsider, Sartre would recognize its existential quality, a historian would see it as the symbol of the Algerian Frenchman isolated in his Moslem milieu.

Much later, a hostile Algerian would decide that in killing the Arab, Camus (or his hero) subconsciously acted out the dream of the pied noir who loved Algeria but without Moslem Algerians. A Finnish economic geographer would tell the author of this book that he saw in the beach scene, when the sunstruck Meursault pulled the trigger, a textbook example of the effect of climate on population.

CAMUS ON THE ABSURD

Camus claims that the feeling of the absurd is something of which we find evidence

not only in literature but in daily conversation and ordinary contacts with other people. The absurd may be experienced quite spontaneously without preparation of the mind or senses. Its revelation of itself to certain individuals is as arbitrary as the operation of divine grace for a believer in predestination. Generally, however, a sense of the absurd is most likely to arise in one or more of four different ways. Firstly, the mechanical nature of many individuals’ lives, the deadening routine that marks them, may one day cause some of these individuals to question the value and purpose of their existence. Awareness of the absurd finds its second possible source in an acute sense of time passing- a sense of time as the destructive element. Thirdly, the absurd arises from that sense of dereliction in an alien world which people feel in varying degrees. Lastly, we may possibly experience the absurd through an acute sense of our fundamental isolation from other human beings.

MEURSAULT AND THE NATURAL WORLD

Meursault’s awareness of the colors, lights and sensations of the external world is so

acute as to recall at times a mystical experience. Objects exist for him in their absolute

newness as they exist for the illuminate. He delights in existence such as he finds it, and each detail is for him infinitely important. This importance of physical existence is, in The Outsider, part of the expression of the absurdity of the world. When no emotions or ideas have any significance, physical events alone are capable of influencing a man and making him act. It is not hatred, envy, greed, revenge, or honor which makes Meursault kill the Arab, but simply the effect of the sun. This is the only explanation which he can give of his act, and since he is not very good at expressing himself, it is one which society cannot understand or accept.

CAMUS ON RELIGION

We come to understand the thought of Albert Camus only after we have probed the full significance of his optimism about and his pessimism about human destiny. For this throws us back to the abiding evidence of evil in human existence. For the Christian the ultimate character of the universe is good, and in this he finds his hope and the ability to transcend and accept, to a degree, the evil in the world. But what, at this point, has become clear about the thought of Camus is that for him the ultimate character of the universe is evil and that consequently men are always uncertain and always threatened; whatever goodness there be in life, it is in men, and this goodness is created only in the struggle of men to preserve and enlarge this area of goodness which they alone know and which they alone can guarantee.

CAMUS AND THE SUN

The sun, experienced with such pagan receptivity in the early essays, again dominates

these passages of The Outsider and unifies them insofar as it symbol-izes violence and

destruction. The key to this symbolical use of the sun lies in the metaphysical intention that animates Camus’ work. The entire novel is an allegory of that absurd universe which Camus had described elsewhere- The Myth of Sisyphus- in philosophical terms.

Meursault is the symbol of man perpetually estranged in the world and this conception is reinforced when Camus, lending the sun this potent destructive influence, absolves man from responsibility- and hence from guilt- by reducing him to something less than man, to the status of an irresponsible element in nature.

CAMUS’S VISION

The final pages [of The Outsider] remain unclear even after several readings. Camus’

intention is clear enough: he is asserting that life has value and meaning even when

it appears most valueless and meaningless; he is trying to find a way to repudiate the

implications of his own vision of the human predicament. Yet all he can do is to counter this vision with an abstract argument, and since he is a man of honesty and intellectual integrity, he will not permit himself a glib argument. The result is an obscure one... that carries far less conviction than the strong nihilistic bias of the book as a whole. What remains after you have put The Outsider down... is a cry of despair and the memory of a writer doing his best to say no to the pronouncements of his own voice.

MEURSAULT AND SOCIETY

Society as Camus portrays it is as duplicitous, capricious, and lethal as fate, with one

vital difference: fate makes no claim to rationality, while society does make one. Once

Meursault has been labeled a “criminal,” all of his previous actions that have seemed

merely eccentric are brought against him as evidence of a heinous personality by the

witnesses who gave no indication of judging him so harshly before his crime. There is

implicit in The Outsider the theme that no matter how innocent a life one may have led, once he has been judged guilty of a crime, society sanctimoniously hastens to reinterpret all his past actions in a guilty light. It would be a mistake, however, to interpret the novel, as the jacket note of an American translation does, merely as the story of “an ordinary little man... helpless in life’s grip.” Although Meursault does describe himself as being “just like everybody else,” this represents a certain irony on Camus’ part... for it is clear that Camus meant Meursault to be something more than a normal citizen whose minor eccentricities are turned against him because a freakish stroke of fate has caused him to commit a crime. Meursault is a social rebel.

MEURSAULT AND THE READER

The second part of the novel is concerned with the enigmatic problem of Meursault’s act, a problem as puzzling to Meursault as to the reader. Of the usual interpretations, Camus makes short shrift, presenting them ironically in Meursault’s semi-burlesque interviews with the prosecutor, magistrate, and lawyer, and in his account of the trial. The first person narrative now establishes a strange dissociation between the facts and feelings Meursault had previously described, and the attempts made by others to interpret them coherently. A definite shift in perspective is introduced: the reader finds himself in the position of judge, jury, and privileged witness. He and Meursault alone know the facts. Camus has thereby put upon him the burden of an explanation Meursault is unable to furnish. Self-critical and self-correcting, the novel rapidly moves towards its end.

The Stranger Social Concerns

The Stranger was the first great novel to emerge from French Algeria. The Arab presence figures prominently in the story, and stresses kinship, rivalry, and bloodshed. The violence expressed in the murder of the Arab by Meursault brings out the violence in Arab-European relations. The Arabs, however, were not natural enemies to the French, and the one who is killed in the story represents his race as a model of silence and contemplation. The tact that Meursault murders him needlessly shows that murder is not the solution to the Arab-European conflict, which was to erupt into warfare in the 1950s, and in which Camus took a side opposed to native independence.

Camus also addresses the question of justice in Meursault's trial. Actually, it is a parody of justice, for he is tried, not for killing a man, but for not having wept at his mother's funeral. Throughout his trial, he is robbed of his own identity, never really allowed to speak, and his lawyer uses the first person in his place. Meursault represents the person persecuted by society because he refuses its falseness and hypocrisy. He will have no part of its artificiality, and will not become involved in its game. In the end, he is convicted on a technicality, showing that the trial is a meaningless formality.

The Stranger Compare and Contrast

1942: Algeria is a French colony under Nazi occupation. Today: The political party which established Algeria as an independent nation has lost power to more fundamentalist groups.

1942: Mahatma Gandhi is imprisoned as a part of the British government crack-down on India’s demand for independence.

Today: Independent India has a population of just under billion people and, according to Bill Gates, is soon to catch up with the United States in terms of technological sophistication. India’s middle class is currently the largest of any nation on Earth.

1942: Roosevelt’s $59 billion-dollar budget called for $52 billion to be spent on the war effort.

Today: In peace time, the U.S. spends 6 times that amount on military expenditure.

The Stranger Topics for Further Study

Consider the element of time in the novel. Suggest some reasons why Camus chose not to establish the date or era. Keep in mind the historical context of the novel and the universal pretension of the theme.

Consult psychological literature and create a profile of the “outsider.” What sort of mental condition creates a person of moral indifference? Begin with the book The Outsider by Colin Wilson.

Do some research on the condition of freedom of the press in France under Nazi occupation and the role of journals such as Combat in the resistance to this occupation. Does the refusal of Meursault to abide by the societal code of the world in which he lives have anything to do with the conditions under which Camus struggled?

Read the The Myth of Sisyphus. What is the absurd man? Was Camus successful in creating a character in terms of his theory of the absurd? Does Meursault have a place in reality?

Read the first American existential novel by Richard Wright, entitled The Outsider (1953), and compare to Camus’s The Stranger.

Often encyclopedic entries on existentialism will list Camus as a representative author. Select an existential novel (by such authors as de Beauvoir or Sartre) and compare its themes to Camus’s theory of the absurd. Agree or disagree with such a categorization.

Much has been made of the evident moral clash between Meursault and the magistrate or the priest. Do you think that Camus’s project was the outlining of a moral code or the presentation of the absurd man?

The Stranger Literary Precedents

Camus has often been compared to Pascal in his existential questioning and anguish, although Pascal was a firm believer in immortality. Among his nineteenth-century predecessors are the skeptical Vigny, and Stendhal, whose The Red and the Black (Le Rouge et le noir,1830) also contains a mistrial and a condemnation on technicalities. Victor Hugo'sThe Last Day of a Man Condemned to Death (Le Dernier jour d'un condamne,)1829) also contains the reflections of a man in prison. Meursault's crime is similar to that in Samuel T. Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). Germaine Bree sees in Meursault an echo of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Dmitri Karamazov, "whose real crime was not the one that he is tried for, but one which will lead him to a new level of awareness" (The Brothers Karamazov[Bratya Karamazov], 1879-1880). Finally, the short, unconnected sentences of the entire narration are most like Hemingway, who was a great influence on many mid-century French authors.

Critical Evaluation

A French author born in Algeria just before the outbreak of World War I, Albert Camus considered the history of his times a history of “murder, injustice, and violence.” He lost his father in the Battle of the Marne, grew up in the shadow of a world war, and participated in the next world war as a member of the French resistance movement.

Athletic and intellectually gifted, Camus played football while attending the University of Algiers, where he studied philosophy and the Greek classics, planning to become a teacher. In 1937, however, at the age of twenty-four, he was stricken with tuberculosis, which led to four years of enforced inactivity while he recuperated. During this period, he began to write and to formulate the philosophy that would underlie his novels, plays, and essays. In 1957, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

As much a philosopher as a creative writer, Camus is closely associated with the atheistic branch of existentialism, a philosophy emphasizing humanity’s consciousness of its mortality and its consequent need to find meaning in a universe that seems indifferent and inhospitable to such a quest. Camus believes that there is no god, hence that life has no purpose. Things—human beings, plants, animals—simply live and die as part of a natural process that has no transcendent meaning or value. Human beings are distinguished from plants and animals only by virtue of the fact that they are conscious of their own mortality. Alone among all living things, human beings know that they must die. This awareness pushes them to seek explanations, to try to find meaning in what is essentially meaningless. Camus and other thinkers describe this situation as “the absurd.” Human beings—seekers of meaning in a meaningless universe—live in a condition of absurdity.

Meursault, in The Stranger, is not at first a seeker of meaning, nor is he particularly aware of his own mortality. He simply sleepwalks through life, as many do, ignoring the inevitability of death and the implications of mortality. Camus argues that most human beings live in this condition for as long as they can, going about their daily routines like automatons, refusing to think, seeking solace in simple physical and material pleasures. However, most are doomed to be awakened to their condition when something—the death of a loved one, perhaps, or a serious illness as in his own case—disturbs their routine.

For Meursault, the event that forces him out of his complacency is the killing of the Arab—not the murder itself, a meaningless event brought about by a natural response to the sun and danger, but its aftermath. When society condemns him, Meursault realizes that he is not being condemned for taking a human life but for refusing to accept the illusions society promotes to protect itself from having to acknowledge the absurdity of the human condition. In effect, Meursault is condemned to death for failing to weep at his mother’s funeral.

After he is condemned, Meursault could fall back on the illusions proffered by society through its priests and clergymen—hucksters and shills, as Camus thought of them. To do so would have been intellectually dishonest. In fact, the novel’s real turning point occurs when the priest visits Meursault in his cell. Here, for the first time, Meursault shows passion, revolting against the priest’s effort to impose on him the platitudes and false certainties of religion. Meursault chooses, instead, to accept his condition; he refuses to deny the reality of his impending death. In doing so, he discovers the one tie that links him to all other beings: death. Once death, or the inevitable cessation of existence, is recognized as the single inescapable condition of existence, life, however meaningless it might ultimately be, becomes valuable. However, whatever value life has must be imposed on it; people must engage it actively. Ironically, Meursault learns this too late.

The Stranger is a deeply disturbing novel. From its famous dispassionate opening—“Mother died today. Or maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.”—to its conclusion, where Meursault expresses the hope that on the day of his execution he will be greeted by “a huge crowd of spectators,” all hurling at him “howls of execration,” the novel challenges assumptions about life and literature. Just when it appears that Meursault can be dismissed as a callous egoist, he reveals complexities of emotion common to all; he merely refuses to pretend to feelings he does not possess. When Meursault becomes enmeshed in the legal system, Camus shows how society is more concerned with appearances than with any meaningful concept of justice. When Meursault, instead of repenting and seeking solace in some transcendent reality, refuses to acknowledge the possibility of anything beyond the immediate facts of his situation, the heroism of his attitude is made clear.

Camus’s style in this novel is disturbingly flat and objective, an anomaly for a first-person narrative. It has often been suggested that Camus was influenced by Ernest Hemingway in this respect. With this curiously flat style, Camus suggests that in an absurd universe all things have equal value. Nothing in the entire universe is intrinsically more meaningful than anything else.

The Stranger Essay - The Stranger

Narrator Meursault begins with one of the most famous opening statements in modern literature: “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.” Meursault is not so much callous as affectless, utterly disconnected from social conventions. He attends his mother’s funeral but fails to conform to the rituals expected on such an occasion.

The next day, he goes to the beach and picks up a woman named Marie. The two become lovers, but Meursault is unable to make any long-term commitments. He is also befriended by a petty hoodlum named Raymond.

The following week, Raymond invites Meursault and Marie to join him at the beach. While walking alone along the shore, Meursault confronts a hostile Arab. The sun flashes in Meursault’s eye while he finds himself with Raymond’s revolver in his hand. Before he is aware of anything, he has fired five shots into the Arab’s body.

The novel is divided into two almost equal parts; the second focuses on Meursault’s trial for murder. The prosecutor builds his case upon what he argues is a pattern of consistently selfish, cynical behavior. The defense attorney uses the same circumstantial evidence to attempt to depict Meursault as fundamentally sympathetic.

Meursault rejects the specious games of both and the premise that there is a meaningful pattern to any individual’s existence. Uncomfortable with the facile abstractions that distort the gratuitousness of actions, he offers himself as a martyr to the truth.

Written in a severe, understated style, the novel mocks grandiose claims for coherence among discrete, immediate events. It questions traditional assumptions about moral responsibility and about the individual’s role in society.

Critical Overview

The success of The Stranger has been matched by an unceasing flow of criticism. Most of that criticism has been a positive affirmation of Camus’s place as a master of French literature. One reviewer even described Camus as the writer America had been waiting for since Hemingway. The criticism has also had the effect, good or bad, of rendering the novel a moral treatise. This occurred early on when Jean-Paul Sartre reviewed the work in 1943 and said, among other things, that with this work “Albert Camus takes his place in the great tradition of those French moralists.” Philip Thody, in a more recent article, says this is a misleading approach to The Stranger since in moral terms the novel is full of contradictions, whereas if read for its absurd theory, no breakdown exists.

Taking the cue from Sartre, other reviewers of the 1940s matched the novel with Camus’s writings in The Myth of Sisyphus and criticized Camus’s ability to handle Heidegger and Kierkegaard. Richard Plant, however, did not seem to need the heavy guns of philosophy to enjoy the novel, according to his 1946 article “Benign Indifference.” Instead, he claims, the novel presents the protagonist’s philosophy as “nothing but a rationalization of his sublime indifference.” Unfortunately, Plant seems to grow confused and therefore moves very quickly to compare Camus with the American style of writing. Plant says that the way Camus handles the shooting of the Arab should serve as a model to Americans of the “tough school.” Finally, Plant says, “Camus emerges as a master craftsman who never wastes a word.”

During the 1950s most critics were more concerned with Camus’s political stance in response to the Algerian independence movement as well as his disagreement with French intellectuals—namely Sartre. The strife of the decade, accompanied by ailing health, gave Camus a horrendous writing block and left him silent but for a few rare occasions. Critics generally enjoyed The Plague of 1947 and The Fall of 1956. His Nobel prize was seen as well deserved.

Two exceptions to the above were Norman Podhoretz and Colin Wilson. The latter wrote a book in 1956 detailing the trend in modernity, and its fiction, toward a hero who stood for truth. Wilson entitled this work in honor of Camus’s novel— in its British translation—as The Outsider. This character is defined as follows:

The Outsider’s case against society is very clear. All men and women have these dangerous, unnamable impulses, yet they keep up a pretense, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosophy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make look civilized and rational something that is savage, unorganized, irrational. He is an Outsider because he stands for [this] Truth.

Sartre wrote similarly about the phenomenon Camus’s Stranger represented. However, Sartre believed such a being had a place in society whereas Wilson was simply recording a literary trend.

Podhoretz was also interested in this new hero. In 1958, he credited Camus with the correct identification of this new hero. “It was, of course, Camus who first spotted the significance of [the] new state of nihilism and identified it, inThe Stranger, with the pathological apathy of the narrator Meursault— the French were far in advance of the Americans in seeing that the ‘rebel’ was giving way in our day to the ‘Stranger.’”

Camus’s death in 1960 shifted the discussion surrounding his work to an automatic respect, followed by criticism. Exemplifying the criticism that arose in the face of his death, Henri Peyre wrote in a 1960 article, “Camus the Pagan,” “the works of Camus, as they stand interrupted by fate, utter a pagan message which is to be set beside that of the great pagans of antiquity and that of some of the modern pagans to who Christianity owes an immense debt of gratitude.” If Camus could be said to have had a religion, it would have been atheistic humanism. Writing in a 1962 introduction to “Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays,” Germaine Bree commented: “Camus’s rapid rise to celebrity between 1942 and 1945 is unparalleled in the history of French literature: The Stranger,The Myth of Sisyphus, and the two plays Caligula and The Misunderstanding, together with Camus’s role in the Resistance and the widespread interest in his Combat editorials, started his career in meteoric fashion.”

By the 1970s, criticism had returned to traveled, but still fruitful, paths of inquiry. In 1973, Donald Lazere wrote, “The Stranger, like the Myth, asserts the primacy of individual, flesh-and-blood reality against any abstract notion that claims to supersede it.” But then with the rise of Post-Colonial criticism, there was a turn to aspects of The Stranger that were not often discussed. Philip Thody, in “Camus’s L’Etranger Revisited” (1979), wrote that despite the fact that Camus championed the cause of Algerian independence in his journalism, he did not escape or confront colonialism in his fiction. For support Thody points to the obvious and striking absence of names for Algerians. Neither the nurse (who has an abscess), Raymond’s girlfriend, nor the Arabs (who follow Raymond) have names. They are simply part of the scenery affecting Meursault when he pulls the trigger.

The Stranger Essay - Essays and Criticism

Elements, Philosophy, and Viewpoints in The Stranger

The Stranger is probably Albert Camus’s best known and most widely read work. Originally published in French in 1942 under the titleL’Etranger, it precedes other celebrated writings such as the essays The Myth of Sisyphus (1943) and The Rebel (1951), the plays Caligula (1945) and The Just Assassins (1949), and the novels The Plague (1947) and The Fall (1956). Set in pre-World War II Algeria, The Stranger nevertheless confronts issues that have preoccupied intellectuals and writers of post-World War II Europe: the apparent randomness of violence and death; the emptiness of social morality in the face of an irrational world; a focus on existential and absurd aspects of the human condition. Through the singular viewpoint of the narrator Meursault, Camus presents a philosophy devoid of religious belief and middle-class morality, where sentience and personal honesty become the bases of a happy and responsible life.

What perhaps strikes the reader first about The Stranger is the unemotional tone of the narrator, Meursault. The novel begins: “Today, mama died. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I received a telegram from the retirement home: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Deepest sympathy.’ That tells me nothing. It could have been yesterday...” Meursault’s flat response to the death of his mother conveys a sense of resignation, one supported by his lack of ambition at work and his indifference in personal relationships. Save for his tirade against the chaplain at the end of the novel, Meursault remains rather monotone throughout; his only pleasures are immediate and physical: the taste of a café au lait; the warmth of sun and water; the touch of his fiancée, Marie. Thus, from the opening words, Camus projects his remarkable philosophy through an unremarkable protagonist: since death is both arbitrary and inevitable, and since there is nothing beyond death, life only has importance in the here and now, in the day to day activities that make up our existence. Camus’s simplistic narrative style, influenced by the journalistic tradition of Hemingway and his own experience as a reporter, helps to convey the sense of immediacy that lies at the foundation of his philosophy.

From a literary standpoint, The Stranger offers aspects that complement both modern and traditional sensibilities. With regards to the former, the story is presented as the subjective experience of a first-person narrator. We do not know his first name, what he looks like, or precisely when the action of the story takes place. He does not divulge much information about his past, nor does he attempt to present a cohesive view of, or opinion about, the society in which he lives and works. Such qualities are in stark contrast to the Realist novel tradition represented by such nineteenth century writers as Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), whose works attempt to reproduce a complete account of French society through the eyes of a moralizing, omniscient third-person narrator.

In a more classical vein, The Stranger offers order and balance. The novel is organized into two parts of equal length, and the central episode of the book—the shooting of the Arab—is both preceded and followed by five chapters. Themes are maintained with strict focus: the story opens with the death of Meursault’s mother, the murder lies at the exact center of the book, and the novel concludes with the death-sentence of Meursault. Within the story Camus creates scenes of explicit parallel and contrast. The tears and fainting of Thomas Pérez at the funeral, for example, offer a foil to Meursault’s lack of emotion. The noise of Salamano cursing his dog directly precedes the screams of the Moorish woman as Raymond beats her; both relationships share qualities of physical love and abuse. One might argue that Camus’s sense of literary balance is an attempt to put into practice an existential philosophy: the only order in a disordered world is the one we create for ourselves.

The Stranger and its author have often been linked to Existentialism, a post-World War II philosophy that has become synonymous with the name of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80). Although Camus was a one-time friend and supporter of Sartre, he denied being an existentialist. Nevertheless, there are clear existential themes in the The Stranger, a product of the intellectual climate of the times. Camus’s preoccupation with the nature of being, for example, and his rejection of reason and order in the universe, are both existential concerns. When Camus presents the Arab’s murder as the result of a random series of events, and Meursault refuses to lie in court to help win his case, we enter into existential realms of human action and responsibility. There is no outside force governing our lives, according to the existentialists; individuals must take responsibility for their own actions. Meursault’s ultimate vindication is in having remained true to himself and to his feelings in a society that cultivates deception and hypocrisy.

Since its publication, critics have interpreted Meursault’s plight in many ways. From a mythic or structuralist viewpoint, Meursault reenacts a timeless struggle of an individual caught up in the forces of fate, driven toward the murder by divine powers acting through the sun and the sea. In psychological readings, the protagonist acts out issues held by the author: an oedipal love for his mother and the desire to kill his father. Poststructuralist accounts concentrate on the novel’s language and Meursault’s inability to explain his actions adequately in court. This inability should be read as the failure of language, these latter critics argue, since it lies outside of reality, and not that of society’s justice system or of its moral code. If there is a reading Camus himself preferred it was one that took into account his philosophy of the absurd. Many readers, following Sartre’s first review of the novel in 1943, look to Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus for the most revealing commentary on the work. Published the year after The Stranger, the essay defines the absurd as arising from the meeting of two elements: the absence of meaning in the natural world, and mankind’s inherent desire to seek out meaning. Meursault’s ultimate dignity resides in the knowledge that his quest for meaning will always go unfulfilled; happiness is achieved only in a life without illusions. Notions of the absurd become an important part of post-World War II literary production in France, the principal writers, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genêt and Eugène Ionesco, forming what has become known as the “Theater of the Absurd.”

Meursault’s experiences with the natural world draw out elements of Camus’s philosophy of the absurd. Meursault’s name itself has been associated with the environment that affects him so strongly throughout the novel. In French, mer means “sea”; sol means “sun.” Standing under the penetrating rays of the midday sun at the beach, “the same sun” that burned the day he buried his mother, Meursault faces off with the Arab. Suddenly scorched by a hot blast of wind from the sea, blinded by the sweat in his eyes, Meursault fires the revolver and shatters the silence of the day. Later, in court, he will tell the judge that he killed the Arab “because of the sun.” He shows no remorse for the crime he has committed, realizing that it occurred only because of chance circumstances. This meeting between man and nature, like all such meetings, ends in a meaningless act. All that remains is for him to acknowledge what he has done.

Not surprisingly, much commentary has focused on the colonialist aspects of the novel, above all because the victim of the murder is an Arab. Camus’s philosophy of the absurd may point to the murder as meaningless, but during a time of straining relations between Arabs and French (war broke out in 1954 between France and Algeria and concluded in 1962 with Algerian independence), the killing of an Arab by a French-Algerian could have been interpreted, and was, as a meaningful act indeed. A critic of colonialist oppression and a proponent of social justice for Muslims, Camus—a pied-noiror Frenchman born in Algeria—is nevertheless silent in his novel on the volatile political issues of the time. Although not depicted as social inferiors, Muslims in the novel are relegated to the periphery: a deformed nurse, an abused mistress, prisoners, and shiftless hangers-on. Camus considered himself an “Algerian” writer, yet his two-dimensional treatment of Arabs in the novel has, for some, aligned him more on the side of the French.

Early on in his career, Camus planned out the stages that his work would follow. The Stranger belongs to the first stage of his writing career, a period that also includes such titles as The Myth of Sisyphus and Caligula. The Stranger projects a “zero point,” according to the author, an “absurd” state of existence reduced to immediate sensations. Camus’s later works, informed by his years working in the French Resistance and his experience with totalitarian governments, move beyond the leveling effect created by The Stranger and build upon positive social values. The Just Assassins and The Plague, belonging to the later period, recount tales of community, justice, and solidarity.

Source: Patrick J. Moser, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 1999.

The Stranger

The Stranger, which grew out of the experiment of A Happy Death and was nourished by Camus’s political experiences, constitutes an attack on the accepted norms of bourgeois society. It calls into question many aspects of an oppressive colonial regime: the use of the judiciary, religion, and above all, language to maintain dominance. It is an ironic condemnation of colonialist and racist attitudes. The novel also develops a theme with variations on indifference and difference, a theme rooted in the Algerian experience, as Camus’s articles in Alger-Républicain have shown. If the hero Meursault has a moral message—and the reference to him as a Christ figure would suggest that he has—it is one that plays a constant role in Camus’s thought; there are no absolutes to which one can adhere, only limits, and the vital nuances are played out within those limits. Total indifference and apathy allow others to act without limits. Meursault develops from an acquiescent figure who admits no limits to a combatant who claims the right to be different.

The story has a simple plot. Meursault, a clerk in an Algiers shipping office, attends his mother’s funeral at an old people’s home in Marengo. The following day he goes swimming, meets an old friend, Marie, takes her to see a Fernandel movie, and initiates an affair with her the same evening. With another friend, Raymond, he spends a Sunday on the beach with Marie, where they encounter three Arabs, one of whom has a grudge against Raymond. In the ensuing confrontation, Meursault shoots one of the Arabs.

The second half of the novel relates Meursault’s trial and conviction, and his growing selfawareness during the months in prison. After being sentenced to death, he affirms his own system of values and rejects that of established society.

When The Stranger was first published in 1942 the aspect that evoked the most interest among critics was the use of the passé composé, the compound past tense, since the traditional tense used in literary narrative is the passé simple. Sartre, in his review of the book, comments that the effect of the passé composé is to isolate each sentence, to avoid giving any impression of cause and effect. Meursault’s experience is a succession of presents. During the transition from Mersault to Meursault, Camus changed the form of the narrative: an omniscient author using the passé simple and the third person was replaced by a first-person narrative in the passé composé. The author leaves his hero in a situation where he is dominated by the power of language rather than in control of it; language is equivalent to destiny.

Camus’s concern with language is evident in The Stranger. [The] use of language beyond [Meursault’s] mastery reveals an intellectual confusion that stems from the limits of his education. It is true that Meursault was once a student; but in rejecting ambition, he also rejected the value of an intellectual life. Rational thought is not worth the linguistic effort involved. Ironically enough, misinterpretation is not limited to Meursault. The French authorities misinterpret too.

“Literature” obscures the true nature of reality: Meursault is someone who has “given up language and replaced it with actual revolt. He has chosen to do what Christ scorned to do: to save the damned—by damning himself.” Viewed in this light, Meursault’s deliberate firing of four more shots into the dead body is an act of revolt, a defiance of the society in which he lives. Meursault, who places no reliance on language, throws down the gauntlet but fails to justify his action in the eyes of the world.

[It] is obvious that Meursault is in conflict, albeit unconsciously, with all the norms of the French system; in response to his narration of events, the reader’s sympathies lie with the Arabs defending their honor rather than with the unsavory Raymond. Meursault refuses to play the game, to be part of the family. The authority figures are all predisposed to be kind to Meursault: the soldier on whose shoulder he falls asleep on the bus, the director of the old-age home, his employer, the examining magistrate, his lawyer, the priest. It is only when he says no that they begin to resent him; he declines to view his mother’s body, he turns down a promotion that would take him to Paris, he refuses to recognize the Cross, or to misrepresent the details of his case. When he says yes, it is to the “wrong” things: to a cup of coffee, to a Fernandel film, and to Raymond’s sordid plan.

During the trial, it becomes clear that Meursault is being tried not for his action, but for his attitudes. The ironic presentation of the prosecutor’s arguments, in which the narrator’s use of free indirect discourse shows up the emptiness of the rhetoric, makes the trial seem farcical. Indeed one could assert that Meursault is innocent with respect to the invalid reasons for guilt attributed by the prosecution: “I accuse this man of burying a mother with a criminal heart.” The implications of “the void in the heart that we find in this man” are enlarged to the scale of “an abyss into which society could sink.” Meursault is accused of two crimes which he has not committed: burying his mother with a criminal heart (although psychoanalytical studies of this text have concluded there is some basis for his feelings of guilt at her death), and killing a father, since the prosecutor affirms in a flourish of rhetoric that he is responsible for the crime that will be tried in court the following day.

Bearing in mind the trials in Algeria that Camus covered as a journalist, one could conclude that the parodic deformation is mild, for in many of those cases the charges were politically motivated, the witnesses bribed, and the verdict a foregone conclusion. It is true that Meursault makes no effort to defend himself; but it is because he does not understand the ideas behind the verbiage, nor the consequences of his own words and deeds. The words used do not express reality, but Meursault and his friends are unable to counteract the force of their intent. They are verbally ill-equipped. The prosecutor, however, rejects such a defense before it is voiced. “This man is intelligent.… He can answer. He knows the value of words.” In a sense, this is true. Meursault refuses to use words that do not precisely translate his feelings, words like love, guilt, shame. Society is accustomed to euphemism and lip-service.

Meursault finds a voice and an adequate command of language in the final pages of his narrative. The reader is led to suppose that his execution is imminent and that his voice will be silenced: the guillotine effectively dislocates the very source of speech.

Only in his final outburst does Meursault consciously evaluate other people, although still in a negative way. Camus called him “a negative snapshot.” In an absurd world, all men are equal. It is through a kind of askesis, a narrowing down of his field of vision, that Meursault reaches an initial state of awareness, just as Mersault did. But Mersault is committed to death, and Meursault is committed to life.

Camus is playing ironically with ambiguity here, but this does not detract from the moral intent, to demonstrate that judgment is unjust because it is based on ambiguous data. Misinterpretation can be accidental or intentional, but in either case the consequences can prove fatal.

Metaphysical absurdity is mirrored by the social situation depicted in The Stranger; as Camus remarked, “The Plague has a social meaning and a metaphysical meaning. It’s exactly the same. This ambiguity is also present inThe Stranger.” The injustice of that social situation is in turn reflected and complicated by the particular attributes of a colonial society. Meursault learns in the course of writing his life that it is not meaningless, and his desire to relive it is the first positive affirmation he makes.

One aspect of Meursault’s statement, which will be a constant in Camus’s ideas on rebellion, is the emphasis on the concrete and the present. The prison chaplain embodies exactly what Meursault rejects: a nonphysical relationship with the world and with human beings, a passive submission to the injustices of God and society, and a dogmatic faith in a better life in the future. Meursault is solidly involved in the here and now, convinced that joy is one of the most precious of human emotions, not to be sacrificed for some abstract and hypothetical goal. He sums up, but only for his readers, his notion of happiness during the final day in court: “While my lawyer went on talking, I heard the echoing sound of an ice-cream vendor’s horn. I was overwhelmed by the memories of a life that was no longer mine, but in which I had found the simplest and most persistent joys…: the smells of summer, the neighborhood I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie’s laughter and her dresses.” The core of Camus’s arguments in The Rebel is here in embryo.

Source: Susan Tarrow, “The Stranger,” in her Exile from the Kingdom: A Political Rereading of Albert Camus, University of Alabama Press, 1985, 215 pp.

Camus's L'Etranger Reconsidered

The ambiguity of the novel starts with the title. With regard to whom or to what is Meursault a stranger or an alien? The wordétranger is only used twice in the récit, but not for Meursault. Alienation or estrangement is said to be the mood of Camus’s L’Etranger, and this short novel allegedly demonstrates a person’s complete lack of relatedness to other human beings. Meursault, however, is not like Baudelaire’s “Etranger,” who has no friends, like the “stranger” in Schnitzler’s short story “Die Fremde,” or like the outsiders in Thomas Mann’s early writings, who create an atmosphere of cold estrangement whenever they meet other people. Meursault is not odd, certainly not odder than, for instance, Salamano. True, Marie once calls him “bizarre,” but this does not apply to his way of life, or his character, only to his unconventional views of love and marriage. He is not a stranger to Masson or to his boss. He has friends, such as Celeste, Emmanuel, Raymond; and his friends stay by him when he is in trouble. People in the neighborhood know him and he knows them. He is one of them.

Thus, it is rather obvious that Meursault is not a stranger to others. However, it is more difficult to determine whether he is a stranger to himself, as it has often been said.

There can be hardly any doubt, however, that Meursault is a stranger to society. As Camus states in his “avant-propos,” “il est étranger à la société où il vit, il erre, en marge, dans les faubourgs de la vie privée, solitaire, sensuelle.” (One might perhaps question both “errer” and “solitaire”). He is, according to Camus, not playing society’s game, because he does not lie, even where and when everybody lies in order to simplify life, and because he rejects time-honored formulas, such as expressing regret after a crime, even when this rejection means the death sentence. Whether this actually stems from a “deep, though silent passion for the absolute and for truth” is debatable; this passion being too silent to be noticeable. To be sure, he is not only sincere when he refuses to pretend before the investigating judge that he feels genuine remorse, but also when he refuses to pretend to Marie that he loves her, and his sincerity makes him even say dogmatically that one is never allowed to pretend. Yet when he congratulates his lawyer in court, he is aware of not being sincere, and his testimony in behalf of Raymond at the police station is not a proof of his absolute sincerity either.

Meursault may also be termed a stranger to society because of his unconventional ideas about love, marriage, and how to get ahead in a job. Love, a conventional concept according to Le Mythe de Sisyphe, does not mean anything to him, and marriage, a conventional basis of society, is not a serious matter. He also declines the opportunity of going to Paris. Not to have any professional ambition is an affront to modern society. Meursault antagonizes society also by his “friendship” with the pimp Raymond and, above all, by not displaying the usual signs of grief at and after the burial of his mother.

Meursault is also a stranger to society because he sometimes feels left out. In the courtroom he has the bizarre impression of being just an intruder. Though he is sometimes tempted to “intervene” in the proceedings, he is told by his lawyer to keep quiet. His own trial seems to be held without him and his fate is decided without anyone asking him about his opinion. He is “reduced to zero” precisely by somebody who “acts” in his interest and who, according to convention, identifies himself with him by using “I” many times when he speaks of him. Meursault’s helplessness during the proceed- ings in court may be symbolic of man’s precarious place in a mass society whose workings he does not control nor even understand and whose leaders may speak in his name to further their own interests.

Meursault not only disregards some of society’s time-honored conventions, but also some of its most valued achievements. Unlike another “stranger,” Jean Péloueyre in Mauriac’s Le Baiser au lépreux, he makes no reference to his former studies. Literature, philosophy, science, art do not seem to exist for him. No great personality, living or dead, is ever named in the book. Although he went to a university, there are only a very few instances which would indicate that his education might be more than elementary. Raymond obviously assumes that Meursault can write better to his prostitute mistress than he himself could. Meursault remembers having learned in school something about the guillotine and about the events of 1789 (the only historical fact mentioned in L’Etranger). He apparently read some mystery novels, and also thinks he should have read books dealing with executions. These are rather few and strange examples of the education society has given him. His short, “disconnected” sentences and his almost exclusive use of thepassé composé may also be taken to be—among other things—a rejection of school rules and conventional writing.

This negative attitude toward culture perhaps reaches its climax in that unbelievable description of Paris, the cultural center of his nation: “C’est sale. Il y a des pigeons et des cours noires. Les gens ont la peau blanche.” (It’s dirty. There are pigeons and dark alleys. The men have white skin.) This is not meant to be funny. Meursault does not crack jokes and Marie does not laugh when she hears it, although she usually laughs at almost anything. It seems thatL’Etranger is directed not only—as it has often been noted—against thePharisiens but also against the Parisiens. Camus, of course, has often been critical of Parisian life and society, comparing it with the happier and more natural life in sundrenched Algeria.

However, this stranger to society never attacks society as such. He is not an anarchist or a rebel, he does not accuse or deride the judicial system, even praises some of its features, and is, according to the warden, the only prisoner who understands and approves certain punitive aspects of prison life. He is a law-abiding citizen, holds a steady job, works hard and well, and wears a black tie and a black armband as a tribute to convention. He is respectful to everybody, including the authorities (“Oui, monsieur le Directeur,” “Oui, monsieur le Président”) and does not deny conventional politeness: he thanks the director for arranging a religious funeral and later for attending the funeral. He compliments Masson on his cabin and thanks the newspaperman for his friendly words. He never uses offensive language.

Meursault, the stranger to society, never speaks of “society,” although the public prosecutor and the papers do. It is “the others” who have condemned him, that faceless, anonymous, undistinguishable group of people that sit in the jury box as well as in the streetcar and judge any new arrival.

A word that is stressed by Camus in connection with estrangement, especially in his Le Mythe de Sisyphe, and has perhaps become the most popular word of his philosophical vocabulary, is “absurd.” It has confusingly different meanings, and often is synonymous with “indifferent” or “stranger”-like. Meursault, therefore, has also been called an absurd man, his style “style absurde,” andL’Etranger an absurd novel or a novel of the absurd. In the novel the word is used only once. In his outburst at the end Meursault calls his life, not life in general, “absurd.” But “absurd” has no meaning without the assumption of a meaning, and it is not clear which meaning Meursault thinks or feels his life has been lacking. This somewhat corresponds to the “poor joys” of his life he speaks about, which imply great and real joys, of which, however, there is not the slightest intimation in the novel.

According to the terminology and the illustrations of Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Meursault’s basic indifference is absurd, since the absurd teaches that all experiences are indifferent. In addition, some of his experiences can be called absurd, such as that of the “inhuman landscape” and that of the independent reflection in the mirror of his tin can. In Le Mythe de Sisyphe Camus also calls the uneasiness absurd which one feels on discovering how non-human men really are and how mechanical their gestures can be. In L’Etranger Meursault is fascinated by the little woman who one day sits down at his table in the restaurant. Twice he calls her “bizarre,” and he even follows her to watch her. Her gestures have the precision of an automaton. This woman automaton, as he calls her, observes him in court as intently and seriously as the young newspaperman. Since the latter is to some extent Meursault (and Camus) himself, this encounter with her may indicate his discovery of his own mechanical way of life. The jerkiness (saccadé ) of her gestures also corresponds to the frequent jerkiness of his style. But the “femme automate” is not a “reflection” nor a “more extreme version of him.” He lacks her “incredible” precision, speed, and assurance. Also, Meursault apparently sees “la mécanique qui écrasait tout” not in his life but in his execution. By the woman automaton Camus may have intended to symbolize the mechanization of modern life in this story that uses the style of modern American fiction.

“Indifference,” which plays a key role in Camus’s world, is a concept related to estrangement and absurdity and often synonymous with either. His teacher, Jean Grenier, wrote an essay “De l’Indifférence,” and the original title of Meursault’s story was “L’Indifférent.” In the preface to the 1957 edition ofL’Envers et l’endroit, Camus diagnoses a deep indifference in himself which is like a natural weakness and has to be corrected. In Le Mythe de Sisyphe, however, he finds a noblesse profonde in indifference and sees that man at an advanced stage will nourish his greatness with the wine of absurdity and the bread of indifference. The world reveals to him a serene indifference to everything. The sky, in particular, is indifferent, has an inane, indifferent smile, pursues with the earth an indifferent dialogue, and is even indifferent to the “atrocious victories and just defeat of Nazi Germany.” But it also has charm, beauty, sweetness, and tenderness. This “explains” the paradoxical “tendre indifférence du monde” in the last paragraph, when Meursault looks at the starry sky.

Meursault is never called “indifferent” in the novel, but a group of hostile Arabs watch Raymond’s house with indifference and the court reporters seem indifferent. It is clear from these two occurrences that indifference is not identical with apathy, but rather with lack of emotionalism. Meursault displays indifference at the death of his mother, at Raymond’s offer of friendship, at Marie’s desire to marry him, and at his employer’s proposal to transfer him to a Paris office. After his mother’s death “nothing has changed.” One cannot change one’s life; at any rate, all lives are of equal value. Meursault’s indifference is probably not congenital, like Camus’s, but the result of a drastic experience of an undisclosed nature. The break came when he had to give up his studies and ambitions. Now he knows that “all that” has no real importance and in various situations he repeats the slogan of indifference: “It’s all the same to me.” The prospect of impending death shakes his indifference considerably, although he tries to maintain it by looking at the sky, and in his violent anger at the chaplain he even loses it to some extent, but only to regain and reaffirm it on a higher, lyrical, or mystical level. Again he maintains that nothing has any importance, that all lives and men are equal (because of death); but now with the “stars on his face,” he feels that the world’s “tender indifference” is penetrating him. As he finds the world brotherly now, it is a kind of mystical union, not with mother nature, but with brother world. Whereas the end of the first part, which leads to a violent death, is dominated by tension, hostility, destruction, and misfortune (malheur is the last word of this part), the end of the second part leads Meursault, who expects a violent death, to vague feelings of truce, peace, tenderness, brotherhood, and happiness. The last word (haine) is harsh again, but it means in its context the conquest of solitude and the reconquest of indifference.

Although Camus once states that “those are very poor who need myths” and that Algerians live without any myths, he himself reinterpreted or recreated old myths and perhaps created some new ones. In particular, his L’Etranger has been thought of as embodying various old and new myths. The multiplicity of mythical interpretations points definitely to the suggestive intensity of Camus’s novel, but perhaps also to the elusive vagueness or to the abuse of “myth” as a literary term.

While representing the myths of modern man, of Oedipus and Sisyphus, Meursault is also said to be a reincarnation of the myth of Christ. Indeed, it is almost generally believed that this little office clerk, who cannot feel sad at his mother’s death, who does not believe in a life hereafter, who kills a fellow-man, who does not seem to have any set of moral values, and who, consequently and perhaps not quite jokingly, is called “Mr. Antichrist” by the investigating judge, is a Christ figure, a tragic hero who takes upon himself the burden of humanity, a “sacrificial victim,” or the “scapegoat of a society of pharisees and Pilates.” Camus himself calls him—“paradoxically,” as he says—“the only Christ we deserve.” True, Meursault is like Christ a “victim of a judicial error,” is like Christ unprejudiced toward social outcasts, and is executed at approximately the same age Christ was. But, in spite of Camus, one cannot see how Meursault “accepts to die for truth.” He does not “incarnate truth,” he does not die for the sake of sincerity, but because of his sincerity (whatever the causes of his sincerity may be), because his attitude is not “conventionnelle, c’est-à-dire comédi- enne.” He does not live or die for anybody or anything, nor does he think he does, and his death does not change anything or anybody.

It is also rather difficult to see how the sea and the sun are used as “mythic religious symbols” in L’Etranger and especially how they are “associated in Camus’s mind” with the mother and the father. The homonymy of mère and mer does not mean much, since most of the time Meursault calls his mother “maman.” It is impossible to see the connection between the colorless, boring old woman, as Meursault sees his mother, whom he hardly cares to visit at the old age home, and the fascinating and beautiful Mediterranean, which he likes to watch and where he enjoys swimming. And while the sun is in L’Etranger the most powerful force, the father is weakness personified. All that Meursault knows about his father is that he vomited after witnessing the execution of a stranger, whereas his “stranger”-son finally expects his own execution with a feeling of near elation.…

Camus in the “avant-propos” calls Meursault “un homme pauvre et nu.” Indeed many a reader may sympathize when seeing poor Meursault suffer from an excess of light and heat, or dine on boudin, or “lost” in the forensic maze, or subjected to monstrous accusations. To be sure, there also are extenuating circumstances for his crime: the preceding scuffle, the beginning of a sunstroke, the lack of premeditation, the excessive consumption of wine, the feeling of the hostility of the world, the reflex (or defensive) nature of the first shot. But Meursault is no innocent, as most critics assume, unless one adopts the “absurdist” point of view, which “makes murder at least indifferent.” Meursault’s deed is not altogether an accident or a stroke of bad luck, as his friends in the courtroom and the magazines have called it. It comes as a climax: first, Masson, Raymond, and Meursault walk on the beach, then Raymond and Meursault, and finally, Meursault alone; at first, Meursault tries to prevent Raymond from shooting, then he thinks that one could shoot or not shoot, which is not a very innocent thought, and finally he does shoot. As he stands by the body of the dead man, he does not even feel that he has committed a crime. He understands that he has destroyed the equilibrium of the day and the exceptional silence of a beach— which is a credit to his feeling for nature—but he does not feel that he has also and above all destroyed a human life. He has to be told that he committed a crime and actually remains to the very end a “stranger to his crime.”

Paradoxically Meursault gets even more elusive when he reaches what is generally assumed to be “lucidity” at the end. The light which illuminates for him his past life and life in general is not bright sunshine, but seems to come from the stars which he sees. His rejection of a future life, his reaffirmation of indifference, his contention that death equalizes all men and makes everything look unimportant, seem clear, in spite of the passionate tone; his lyrical reflections at the very end, when he has regained his calm and reached the height of lucidity, are the least clear passages of the whole novel.…

Those who see in Meursault a Christ figure recall “the last moments of Christ, whose crucifixion was preceded by cries of hatred from the crowds.” But then one must also explain why Meursault suddenly and consciously identifies himself with Christ or parodies him. When one thinks that Meursault deserves the hatred of the people because he “has denied their myths,” and they see in him the symbol of their fate, which is usually masked by myths, one overlooks the fact that Meursault does not speak of expecting, but of wishing those cries of hate; also he has never been aware of his denying collective myths or of his being a symbol of something. When one believes that Meursault “wants the crowds to be there because he wants society to give some sign that it realizes how much he defies it,” one forgets that the death penalty is a clear enough sign of how society regards him.

Meursault’s strange last wish is above all proof of the firmness of his indifference in contrast to his attitude in court where the mere sight of people who, as he thought, detested him, made him feel like crying. He actually does not express that strange wish, but he feels the desirability or necessity of it; that wish probably means the ultimate height of tender indifference, which he thinks he has not achieved yet, but may or will very soon achieve.

The number and the violent reaction of the spectators are, of course, also a sign that people care about him, but a possible connection with the Salamano episode seems to be more enlightening. The only other time “haine” is employed in L’Etranger is to denote Salamano’s feelings toward his dog. The old man even constantly uses what might be called “cris de haine” toward his dog: “Salaud, charogne.” Since after his presumably violent death the hated dog makes his former master cry with affection and unhappiness, Meursault’s possible identification with the generally detested dog may be an indirect way of expressing his desire to be remembered well by the people who despised him before his death. Meursault’s identification with a dog at the time of his execution recalls Josef K., who in Kafka’s Der Prozeb; is executed at the end “like a dog.”

Meursault’s final illumination does not quite illuminate him in the eyes of the reader, who is left in the dark about the narrator’s outward appearance (except his complexion), about his first name, and, above all, about his childhood and youth. In addition, Meursault shows baffling inconsistencies in his attitudes and actions. At ten in the morning he barely manages to walk three quarters of an hour because of the sun, but he walks the same distance at four o’clock the day before after a bus ride without any complaints; he takes a sunbath the day after, races after a truck and jumps on it at twelvethirty two days later, and enjoys lying in the sun for hours. He shuns the “effort” to climb a few wooden steps, but instead takes a long walk in the broiling sun. He first wants to “see his mother right away,” but then repeatedly declines to see her. He does not care about Sundays, but does not want to waste a Sunday visiting his mother. And why does he keep Raymond’s revolver? And why does he (as well as the prosecutor) mistake the day of his mother’s burial for the day of her death (is this another “burial of the burial”)?

These are some of the puzzles which the numerous critics of the book have failed to solve or even to notice. Prompted by their philosophical preoccupations, some have in ingenious “superstructures” discussed ill-defined alienations or discovered non-existent myths and “absurdities,” while they often failed to see obvious facts and to explain disturbing difficulties. One ventures to hope that careful and searching attention will turn to the “properly esthetic” facets of the book, such as the varied style and the enigmatic point of view. L’Etranger itself will continue radiating its charm and challenge.

Source: Ignace Feuerlicht, “Camus’s L’Etranger Reconsidered,” in PMLA, Vol. 78, No. 5, December, 1963, pp. 606- 21.

APPENDIX

The Stranger Characters

Meursault

Meursault (mur-SOHLT), a young clerk in a business office in Algiers, Algeria. Although not totally disengaged from humanity, Meursault, the narrator and main character, maintains only unemotional and uncommitted relationships with others, even his mother. When called to a home for the aged in Marengo, fifty miles away, for his mother’s funeral, he shows no desire to view her body for the last time and shocks the other residents of the home by his seeming indifference. Though physically intimate with his Arab girlfriend, Marie, he regards her desire for marriage as a matter of no consequence. When an acquaintance named Raymond Sintes promises to be Meursault’s “pal” for life if he will help him in his own love affair, Meursault replies only that he has “no objection.” Meursault is completely but passively amoral. He sees nothing wrong with attending a comic film with Marie immediately after returning from the funeral or in assisting Raymond in the latter’s mean-spirited effort to punish his girlfriend for her refusal to submit to his domination. When Meursault and Raymond arm themselves against two Arabs, one of them the brother of the young Arab woman Raymond is attempting to dominate, it occurs to Meursault that whether he shoots or does not shoot the Arabs would amount to the same thing. When he kills one of the Arabs, he acts unconcerned. Another feature of his character, complete resignation to the flow of events, including the consequences of the murder, emerges during his prison experience. If character is created by, and is merely the sum of, a person’s decisions, as existentialist philosophy holds, Meursault makes very few true decisions. Even the five shots that he fires into his victim seem to represent something that simply happens to him rather than any conscious choice. Later, in his cell, he contemplates his future calmly, concluding that having lived even one day in the outside world provides a prisoner with enough memories to keep him from ever being bored. He cooperates with his court-appointed lawyer only passively and does nothing to help the latter counter the general impression of callousness toward his mother that the lawyer knows the prosecution will use to sway the jury. Meursault completely lacks faith in God or in the possibility of an afterlife. He rebuffs all soul-saving attempts of the priest who visits him in his cell after his conviction. He possesses only the existentialist certainty of death and feels happy in the awareness that life has emptied him of any hope except the hope that his execution may draw “howls of execration” from a crowd of onlookers.

Marie

Marie, Meursault’s girlfriend, by contrast a conventional young woman who enjoys the beach and films. She want to settle down with a husband and is willing to marry the indifferent Meursault. By visiting him in prison and attending his trial, she exhibits patient hopefulness in behalf of her hopeless companion.

Raymond Sintes

Raymond Sintes, an aggressive young man who comes closest to being a friend of Meursault. He possesses mostly undesirable traits. Pugnacious and vindictive, he beats his own Arab girlfriend and talks constantly of punishing her and wreaking vengeance on her brother, who appears only to be trying to protect her. It is Raymond’s aggressive attitude that draws Meursault into the situation that results in his crime.

The lawyer

The lawyer, unnamed, is a crafty and valiant defense attorney. He is nevertheless unable to elicit from his client the responses that might prevent the imposition of the death penalty.

The priest

The priest, also unnamed, is a man of faith, conscientious in his duty. He is knowledgeable about psychology but unsuccessful in his attempts to reclaim Meursault’s soul for Christianity. The fact that he is resourceful and persuasive serves to underline the extent of Meursault’s resistance to all aspects of conventional faith and hope.

Mersault

Meursault, the protagonist, is a character who is ostensibly without awareness, except for immediate physical sensations. He is an "outsider," as the title sometimes appears in English, who refuses to play the game of society. There is a gap between what he feels and what goes on around him, and he constantly vacillates between total comprehension and total skepticism. Although he does not understand the people around him, he keeps on trying. He is unable to create a real relationship with other people. His attraction to Marie is purely physical; when she wants to marry him, he replies with his usual "It doesn't matter." His neighbor Raymond Sintes requests his help; he writes the requested letter mechanically. However, one has the impression that he keeps trying to enter into the world around him, but that he is too much of an "outsider" to succeed. His name suggests "mer," the sea, and "soleil," the sun, which summarizes his contact with primitive physical sensations only.

Other characters are represented through Meursault's eyes, since the story is narrated in the first person. Marie appears as any woman, physically attractive, described often through her hair, her clothing, her body. One might doubt her commitment to Meursault, until she comes to visit him in prison, and is still interested in marrying him. Meursault's two neighbors, Salamano, and Raymond Sintes, are described humorously. Salamano looks like his dog, whom he constantly insults. Yet when the dog disappears, he is inconsolable. Raymond Sintes has a doubtful profession, a cluttered room, and a mistress on whom he wants revenge. Meursault is amused by them, but not overly involved. On the other hand, the judge of instruction, the lawyer, and the chaplain are presented ironically, in keeping with the parody of justice, the depersonalization of Meursault, and his refusal to believe in a future life.

Marie Cardona

Formerly a typist in the same office as Meursault, Marie Cardona happens to be swimming at the same place as Meursault the day after his mother’s funeral. She likes Meursault and their meeting sparks a relationship. She asks if he loves her but he tells her honestly that he doesn’t think so. Still, he agrees to marry her, but then he is arrested.

Marie represents the happy life Meursault desires to live. In fact, she is the only reason he even considers regretting his crime. Meursault sees Marie’s face in the prison wall—but the image fades after a time. Marie, for Meursault, was a comfort representing a life of “normality” that he might have lived. However, it did not happen. Instead he becomes certain only of life and death and is executed.

Caretaker

The caretaker takes a keen interest in Meursault. He stays by him throughout the vigil and provides him with explanations and introductions. He also tries to justify his life to Meursault. He explains that he has been to Paris and only became a caretaker when fate made him destitute.

It is the caretaker who provides the most damaging testimony at the trial. The caretaker testifies that Meursault “hadn’t wanted to see Maman, that [he] had smoked and slept some, and that [he] had had some coffee.” The prosecutor dwells on the caretaker’s testimony and asks him to repeat the part about having a coffee and a cigarette with Meursault. It is during this testimony that Meursault “for the first time … realized that [he] was guilty.”

Céleste

Céleste owns the cafe at which Meursault customarily dines. He is called as a witness at Meursault’s trial. His theory on Meursault’s crime is that it was bad luck. He seems to be a fatalist, believing that one is more the victim of chance than a free agent.

Defense Counsel

The lawyer represents Meursault to the best of his ability. He seems to be the only person who understands the silliness of the trial and the difficulties for someone like Meursault. After the examination of Pérez on the witness stand, he says, “Here we have a perfect reflection of this entire trial: everything is true, and nothing is true!” Unconsciously, the lawyer has just sided with Meursault— the truth of the court is arbitrary and meaningless.

Director of the Home

The director of the nursing home where Meursault’s mother lived is a very matter-of-fact man. Death in his community means taking care of ceremony and keeping, as much as possible, the other patients from being too much on edge. Consequently, everything is done “as usual” so that while a funeral is a stress to the community, it is also a habitual ritual. The director accompanies the funeral procession to the gravesite and offers Meursault information about his mother’s life at the home, but Meursault is not very interested.

Examining Magistrate

The magistrate, as an investigator, is interested in what other people think. This makes him the exact opposite of Meursault in psychological makeup. He examines Meursault’s testimony for the insights they might provide about Meursault’s mind, rather than making an effort to establish the facts of the murder. He tells Meursault that with God’s help, he will try to “do something” for him. The magistrate asks Meursault if he loved his mother before asking about the five shots. Thus, the connection between Meursault’s behavior at his mother’s funeral and his act of murder is made concrete. The magistrate then presents Meursault with a Bible and crucifix, hoping to save Meursault’s soul.

The ruse backfires because Meursault refuses to see the relevance of religion to the state’s case against him. Having failed to “do something for him,” the magistrate never brings up the matter again.

The magistrate is an important character in the story as the representative of society’s law. He fails in his attempt to make Meursault acknowledge either the authority of law or that of religion. The magistrate is entirely unable to understand Meursault, and after a few sessions speaks only to his lawyer.

Lawyer

See Defense Counsel

Masson

Masson is the owner of the beach house to which Raymond takes Meursault and Marie for the day. Masson is an obese, carefree fellow who wants them all to live there in the vacation month of August and share expenses. He believes that lunchtime is when one is hungry and that it is good to do things when one wants and not according to schedule. Thus he is simply a man who likes to live well and to be happy.

Arthur Meursault

Meursault is a French Algerian clerk who learns that his mother has died. He attends the funeral and, on the following day, goes to the beach. There, he meets Marie, with whom he begins a relationship. A neighbor invites him to the beach where they encounter some Arabs. Meursault shoots one of the Arabs for no apparent reason. He is arrested, tried, and executed. Until the moment when the judge pronounces him guilty, Meursault is annoyingly indifferent to the activities of the real world. The judgement jars him into an examination of life, at the end of which he concludes that life is absurd. He finds peace and happiness in this acknowledgment. This conclusion of his analysis, Meursault discovers, is liberating.

The Stranger is the manifestation or incarnation of Camus’s theory of the “absurd” man. Meursault reveals Camus’s theory through his actions. That is, the protagonist Meursault possesses a curious psychology whose activity is of more interest than the fact of his crime. Meursault is an “outsider”— a person who lives in his own private world and maintains no interest in anyone else, least of all in how they view him. However, he is not unaware of others. Several crucial moments demonstrate this: at the opening, Meursault is aware that his boss shows him no sympathy upon hearing of his mother’s death. Next, he is aware that one is expected to mourn the dead, which he refuses to do. He knows he could say he loved Marie and that she would accept his love, but he does not. Lastly, he is aware, throughout his own trial, that he ought to say certain things, but he does not.

Finally, as Camus himself said, Meursault is a Christ figure who dies for everyone who misunderstands him. Meursault becomes aware of the meaninglessness with which society pursues its notions of propriety, and, in the case of the prison chaplain, its dogmas. Meursault is convicted as much for his psychological indifference, his selfish and asocial behavior, and his lack of mourning for his mother, as for his crime. His position is not without logic. For example, when the magistrate tries to persuade him to believe in God so that he might be forgiven, Meursault asks what difference that makes when it is the state that will find him guilty and then execute him—not God.

It is before the priest, however, that he finally explodes: “none of [the priest’s] certainties was worth one strand of a woman’s hair. Living as he did, like a corpse, he couldn’t even be sure of being alive. It might look as if my hands were empty. Actually, I was sure of myself, sure about everything, far surer than he; sure of my present life and of the death that was coming. That, no doubt, was all I had.” Meursault dies because he knows this truth—he is killed because the others cling to their illusions.

Monsieur Thomas Pérez

Pérez is an old man who was a friend of Meursault’s mother at the nursing home. He insists on attending the burial. Because of a limp and his age, Pérez falls behind the procession but still manages to attend. He is called as a witness at the trial and is unable to say whether or not he had seen Meursault cry.

Raymond

Raymond is a neighbor who asks Meursault to write a letter for him. Meursault agrees to do so because it is easier than saying no. Consequently, they become friends and Meursault even testifies to the police that Raymond’s girlfriend was cheating on him. In response, the police let Raymond off (for beating her) with a warning. However, the girlfriend’s brother is not so benevolent, and, along with a group of Arabs, starts following Raymond. A showdown takes place when Raymond and Meursault visit Masson’s beach house. A fight ensues, and Raymond is cut. Shortly after this, Meursault shoots one of the Arabs.

Raymond represents the small-minded man who views things in terms of possession—he beats a woman for not being solely his; he insists that Meursault is his friend because he agreed to write the letter. Relationships, for Raymond, are his certainties and life fills in around them. It is Raymond, contrary to the evidence, who unquestioningly believes that Salamano’s dog will return.

Salamano

Salamano is a disgusting older man who beats his dog. His routine walk with his mutt and his muttering give Meursault daily amusement. This routine is part of the general rhythm of tedium that is Meursault’s universe. Sadly, the dog goes missing, and Salamano comes to Meursault for help. Meursault offers him none and Salamano acknowledges that his whole life has changed. The disruption of routine caused by the loss of the dog is one of many signs that Meursault’s tedious universe has collapsed.

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