The Stranger
About the book
Book author: Albert Camus
* Spoiler warning *
We follow our protagonist, Mr Meursault in Algiers. He is a french expat.
The story is divided into two distinct parts. In Part I, we follow him through the death of his mother and he seems rather insensitive about it. He meets Marie, his lover, the day after the funeral, not being particularly sad. He helps someone called Raymond to write a letter to a girl, and afterwards, Raymond beats the girl. Mr Meursault covers for him in the story to the police.
The beaten girl’s brother and friend encounter Meursault and Raymond. It almost gets violent before they leave. For some unexplicable reason, Meursault goes back to where the event happened, and shoots the beaten girls brother.
In Part II, Meursalt is incarcerated. He is not particularly bothered about his situation. Because he never denies his crime, and shows such a general detachment, he is called a soulless monster and gets sentenced to public execution. He meets a priest and argues with him that ultimately nothing matters, because everyone will die anyway.
Reflection and takeaways
I did not like this book. From a story point of view, Meursault does too dumb choices. However, the real book is between the lines. It is a philosophical essay into absurdism.
Absurdism has a valid case to it, as Meursault says in the book: what we say or do or feel can cause our deaths to happen at different times or under different circumstances, none of those things can change the fact that we are all condemned to die one day, so nothing ultimately matters.
However, if nothing matters, you become indifferent to everything. Absurdism has no morality. This indifference causes you feel acceptance with anything but it turns into an insufferable asshole. Meursault even commits murder. If you buy into it, its likely you are put in situations where you have to stick to the strategy even harder, because your circumstances start to suck big-time. It is exactly what happens in the book. Meursault throws his one life away for no reason. When he is in jail, he had to keep sticking to the philosophy, and has to die. He only got sentenced to die because he stuck do it and didn’t regret his choices. What I can’t comprehend is that Meursault writes this book as an argument for absurdism. Sure, Meursault died “happy”, but truly a pointless death, as the philosophy allows.
Certainly, much can be endured better by not taking everything dead serious. Especially things outside of your control. But to take absurdism to this level is, for lack of a better word, absurd. I think it is much better to go the Nietzsche route and find your own meaning in life, whatever it might be.
Why did I pick it
It has been on my radar for some time, and was a short read.
Verdict
2.5⁄5. I don’t buy the philosophy and thought Mr Meursault was a soulless monster, much like the prosecutor.