Albert Camus - The Stranger

Albert Camus is a renowned French author whose work, The Stranger, has been read by people from all over the world because of its critical message. Translated word-for-word by Matthew Ward, The Stranger is a rather mysterious story about Monsieur Meursault and a series of events which take place in his life. A French Polynesian, Meursault tells his story in a first-person narrative of life in Algiers. The first chapter starts with the death of his mother - perhaps the best way to set the tone for the rather depressing novel.

After his mother's funeral, we follow Meursault back home, where Camus introduces readers to Marie, who is Meursault's girlfriend whom he claims not to love; Raymond, who is an immoral pimp who befriends Meursault, and; Old Solomon, a rather senile old man who has nothing left to live for other than his dog. The four characters to the novel - though there are some other, smaller ones - play an integral part in displaying Camus' ultimate moral to the story.

When Meursault defends Raymond for beating his mistress - claiming that she had been cheating on him (though there is no proof) - Raymond invites him to the ocean, and also allows Meursault to bring Marie. At the shore, there are two Arab men - who turn out to be Raymond's mistress' brothers - who fight Meursault and Raymond. When Meursault takes his revolver and kills one of the Arab men, he is then arrested and thrown into jail.

From here, there is really not much progression of the story. The first part of the book, which leads up to the murder, has many different scenes and introduces at least half a dozen characters. However, the second part of the book takes place only in the jail and the court, and it is anticlimactic until the jury makes their shocking decision - though, to many, it may not be so shocking.

My rather bland explanation of the plot was purposely crafted in such a way. The story moves slowly, is not at all vivid, and Meursault expresses very little - if any - emotion. When his mother dies, he fails to cry or show any sort of remorse. When Raymond is beating his mistress, Meursault fails to stop him or show any kind of opinion regarding the situation. Even when he kills the Arab, there is nothing in the text which explains how he felt.

This blandness seems to be exactly what Camus was aiming for. His message - which can be debated by many and yet everyone could be right - is that life is taken too seriously, and that death is ultimately inevitable. Perhaps Camus felt that prolonging death was pointless, and that life is a tragedy of its own. The ending of the book helps make his message a little bit clearer, but there are still some unanswered questions regarding the peculiarity of the narrator.

The writing is very straightforward and involves basic language and grammar. Nonetheless, many paragraphs are overwhelmingly simple and many thoughts are cut short and without any substantiation. Take these few lines as an example:

"That evening Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn't make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't love her."

After these lines lies absolutely no further explanation about the exchange Meursault has with Marie - something which would normally be done with most other styles of writing. As you can see, the writing is rather simplistic, which seems to complement the narrator's shallowness, his unsophisticated life style and his trivial thought processes.

To conclude, I'm not sure that I can recommend The Stranger. While Camus is certainly commenting on society and life, I feel that the strange way that this novel was written will not be too well received by many audiences. While I had read that others thought The Stranger was powerful and perhaps earth shattering, I found myself detached from the main character and turned off by the lack of detail. Perhaps another read through will make me feel different, but the text is rather depressing and - to be frank - boring. I would have to force myself to sit down with this text again - something which I shouldn't have to do if I really think it's a good book. You may want to skip this one, but I'll leave it up to you.