The Stranger by Albert Camus

Thank you Brianna for lending me your copy of The Stranger by Albert Camus (published 1942).  Albert Camus was a major French philosopher and writer of the 20th Century and I had been planning to read The Stranger eventually but there is no time like the present.  This review will contain spoilers.

When The Stranger (translated by Matthew Ward) begins Meursault, the main character in the novel, is living in Algiers.  His mother has just died.  As Mersault travels to the nursing home where his mother was living it becomes clear that he is not broken up by her death.  He's not happy or sad.  He doesn't cry.  It's just that nothing affects him one way or the other.  After his mother's funeral for example he begins a relationship with a young woman named Marie.  She brings up the subject of marriage and Meursault responds::

"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.  "So why marry me, then?" she said.  I explained to her that it didn't really matter and that if she wanted to, we could get married.  Besides she was the one who was doing the asking  and all I was saying was yes.  Then she pointed out that marriage was a serious tbing.  I said "No".  She stopped talking for a moment and looked at me withot saying anything."

Mersault also makes friends with Raymond, a neighbor.  Raymond beats up his mistress who he believes is cheating on him.  She has two brothers who vow revenge.  Meursault, Raymond, Marie and another couple are vacationing at the beach when they spot the two brothers.  Later that day Meursault goes back to the beach where the brothers are staying and for no reason shoots and kills one of the brothers.  The second part of the book involves Meursault's trial where he is facing the death penalty.

The Stranger is a philosophical novel and needs to be read with that in mind.  Meursault behaves as if life is meaningless and because of this he is a threat to the other characters in the book.  At his trial the prosecutor, judge, even the defense attorney are obsessed not with the murder but with why Meursault did not cry at his mother's funeral.  Why didn't he visit her more?  Why did he begin a relationship with Marie so soon after his mother's death?   Meursault will not conform to what society expects of him.  He will not pretend to have emotions he doesn't feel.  He sees life as fundementally meaningless and everyone else in the novel including the prison chaplain at the end of the book is trying to get Meursault to come around to their point of view.  They don't want to acknowledge that he may be right, maybe life is meaningless.

In one of his other books, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus lays out the philosophy of absurdism which sees the universe as chaotic and uncaring.  To offset this grim picture humanity has tried to build a world with meaning:  religion, marriage, children, work, laws, art politics etc but its all futile.  Camus who was an atheist believed that people would be happier if they could admit to the absurdity of life and he encouraged people not to give up in the face of absurdity but to revolt against it.  Live a life with meaning anyway.  This was the road to true happiness and freedom.  At least I think that's what Camus is saying.  I would have to read more to be sure. 

The facts of Camus' life may have contributed to his philosophy of the absurd.  His father died iwhen he was a year old.   Camus grew up poor but happy and he loved his mother. Camus got accepted to the University of Algiers but had to drop out because of TB.  Camus lived through World War II which must have reinforced his view that life was uncaring and where was God?  But he was a brave man who joined the French resistance and published the underground newspaper Combat.  He was very troubled by the bombing of Hiroshima and what these devastating weapons meant for humanity's future.  Camus continued to speak out against the death penalty, poverty, war.  He was critical of the Soviet Union and their treatment of Eastern Europe which caused his break with Jean Paul Sartre. As Camus once put it "I am for the left, despite myself, and despite the left."  Camus won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957.  He died in 1960 in a car crash.   He had bought a train ticket to Paris but at the last moment his publisher offered him a ride and they were killed when their car hit a tree.  Camus was 46.

I recommend The Stranger and am glad I read it. It's not a beach read but it's a novel that causes you to think.  I came away from The Stranger wanting to know more about Albert Canus and read his other classics, The Plague, The Fall and his book The Myth of Sisyphus where he goes into more depth about absurdism.  Thanks once again Brianna for recommending The Stranger