The Stranger by Albert Camus

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What do I think about this book? The book which is adequate to make you sit riveted, casting off the presence of any other issue or entity, to a side! Is there anything more astonishing than to see a written word, written by someone at a different place and time, reflecting your own thoughts!

Starting with the book, I had an anticipation of the way it would turn out, considering that it is the third book by Camus that I had taken up. And I must add that I wasn’t disappointed. “The Stranger”, as the name suggests, turns out to portray a man who has always been a stranger, not only for the people surrounding him but also for his own being. This is emphasized through the way he responds to the events as occur in his life. He shows a casual approach, and not an attention or emotional inclination for anything that ensues in his life, not even the demise of his mother. For the most part of the narration, he seems to be stating things, observing them from a distance, not feeling or analyzing issues, as if nothing matters to him too much. In the opening lines, he says “MOTHER died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.” His indifference might seem appalling to some, for he seems to be lacking the natural human tendencies of love and sorrow, but it is understandable in the wake that he depicts the character of an absurd, someone who, amidst all the chaos prevailing, is aware of the nothingness of the entire entity that surrounds us.

What absorbs me most here is the account of Meursault, as given by the author. There is no clue about the reason for his temperament barring one single line where, after turning down his employer’s proposal to move to Paris, he says, “I returned to my work. I’d have preferred not to vex him, but I saw no reason for “changing my life.” By and large it wasn’t an unpleasant one. As a student I’d had plenty of ambition of the kind he meant. But, when I had to drop my studies, I very soon realized all that was pretty futile.” This line does tell us that he takes everything to be as pointless, not until the time he is brought into the court for the hearing when he kills a man. It is in the court when he is condemned by the prosecutor, that he realizes that his manners have made people criticize him, and that he is seen as guilty for being the way he is. But not even this realization makes him anxious, as he eagerly awaits the time of his guillotine, his thoughts wavering, from the people who might gather to witness his execution to the machine which might be used, and finally to the dawn of the day when they would come.

The end of the book concluding the absurd in the lines, “And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still.” make me speechless.




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