Book Strut: Albert Camus's "The Stranger"
Mad Drama Teacher
1,985 Posts
Just finished this one. Can someone explain to me why this is considered a classic or is taught in school? I thought it was the most pointless book I've read in some time. In fact, the ending really pissed me off!SPOILER ALERT!"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. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration."That's the end of the novel! A shiftless loser murderer's last wish on Earth is for him to be jeered by a vengeful mob!END OF SPOILER.Can anyone help me understand this book?
Comments
This book is a classic because it challanges the fundamental values of our society and forces us to look inward and see the absurdity of it all.
One of my favorite books.
perhaps you would have preferred:
"And they all lived happily ever after"?
What fundamental values would those be?
Here is a little tidbit that will impress people at parties and will make you sound like you are mad edjumicated.
The Cure's "Killing An Arab" was based on this book.
Now if that doesn't get you laid I don't know what will.
If you haven't already, check out Taoism and Lao Tze: Taoism Lao Tze
I already knew that.
"Endgame" is one of my favorite works. I recently raved over "100 Years of Solitude."
I just think that this one falls short in the existentialist canon. Unlike most of the others in the genre, Mersault brought his fate upon him. He created his nightmare.
The message I've always gotten from Beckett, Pinter, Ionesco, Pirendello, other Camus, Sartre, and Stoppard is that the universe may well be indifferent and that we're all caught up in it, but that we do what we can under those circumstances, even if it's futile.
That's the spirit!
And yes, The Stranger is fairly clumsy at times, but it's often used as an introduction to existentialism, and as an introductory text, it speaks to the sort of confusion and despair often felt by those who are undergoing an existential crisis and investigating existentialism as a result.
See that makes some sense. However, I read Mersault as a sociopath. If "stranger" means alien to society, then I agree.
He's lost faith in marriage? So have I.
He didn't cry for his dead mother? I haven't cried at some funerals, either.
He's lost faith in the justice system? Who hasn't!
He's lost faith in religion? He can believe in whatever he wants.
Accepting oneself as being an indifferent person, though, gets to me. He seems soulless.
If Camus wanted me to be disgusted with the main character, then his book succeeds.
I've never read any of Camus's other work (I wasn't particularly impressed with The Stranger, either), so I don't know how he tends to treat his characters. But it could be that he was trying to instill disgust in the reader at a character who handled his own existential crisis so poorly. Most folks tend to conclude that they need to find another system of values to believe in, such as humanism, but instead the "protagonist" decides to kill, since he thinks it doesn't matter anyway. That's a rather despicable response to what has become a fairly common psychological crisis.
What kind of women do you envision impressing with this observation?
Eighth-graders that paint black raccoon-circles around their eyes and engage in self-cutting?
that said, i thought the plague by camus was also excellent, but it's admittedly longer and slower that the stranger.
Then you sense incorrectly. I wrote the rules to this black nailpolish and Camus-quoting game.
What you know about my harem of dark princesses?
I walk away.
me too: i wrote "whoa!" in my copy after finishing it.
???
Isn't existenstialism, in its most base definition, that one does exactly that - creates and defines the meaning of her/his existence? Mersualt chose this path because he felt it was dishonest to act according to societal expectations when it did not reflect how he really felt - for him that would have been the bigger nightmare.
There is no 'right' way to read this book (any book?), but I would not describe Mersault as indifferent. He was very much dedicated to the notion of truth.
"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. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration."
The indifference is not Mersault's but that of the universe to truth/Truth. He is happy because he has not compromised himself and the fight is over. Before his death he finds hope in the idea of being greeted with disgust because an angry mob bloodthristy for his execution is the kind of society/norm he does not want to be a part of. It was not all for nought.
This is neither here nor there at this point, but Camus didn't like being associated with existenstialism.
Unfortunately for Meursault's comparison, the universe doesn't have the ability to reason. Unfortunately, for Meursault, he doesn't, either.
I don't know how to answer this - these are not themes or issues I even considered when I read it. Safe to say you and I got different things out this book.
But doesn't the fact that he encapsulated so many of your feelings so many years ago count for something? Bonus points if it's made you think about your own life.
Also, people get hung up talking about what an author meant - sometimes they just write stories about things. People prescribe notions after the event that are often far beyond what the author intended.
I dig Camus, I think he was a great writer, but Baudelaire and Bukowski are pretty much my favourites of all time.
Cosign on Bukowski - Reading a novel of his, and then the collection of poetry that came right before it is cool. You can always spot a ton of poems expanding into sections of plot in the novel that followed it.
That's what all good books should do. No bonus points for that.
I asked one of my professors about this because I was getting played out on reader's response and he quoted Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness. "
But you said at the start of the thread it was a pointless book, not a good book. I like your professors quote though. A lot of lit critics go well beyond suggestion and apply their own "truths" to work however, and chaos always ensues.
I probably read this book 5-6 years too late.
Re: Critics
There's a great Stoppard play, "The Real Inspector Hound," that blasts critics really well.