The Stranger by Albert Camus
ASIN: B000BQ4M52 (no ISBN)
154 pages
published in 1942
July 13th – July 14
You can buy this book at this link.
My copy is available for free. Please contact me.
This book is also on the suggested reading list by the English department of Clarion University for English majors. I had no idea this book existed until I saw it on there, after which I spoke to a few of my friends about it. Some expressed to me that they liked it, some said that it was horrible, some actually admitted to having been depressed by it. I have to agree with the latter, which isn’t something I was expecting from such a short little book, but it has had the strangest effect on me. I guess I’m just not one for existentialist fiction or something. I think I just wasn’t so savvy on the fact that everything about this book was so bleak (as is to be expected, I suppose) or that I would be able to identify with that strongly enough that it would actually bother me, but I guess it did.
The book starts out with the main character thinking about his mother’s death and funeral, which he has to attend and has taken off of work to do so. The narration is very droning and matter-of-fact and something about that is very alarming, even right away. Throughout his mother’s funeral he is very emotionless and blunt and this is something that is touched on later in the novel, but something you are really not quite sure how to react to when you first read about it. On one hand, he seems to be perfectly logically and there doesn’t seem to be a thing about him that is to be disliked, other than his apparent lack of emotion, which is really difficult to be angry at someone for. Though while reading that entire part of the book I do have to admit that I wished he’d show SOME sort of feeling towards the fact that his mother died, though that may just be a product of how society has influenced me and now I’m getting way too involved in this and I’m stopping. Now.
Anyway, it follows some of his relationships with various people, all of which are really neither here-nor-there to him, and eventually he gets mixed up with some he probably should not have and winds up killing a man. This all sounds rather sensational when it’s explained but the actual event within the book is handled in the same blunt, emotionless tone and therefore you find it near impossible to react to it in the same way that you would in probably any other circumstance. It moves through his trial, in which this man’s character (and the aspects of it that I’ve touched upon) are spoken about. I think the strange thing to me was the fact that you are seeing everyone else in the book through this man’s narration, and are tempted to believe everyone else in the world is as blunt and uncaring as he is. Apparently, though, this is not true because of the disgust others seem to show in his lack of emotion – some are more tolerant of it than others and even attempt to explain this away for him even while he makes no attempt to do so himself.
I’m not sure if I’d recommend this book to anyone but a specific sort of person. It’s made me feel a bit down. It’s very interesting though and I’m tempted to recommend it simply because it does make you think, which is important, of course – but, in any case, it’s pretty good in my opinion, though I can’t see myself ever re-reading it in the future unless I absolutely have to.
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I was just thinking of this book this morning! It’s one of my favorite books, actually, and a book I’ve taught a few times. It’s fascinating to read about the effect Meursault had on you, to remember what it was like encountering that character for the first time.
dewey
16 Oct 08 at 10:53 am