The Stranger

This book gave me a quite similar impression to Crime and Punishment: both are novels in which you're in someone's head who seems to be less than perfectly sane, and yet sane about that insanity (which is to say, both men violate the law, but have really complex personal explanations for why they've done this).

I was most struck that the narrator breaks down at the end and yells at the priest passionately; this was remarkable, since throughout the novel, he was cool and calm and collected. Also, this passionate railing against the priest does not convey the apathy that Meursault means to convey to the priest; rather, it is a response on the love/hate end of the spectrum.

Meursault's understanding of morality seems to be that there are no morals, except what society imposes. Everyone dies--this is the primary truth of life. There's no difference between the dog and the wife of his friend. Marie (his girlfriend) can kiss someone else; nothing matters. The judge and the chaplain want Meursault to repent and show remorse. The narrator is true to himself and will not show remorse simply because he's afraid.

Meursault cannot live in society--the society cannot understand him and so rejects him (and Meursault himself understands this). The narrator sees the only good as life; the only good of a life after this one would be to remember that life.

Albert Camus asks us to read Meursault sympathetically----it isn't that Meursault is a great person with a lot of feeling and a lot of friends; rather, Camus asks the reader whether anyone else has those feelings and friends, either, really. Camus asks us whether those feelings (which we think we have) are a lie. As the reader, I wanted to defend Meursault from the prosecutor, that is, until I realized, with the narrator, that what the prosecutor was saying was not untrue. Meursault didn't especially care for his mother; Camus asks the reader to consider whether he does, either. Is Meursault any worse of a human being than the man who beats his dog? Is he any worse than his friend who beat his mistress? Does he deserve any more than these people to be excluded from society? (Of course, coupled with these characters' ill treatment of dog and mistress, seems to be some affection.)

And so the book leaves us with the unsettling question of whether or not Meursault should have been convicted. Didn't he just kill the man in self-defense?


(picture, picture; gosh, I love popped collars on men's coats!)