The Stranger - Book Review

The Stranger

            Albert Camus

The Stranger by Albert Camus depicts the story of a calm and compelling man who, in a moment of aberration, commits a murder and is consequently sentenced to death. The book is written in first person narration and consists of two parts, first leading up to the murder and the other describing the events after the murder. The story lingers around the theme of existentialism and fatalism, although Camus has never admitted being an existentialist.

Plot Summary:

The central character of the book, Meursault, lives in Algiers, a small beach town in Algeria, by himself. There he has a job and a leads a solitary but happy life. The plot starts off with him getting news about his mother’s death at the old age home where she was living since past couple of years. As soon as he gets the telegram, he sets off for his mother’s funeral, which involves an arduous journey to a far off town. When he arrives at the home, he is tired and sleep deprived and unable to respond amenably to the whole ‘situation’. His inability to express grief at the funeral surprises the home employees and his mother’s friends, who consider him to be an uncaring man bereft of the slightest concern for his dead mother. The account of this apathy later plays a major role in rendering Meursault as an unfeeling murderer and ensuring his death sentence.

Back from his mother’s funeral, Meursault shows little remorse and carries on with his life as before. He starts dating a colleague and even goes to a comedy movie with her. He is indifferent to condolences by friends and acquaintances. Meanwhile, he develops amity with one of his ill reputed neighbors, Raymond, and helps him intimidate one of the latter’s friends. This friendship with Raymond leads him into murdering an Arab man who is on the watch for Raymond, in a moment of pure indignation and desperation.

Meursault is immediately arrested after the murder and produced before the magistrate and undergoes a trial. Here too, his indifference to everything and dispassionate attitude annoys the magistrate and later upsets the jury which finally hands him the death sentence. He however does not regret his crime and shows least concern for his fate. He spends his time in the prison thinking about Marie, his fiancé and the banal events of his daily routine as a free man, contemplating and analyzing his actions. He refuses to see the prison chaplain before his death sentence while fearfully awaiting the dawn when he will meet his end. During this time, he realizes that one can get acclimatized to any idea, even the idea of imminent death, if he has sufficient amount of time. On the day of his execution, he walks out to the guillotine hoping that people will cheer for his death.

Analysis:

The book opens with the protagonist by the name of Meursault being informed of his mother’s death. The very opening line lays the foundation of the mindset of the protagonist, who has very little emotions, as he is unmoved by his loss and treats it as an everyday event as shown

“Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday. I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.”

This apathetic attitude of the protagonist is built upon in a subsequent episode of debauchery, where he starts dating on the very next day of the funeral. Camus has carefully rendered a gauche personality to the lead character, who is unconcerned about his dead mother and starts life again as if nothing had changed. He goes to comedy movies, jumps in bed with his colleague and so on.

Meursault is a person who lacks much thought of the future and more so lives his life in order to make the present as blissful as possible. For instance, when his fiancé Marie asks if he would like to marry him, he replies with “sure” immediately after stating that he “doesn’t think he loves her”, therefore accentuating his true existentialist self. He is even indifferent to condolences by his neighbor and friends, as he does not feel the need to manufacture the grief that has not naturally arisen. Camus establishes Meursault’s lack of emotion for things that should be taken very seriously and furthermore is using Meursault to catalyze the fact that he stands out from the norm, which will ultimately condemn him. Camus also makes certain to point out that regardless of Meursault’s attitude, he is not a bad person and he is sent to death because his mindset did not fit the social norm, not because of the murder. Camus illustrates this when Meursault says things such as “I really wanted them to understand” and “I wanted to say it in the nicest way possible.”

Camus addresses the issue of conformity within society, and the specific repercussions pertaining to the minority, (the non conformist), such as Meursault himself. Camus has used Meursault to glorify the isolation of one who does not fit the modern social standards, therefore revealing societies’ true judgments upon a man who lives in an alternate fashion. Meursault’s existentialist view is judged by the society as a lack of morality, thus using Meursault as a minute example of a more universal situation, and exemplifying the societal plague of conformity.

The Stranger as a whole expresses the cruelty of society upon a person who is not necessarily bad, but different. Meursault accentuates this generality and illustrates the severity and consequences of isolation and non-conformity. Because Meursault’s views on how he should live were drastically different from the majority of people, he was sentenced to death even though his true moral integrity was hidden and was not displaced from most people so far as to make him a bad person. Camus uses this fact and Meursault’s premature judgment to further exploit society’s faults and fractures and thus emphasizes the dire need of change in the modern world.

All the events are very precisely described and in such a manner that even the most mundane of events offer a gripping account. There’s a whole chapter where the protagonist is standing in the balcony and observing the everyday events in the street. Also, apart from the protagonist, all other characters are exuberant and worldly. They are perfect social specimens and sail along with the flow of life without halting, reinforcing the gap between Meursault and the rest.