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The Stranger by Albert Camus
Introduction
The Stranger, written in 1942 by Albert Camus remains to be one of my favorite novels.
Being his first novel, Camus hit the point direct resulting in an exciting novel which I have
developed the trend of reading it at least once in a year. Even though the novel is short and
sparse, it carries detailed information and every time I read it I get something new from the
novel. It is very hard to describe the experience of the emotional reaction towards The Stranger
partly because the book remains starkly unemotional all through. Taking, for instance, the first
sentence– “Mother died today” – is somehow callous (Camus 1). However, I can attest that The
Stranger to a great extent helped change my perspective on life and humanity in general. The
plot of the novel is rather simple and starts with Meursault, the protagonist learning of his
mother’s death in an elderly home. He seems unperturbed by the death and buries her without
looking inside the coffin. The next day he begins an affair with a former colleague, befriends a
pimp whom he helps to humiliate his former girlfriend. In the weekend he spends time at the
beach and kills a man simply because the weather was extremely hot. After his arrest, Meursault
stands trial, and he is condemned for murder as well as his abnormal behavior during his
mother's funeral. He pretends not to feel anything and is sentenced to death. The novel closes
when he awaits death in prison but a happy person who has understood the meaning of life and
the need to enjoy every moment of life he lives (Camus 121). He doesn’t fear death even after
being threatened physically and mentally by the priest who tells him to convert to Christianity to
enjoy the afterlife. Simply, he tries to paint the picture that, everything in this world is equally

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important, and no action is more important than the other. That said, people need to live their
present moment to the fullest without worrying to conform to other standards set by people.
The Good
The first thing that is good about this novel is that it is very short. I have never been a fan
of long novels, thus with its short nature, I find it very appealing as well as to other readers who
like similar works. However, in its short nature, the novel contains detailed information on the
perspective of life. What makes The Stranger a good novel further is that it is written in the first
person narrative and having a simple and direct to the point style. The writing further possesses
very little emotion but having a lot of sensory information which I deem appropriate in the
revealing of Meursault’s character (Foley 34). The writing style further corresponds to the nature
of the story with the story's direct and simple language allowing the reader to have a more indepth insight on the thoughts of Meursault. Meursault is represented as one man who decides to
live according to his terms, and the author Camus captures this very well. Even though he
Meursault possess actions which are deplorable and having irrational thought processes, the
point being driven here is that these thoughts are his and no one else. According to Meursault,
remorse is not a part of him, and it is a very alien concept. He further hated introspection and
shunned religion and its theories, and the reason was simple, he had no time for them. The
author through this character uses him to show how these activities are very pointless in life as
they didn’t matter at all at the end of life. Through the consistent presentation of feelings,
thoughts and events without any commentary or language, Camus the author tries to make us the
readers to feel detached. He wants us to have the same detached observation just like how
Meursault feels towards the world and the people surrounding him. Basically, Camus is more
than concerned at showing the meaninglessness of human existence and propelling the fa...