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Amine Elorch
Mr. Gallagher
English 12 CP
6 December 2010
The Stranger is a story about a man named Meursault living in Algiers. Algiers is at the very
northern top of Africa. Meursault is instantly labeled as odd in the readers mind when the story starts:
"Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure." As you read along you keep wondering,
"What is going on inside the mind of this man? Is he insane?" Because of this first seed that is planted
in your mind, everything that follows is tainted with the first impression you have of Meursault. So, as
you follow him through his life day to day, after his mother's death, you can know exactly what he is
thinking and doing. Knowing this you are even more confused with the strange attitude of this man in
response to life. The more you find out about him, the more appropriately you realize the book is titled.
You start to realize that he has a very absurd life, and as the back of the book puts it, "Life begins to
stalk him quietly and slowly..." Halfway through the book Meursault ends up killing an Arab man who
was very loosely related to a friend. He goes on trial for this, but the trial, taking up the second half of
the book, turns into an examination of Meursault's character as a human being. I don't want to reveal
the ending but it should be fairly obvious. Basically, Meursault is on trial for his actions as a member
of society, being judged by members of society, while he has almost absolutely nothing to do with
society in the first place. The least you can say is that the court, including the jury, has no reason to
Throughout "The Stranger", Camus seems to be trying to say how little control we have over
life, and constantly stressing the absurdity of it. His point, as I interpret it, is that we have so little
control over life that we should, like the stoics, seek the greatest pleasure for our self when we can.
However, I am divided by believing that and another one of my interpretations, which is that he is
trying to say life may not have any meaning because it is so absurd, and we need to make that meaning
for our self. Meursault accomplished this goal by living his life like a modern stoic, believing that
pleasure is the greatest good and that pain is the worst evil.
In the passage when Meursault feels no regrets about the crime that he has commited, Albert
Camus suggests that the protagonist is a person that is incapable of feeling bad, he doesn’t know how
to rethink and contemplate about past actions…these two do not exist with Meursault.
The author is also trying to show that Meursault is a man of present moments, he has never looked
backward and contemplated the past, and for this exact reason, the entire trial has been an enormously
Meursault says ‘My mind was always on what was coming next, today or tomorrow’, which makes the
author trying to show us that all he cares about is everything except for what he’s done in the past.
During the same passage (p.100), Meursault feels that all through trial, more is said about his
personality and his past than about the crime that he commited, which is in my point of view funny and
ironic.
Camus' view of the absurd was developed while he was helping to defend against the Germans
in Paris during World War II. It really isn't that hard to imagine someone coming to the conclusion that
life has no rational meaning after they have been in such a horrible war. One of the interesting things
about Camus' view on life is that while he was alive (he died in a car accident in 1960), he did not
make immoral decisions. Some would say that he has a belief of a positive outlook on life although
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there is no hope. That is, just because there is no hope it does not mean you have to despair. "After all,
you are here right now" may have been the point he was trying to make.