Albert Camus’s masterpiece The Stranger explores the absurdity humans encounter in a meaningless world, offering profound reflections on life, death, and freedom.
The novel The Stranger is invariably described as a work of the literature of the absurd. The story begins by following the protagonist Meursault’s actions in the town after he returns from his mother’s funeral. After his mother’s death, Meursault begins a relationship with Marie, listens to the concerns of old Raymond, and even offers advice to old Salamano when he loses his dog. Then, at a seaside resort he visited by invitation, he shoots and kills an Arab and ends up on trial. The Stranger was published in 1942 when Camus was 29 years old.
Algeria, the setting of The Stranger, was also Camus’s homeland. Although Algeria was a French colony before gaining independence, leading some to mistakenly believe Camus was an Algerian immigrant, Camus was French from the start. During colonial rule, Algeria was not seen as a separate land by the French but rather as an extension of French territory. In that sense, it was viewed by the French as a land of opportunity for new beginnings. Camus’s parents were among those settlers; Camus himself was French, with no connection whatsoever to Arabs or immigration. The central theme of this novel is precisely Meursault’s motive for murder. Why did he kill the Arab? And why did he pause briefly before firing the final four shots? Meursault gives an answer people cannot comprehend: because the sun was too hot.
In court, people cite his behavior at his mother’s funeral as evidence to prove Meursault’s murder was a premeditated, cruel crime. They try to interpret a tragic event that befell a human being (Meursault recalled his mother’s death in a matter-of-fact tone) through a single, stereotypical mindset. They debate how he could not shed tears when his mother died, how he dared smoke a cigarette and drink coffee before her body, how he could go out with a woman the day after the funeral. They speak as if they have defined how a normal human being should act when sad or happy.
Earlier, I mentioned Camus’s novel is called the literature of absurdity. One absurdity found in this novel is precisely this: a situation where the most human actions are discussed, yet the one person who should be at the center—the individual himself—is missing. In the novel, Meursault excludes himself, speaks about himself, and observes from a distance the act of bringing in other behaviors to judge the event, excluding the event itself. Ultimately, Meursault is sentenced to death. The novel’s conclusion reveals the psychology of Meursault, who clung to his humanity to the very end amidst people who conformed only to social norms, not to humanity itself.
I thought I could understand why Mother, in her twilight years, played that little game of meeting a fiancé and trying to rebuild her life. The evenings that crept into that nursing home, where life was fading, must have felt like a sorrowful respite. Even so close to death, my mother must have felt liberated, wanting to live this world again. I have no right to mourn her death. Just as intense anger washed away my pain and brought new hope, I too felt the urge to rebuild my life.
Gazing at the star-studded sky, I felt the world’s tender indifference capture my heart for the first time. This world felt like a brother no different from me; I had been happy all along, and I still feel happiness now. When everything is accomplished and I face execution, when the many spectators greet me with shouts of hatred, fulfilling that remaining wish of mine, only then will I no longer be lonely.
By regarding his mother as a human being, he refrained from grieving recklessly, revealing how he accepts the world as he stands at his final moment. Meursault, ‘The Stranger’ who had to become an isolated being to exist as himself. Somewhere in Algeria, a French outpost. The author’s own position as a second-generation French immigrant to Algeria, a border figure. Seemingly assimilated into society, yet the inner workings of that society remained beyond the reach of his own story, and myself observing them from outside. The Stranger blends these elements, ultimately making one ponder what the existence of ‘I’ is in a society that does not accept a human being as that human being.
