The Stranger by Albert Camus

This novel is about a young man named Meursault, and he lives in the Algiers. He recieves a telegram that informs him of his mother's death and so he jumps on a bus and rides to Marengo. His mother had been living in an old person's house and by the time Meursault gets to this house, he finds that his dead mother has already been sealed into her coffin. The old person offers to open to coffin so he can see his mother, but Meursault declines. He attends the funeral the next morning and then hops back on a bus to the Algiers.

At this point in the novel, Meursault decides that he wants to go for a swim at a public beach and happens to run into his former co-worker, Marie Cardona. They get along great and decide to go see a comedic movie that night...and he plays his cards well and she stays the night with him. However, when he wakes up, she is not there and he passes the morning watching cars go by on his porch. The following day, Meursault goes to work and then comes home. While climbing the stairs to his apartment, he runs into a man with a mangy dog and a man named Raymond, who is also a pimp. Raymond invited Meursault over for dinner and the conversation at dinner leads to how Raymond beat up his mistress because she cheated on him and how that lead to a fight between Raymond and his mistress' brother. Raymond now wants to torment his mistress even more, and so Meursault agrees to write a letter that will lure her back to Raymond.

The next day Marie returns to Meursault's apartment and asks him if he loves her. He is basically like, eh. The conversation is interrupted by a police force in Raymond's apartment a few doors down that claim Raymond beat up his wife. Raymond asks Meursault to testify for him in court, and he agrees...

Marie asks Meursault if he wants to marry her and he is like, eh, but they get engaged anyway. They go to a beach with Raymond and run into Raymond's mistress' brother, who is an Arab. Raymond wants to shoot him, but Meursault tells him not to and takes his gun. However, Meursault goes back to the spring later on where he sees the Arab and shoots him for no reason. He goes to jail.

In jail, Meursault feels no remorse for his crime, or even that his mother died a little while ago. A magistrate comes and tells him to swear his faith on a cross, but Meursault refuses because he does not believe in God. Marie visits him once in prison, reminds them of their marriage to be. Meursault adapts to life in prison, the lack of women, cigarettes, and nature. He learns to keep his mind on other things...and since I will not reveal the ending, I will just say that this narrator wrestles with believing in a purly physical world and if this view of life is good enough to live on.


*Written by Albert Camus who won the Nobel Prize in 1957, the second youngest person to receive it and at 44 years of age. He schooled at the University of Algiers and received something similar to an M.A. He is often associated with existentialism. I discovered after reading this novel, that I really like this style of writing. It takes a human subject and incorperates their feelings, actions, the whole living individual, and his or her own conditions of existence and questions them. It is a complete disorientation of what you think you know.