The Stranger by DeLaCruz

Sometimes a book acts as a tour guide to paths you have already traveled, and with the book as your guide, mundane landmarks become fascinating. The paths I refer to stem from answers to this question: What is the meaning of life? Last summer, I wandered along those paths alone until I came upon a translation of The Stranger by Albert Camus. Through its plot, characters, and symbols, that small book led me down routes I had never before explored. To bring even more light to the book’s byways, I read SparkNotes’ commentaries on the piece. SparkNotes brought the philosophy and message behind The Stranger to light but also gleaned over some key aspects.

The book’s title, The Stranger, is really a reference to Meursault, the protagonist. Meursault is unique to me for I have never encountered a character like him; he is bleak, numb, and vacant of ambition. The opening of the piece finds Meursault at his mother’s funeral and completely devoid of emotion. In fact, the next day he starts an affair with an attractive co-worker. SparkNotes echoes my understanding of Meursault when it describes him as “psychologically detached from the world around him. Events that would be very significant for most people…do not matter to him….” Yet I, like other characters in the novel, was drawn to Meursault. I wondered why I enjoyed such an amoral character and better understood when SparkNotes explains that Meursault watches people without judging what he sees. His very detachment appeals to others because Meursault does not judge what they do as being right or wrong.

I occasionally feel a desire to handle things with the emotional disengagement Meursault displays. Feeling no sentimental pain, no desire, no anger, and no guilt throughout most of the book, Meursault is almost perpetually in a state of a backwards Nirvana. It seems as though humans feel emotional distress in our lives far more often than physical distress. SparkNotes helped me understand that the “importance of the physical world” was also an important theme in The Stranger. So while Meursault is inattentive to his expressive needs, his “attention centers on his own body, on his physical relationship with Marie, on the weather, and on other physical elements of his surroundings” (SparkNotes). Is Camus saying that all we have is physical gratification? Based on the argument in this paragraph and those expressed in the next, it is possible that Camus believes all there is to life is our physical experience in this world.

Indeed, is physical experience the meaning of life? As I discussed the book with my friends, we hit upon the notion that The Stranger expresses an existential philosophy with an answer to this question. Put succinctly, existentialists believe that life is meaningless. SparkNotes also addresses the existential philosophy in The Stranger when it states “…Meursault…asserts that life is meaningless and that all men are condemned to die. This argument triggers Meursault’s final acceptance of the meaninglessness of the universe.” However, SparkNotes also brought to light how Albert Camus's philosophy went beyond existentialism. Camus created a philosophy of the absurd. After the atrocities of World War I and II, both of which affected Camus personally, he “could no longer accept that human existence had any purpose or discernible meaning. Existence seemed simply, to use Camus’s term, absurd.” Though both philosophies appear identical, I think Camus's holds a more exasperated tone.

Although SparkNotes highlights important ideas -- existentialism, philosophy of the absurd, Meursault’s detachment, etc. -- it can not delve into these topics well enough in just a few pages. There are other discussions I would like to have regarding the use of light in The Stranger, or on his use of foreshadowing, his writing style (or the translator’s style), the symbolism of the courtroom and the poor dog, and why Meursault killed an Arab specifically and its meaning today. I would like to discuss the book from a feminist perspective or a psychological perspective. I would like to hear what a French person had to say about it and see if it differed from my own interpretation. SparkNotes can not do justice to all the possibilities in the book. That is why classroom discussion will be so beneficial.

Yes, The Stranger took me on quite a journey down paths to find the possible meanings of life. Or lack thereof. Having read it and enjoyed it does not mean I ascribe to its philosophies. I take solace in the fact that, as SparkNotes put it, Camus “is noted for his faith in man’s dignity in the face of what he saw as a cold, indifferent universe.” At times I, too, shiver at the dreadful parts of our existence, but I also try to glory in its delights.