The Stranger- Albert Camus
…I laid my heart open to the
benign indifference of the universe
The stranger is the story of a man who perceives the world
matter-of-factly, without either trying to interpret or being able to interpret
the moral, “natural” or the ‘usual’ patterns of the world.
The work is a first person narrative by the protagonist,
written with very little acknowledgement of what things mean. Even though protagonist’s
mother has just died, he is unable to reinterpret his present actions in the
light of his past- that he ever loved his mother, or that he did right or wrong
by putting her in a home. He goes to her funeral calmly, does not want to see
her face presumably because she is dead and has no meaning in the present
context of the protagonist.
The brilliance of this work lies in the form of the
work rather than the content itself. The protagonist seems to be passive of the
things happening to him throughout the story. Rather than feeling guilty about
what he has done, he looks for things that are ‘interesting’ and is bored or
frustrated by things that are not- like a man estranged from his own life. The
world tries to portray him as a man who has no morals- a man who was not
perturbed even by his mother’s death. Even though he finds the accusations
incredible, he sees himself as ‘too lazy’ to do anything because for him, it doesn't
matter if x happens or y if they both lead to z, since z (death in the story) is
always the final result. The character of Meursault comes to life through Camus’s
pen, and though Meursault’s status quo bias might seem incredible at first, the
reader is forced to empathize with him by the end. The reader is forced to
acknowledge the ‘as-is-ness’ of life and the certitude of death…In Meursault’s world- the reader is forced
to see that everyone is privileged to die; and everything that happens in this setting of
death is meaningless- His god, Someone’s death or Meursault’s actions.
A highly recommended read!
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