Library Book Review: The Stranger
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May 31st, 2025
- Publication Date: May 19, 1942
- Written by: Albert Camus
- Page count: 123
A little over a month ago, my girlfriend recommended the YouTube channel Unsolicited Advice to me. His video about the death of focus really got me thinking about how I want to work to fully cut myself off from social media and get my attention span back to where it used to be. Since then, I've spent many shifts at work listening to him cover various schools of philosophical thought and the books that accompany them. At one point, my girlfriend mentioned to me that my outlook on life reminded her of what she heard about absurdism, so I decided to do a little bit of digging. If you've never heard the term before, it roughly boils down to the idea that the universe is a meaningless place, and if you try to search for meaning in it, you'll be coming into conflict with the universe itself. I've never considered myself a pessimist, but I've always been very conscious of the fact that humanity is just an insignificant species on a dirt ball orbiting one star amongst uncountable others. While life on Earth can be pretty extraordinary, we mean nothing in the scope of the cosmos, and that's perfectly ok. The idea of absurdism seemed very interesting to me, and one book that kept getting mentioned in relation to it was a novel called The Stranger by Albert Camus. So, I decided to make a trip to my local library and, for the first time in many years, checked the book out to give it a read. Even though it's very short, I found myself getting pretty engaged with its story, and its final message did give me something to think about.
The book revolves around a man named Meursault as he lives his everyday life following the death of his mother. He spend his days working, spending time with his girlfriend and friends, smoking cigarettes, and generally moving through life without much aim or meaning. Following an altercation on a beach that results in Meursault killing a man, the rest of the book follows his trial as society condemns him for his actions and outlook on life. One of the first things that stuck out to me about this book is the way in which it is written. Most of the sentences in it are short and nondescriptive, like the protagonist is telling the reader his story in a blunt, uncaring way. There are points where Meursault will describe several monotonous days in the span of one paragraph, or answer people's important questions with one-word sentences with little elaboration. The book was originally written in French, and a note from the translator in the beginning states that his intention was to capture what Camus originally said instead of trying to spruce up the text with more flavor. In this regard, I think he succeeded very well. Meursault's narration breezes by at a quick pace, and it always feels like he's just a lonely and tired observer in the world, even when he has people in his life who genuinely care for him. It's almost as if this is a story that was meant to have a third-person narration, but it's being told in first-person form. It's a great way to portray just how alien our protagonist feels as he moves through life.
Meursault himself is a fascinating character. His frame of mind isn't necessarily bleak or depressing, but it's in no way hopeful or optimistic. He seems to exist just for the sake of existing without putting any value into anything he says or does. When his mother dies, he talks about how he couldn't cry over her death and how he didn't even pay his final respects at her burial. He seems to have a decent relationship with his girlfriend Marie, but each time she asks him if he loves her or wants to marry her, he shrugs her off, even stating at one point "I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so." Even though he seems like a person who just wants to mind his own business, there is even a point where he becomes complicit in a domestic abuse situation, helping out the abuser because "I didn't have any reason not to please him." He is completely incapable of placing any value in right or wrong, and this comes to a head at the halfway point of the book, when he kills a man who pulls a knife on him. Instead of immediately realizing what he did and acting with remorse or shock, he shoots the body four more times for no apparent reason. Not only is Meursault an unfeeling stranger to those around him, but now he's also alien to the readers of the book. It never feels like he's straightforwardly evil, he just seems to act on whatever impulse he's feeling at the moment. To him, nothing in the world matters very much, so what does it matter how he interacts with it? However, we don't want to empathize with a person who is capable of killing someone just because they get the urge to, and his frame of mind is perfectly demonstrated in the last couple of chapters when Meursault is sentenced to death for his actions. The court makes more of a point to stress his lack of human connection and value judgments instead of the murder itself. To them, this worldview is dangerous and has to be disposed of for the good of society.
The last chapter of the book is easily my favorite. This is where Camus' philosophy of absurdism starts to take shape, and it's only in the final lines of the novel where this message is driven home. Meursault is visited by a priest who repeatedly tries to get him to turn to God for meaning in the final hours before his execution. After a long exchange, Meursalt finally unloads all of his feelings about how nothing has mattered to him for his entire life, how the lives, deaths, and choices that people make are pointless when we will all be condemned to death one day. When he finally gets the chance to calm down and rest, his final reflection is the most profound moment in the book:
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself - so like a brother, really - I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."
These lines hit me pretty hard. I think we've all had moments where our world is crashing down around us; where no matter how we act or how hard we try to make sense of why the things that are happening to us are occurring, we can't find an answer. No one seems to understand, and the temptation to just give up on life seems so strong. I love the alternative presented here: there is no rhyme or reason to the universe, and that's ok. If you stop trying to make sense of why the universe is the way it is, you can find peace through ways that don't involve figuring out why things are the way that they are. In my head, I imagine this as the meme of two men looking out the windows of a bus; one is depressed and thinking "Nothing matters...", while the other is smiling and thinking "Nothing matters!" Obviously, this idea would be greatly expanded on in later works, and I'm only getting a rough idea of it through this early text. However, the seeds planted here did resonate a lot with my personal outlook on the universe, and at some point I would like to read about how they developed later on.
The Stranger was a hell of a read. I love it when a book can spawn a few days' worth of reflection and consideration, and this book certainly delivered in that area. If you want a fast-paced tale that puts you in the mind of a man who is almost completely alien from human feeling, it's well worth your time. Its ending message gave me a lot consider, and I'm kicking around the idea diving into more books about philosophical thought. If I find anything else that gets my brain working like this, I'll be sure to write about it here.