A Review of The Stranger by Albert Camus

As requested by a friend

The Stranger

Albert Camus

The Stranger, originally published in French as L’Etranger in 1942, is a short brutally minimalist book written by Algerian born French Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. Camus once stated in an interview that the core message of the story is that if you don’t show sufficient emotion at your mother’s death you may be executed. It is an intentionally absurd statement about an absurdist work in which the author created a character devoid of any purpose or conscious will to build a life yet whose sincerity, at least for the author, is admirable.

The book centers on Monsieur Meursault, a young man living in Algiers, Algeria. The Stranger begins with the death of his mother, Maman, an event for which Meursault seems incapable of producing any visible emotional response. His internal thoughts during his vigil for his mother fixate on the absurdity of the caretaker of her elderly home as well as the other mourners, his mother’s friends who grieve her loss. What Camus describes as sincerity manifest itself in the unwillingness of Meursault to feign a single emotion he does not actively feel. The funeral procession sees him distracted by the heat of the day and the extravagant displays of mourning by his mother’s lover, a ridiculous figure who both insists on walking in the procession and cannot keep up with it. This observer relationship, M. Meursault unmoved by the normal emotional trappings of life watching those caught up in them with a sense of bewilderment, runs throughout the novel.

Meursault’s so-called sincerity and inability to care about the events of his life quickly entangle him into a romantic relationship, a series of odd friendships, a feud between his neighbor and some Arab men defending the honor of an abused and discarded woman, his killing a man, and the subsequent murder trial. Meursault’s constant refrain through it all is that none of it matters. The love of the beautiful Marie, the despair of a neighbor over his lost dog, the death of his mother, the abuse of women by his neighbor and new pal Raymond, and even his own murder trial are all meaningless. He cannot bring himself to actively participate in the events even as they unfold toward his ruin. Meursault just doesn’t care.

The sparing style compliments the central character’s point of view. Though he finds the series of events meaningless, Meursault enjoys the pleasures of life: the beach, the sun, the sights and scents of his hometown, sex with Marie, all experiences he actively seeks early in the story and actively misses later. The character doesn’t reject the pleasure of existence, just the idea existence itself has or serves any greater purpose. Algiers, the sun, the sea, and civilization will continue to be exactly as they have been whether Meursault exists or not. His life makes no real impact, however much pleasure he enjoys.

Camus masterfully accomplishes his literary goal. However, the character M. Meursault troubles me. My own frustrations reading the book likely stem from the fact I once shared Meursault’s view of the world. Meursault’s disinterest in his own life because, as he states, there is no difference between living a 30-year life and 70-year life in the grand scheme of things echoes the personal philosophy of my youth. This approach derailed my life and very nearly led to the same end for me, the unnecessarily early death of a young man incapable of seeking his own flourishing. Why should I? Nothing matters, and having the courage to live authentically with that belief was the only virtue available.

The beauty of Jesus ultimately shook me out of that stupor. Younger Jay Watts, just like the fictional Monsieur Meursault, embraced the supposed virtue of seeing the absurdity of the world and the meaningless of particpation, but everyone else paid the emotional and spiritual toll I denied existed. Relatives, friends, mentors, romantic entanglements, anyone who wanted to share the human experience with me became the victims of the so-called courageous sincerity and indifference of someone very like Camus’ enlightened stranger.

M. Meursault’s unwillingness to see life as meaningful causes him to appear indifferent to life’s value. A man who sees no meaning or purpose to his own life is precisely the kind of man who will inadvertently wreak havoc on the lives of everyone around him, as Meursault does and as I once did. Our shared failure to consciously act in such a way as to facilitate our flourishing isn’t an incidental by-product of an overabundance of courageous emotional sincerity. It is the logical outworking of a flawed worldview.

Jesus’s way is better. The Bible shares Camus’s evaluation of the unimportance of much of our life’s pursuits, see The Book of Ecclesiastes. Jesus interrupts that absurdity with a clarifying mandate. Two actions can be done every day with the certainty of meaning and value. We can love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. Getting lost in the crisis of the absurdity of our daily tasks isn’t heroic. The heroism of Christ is that those absurd and weird people are the image bearers of God, the rewards for his sacrifice, the mission of our lives. We must consciously seek God’s flourishing for ourselves and others, though we correctly judge our lives as small. We care for ourselves so that we may fulfill the great commandments. We care for ourselves because God cared for us first, and we honor that love. We live with purpose in the face of absurdity, disappointment, sorrow, and frustration. We all have our portion of pain to carry, but our mission to love God and our neighbors continues unabated through it all. Life can seem absurd, but it is not meaningless.