The Stranger by Albert Camus
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Book Reviews of The Stranger
Book Review: Existential Addiction
Summary: 5 Stars
Find a couple hours in your busy life to read this book--yes, everyone. In this very existential story, the Stranger, Camus shines a bright floodlight into the soul of modern man. Told in the first person by the Stranger awaiting death by the State's guillotine, it is obvious by the very telling of the story that the man was never so put to death. It is also obvious that the Stranger was totally indifferent to whether he was or was not put to death.The death of the Stranger's mother sounds the breakfast bell for his own demise. Later at the beach murder scene the Stranger undergoes a Paul-on-the-Road-to-Damascus-like enlightenment. The Stranger describes this event very poetically. He sees a shaft of light shoot upward from the steel blade of the Arab's knife. He sees "Cymbals of the sun clashing on my skull and ... the keen blade of light flashing up from the knife, scarring my eyelashes and gouging into my eyeballs." Next, "the sky cracked in two, from end to end, and a great sheet of flame poured down through the rift." Had the reader seen what the Stranger saw he too may have emptied the pistol bullets into the poor Arab. "And each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing." Beginning with the murder he was "through with the unreal years of my life."
The Priest visits the cell and forces his trite message upon the prisoner. The Father asks, "how do you picture life after death?" The Stranger wants very little. He answers, "A life in which I can remember this life on earth. That's all I want of it." The prisoner's certainty of death was totally sufficient, it was something he could get his teeth into and that was far better than a brittle, fragile belief in God. The torture of waiting for his own death emptied him of hope, thus allowing him to lay "his heart open to the benign indifference of the universe." Thus sharing, so brotherly, his fate with the universe made him realize that "I'd been happy, and that I was happy still." In death the prisoner would attain public recognition of his indifferent life. "All that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration."
Book Review: a millionbajillionzillion stars!
Summary: 5 Stars
this book makes me tingle all over. i'm glad to see that so many people have read this book, but i feel that many miss the point. unlike many, i was not disturbed by this book. i felt very comfortable with camus's writing and with the main character, meursault. in fact, i completely fell in love with meursault. to some (especially religous people, christians), his outlook on life was very frusterating. but to me, it was mysterious and simple and i loved him for it. meursault completely makes this book worthwhile.
now that i have declared my love for meursault, i'll try to clarify things but this book is so profound it is sometimes hard to put into words. first of all, meursault is no idiot. the best way to describe meursault is that he just IS. he never thinks of why or how, he just is, he just does. his only motivations are physical needs and pleasures. meursault is an existentialist, but he does not know that because a true existentialist would never say "i am an existentialist." they would never even give thought to such things, they just ARE, like meursault.
meursault stands in contrast to society. when he is on trial for killing the man, the courtroom represents society. the trial is moreso a trial of meursault's morals and beliefs than the actual crime he committed. if meursault had shown remorse, he probably would not have given the death penalty and he would have lived, but this would have resulted in society's defeat over meursault because he would have changed his ways for society. during the trial meursault does show some confusion and frusteration and fear, a sign that society may win him. however, in the end he accepts the indifference that he knows as the world and he knows it is who he is and it is ok. for this he is given the death penalty, but for sticking to his views, he has won out over society. in this way, he wins his trial.
i know that sounds confusing, but if you read the book, it will make sense if you think deep enough. also, note meursault's references to the sun and the heat. these images play a constant role throughout the story.
did anyone else note the similarities between this book and the movie garden state???
Book Review: Flawless work of art - the archetype of the alienated man
Summary: 5 Stars
The first novel which Albert Camus (1913-1960) fully and maturely stated his philosophy and created his alienated outsider, (the original title of this 1942 work being L'Etranger, meaning "The Foreigner" or "The Outsider") was this great short novel, the cornerstone of existentialism in twentieth century prose; the first words being, "Maman died today, or yesterday, I don't know" along with the first words of Kafka's The Metamorphosis are some of the most memorable openings ever written in the history of the short novel, novellette, nouvella, whatever you want to call it.
The character Meursault is a strange, zombiefied, indifferent man. Throughout the novel, he hardly ever shows any emotion, and seems to just drag himself through life, indifferent to everything. Even when his girlfriend, after making love, asks him if he loves her, he replies that he doesn't and says that it doesn't really matter.
The Stranger, since it takes place in Algeria, near Algiers, and it is French Existentialism reminds me of some sort of avant guarde French film of the fifties and sixties, something by Jean-Luc Godard, with the scene of the murder of the arab in the scorching hot sun being a scene exhibiting modern art with many cuts and you see weird things like in the movie Don't Look Now when Donald Sutherland is being killed by the midget, there are many cuts, one of them being Sutherland embracing and kissing a statue. As Meursault cringes and can't stand the heat and lifts the gun, you see a guy with no teeth scrunching up his face, then a door opening to a woman, racked by sorrow, somberly looking up at you with her sick husband dying on the bed next to her, then a small child of four or five lifting a revolver up to their temple with a twisted smile, and with the shots fired, a twisted piece of Johann Strauss' The Beutiful Blue Danube playing over Soviet and Nazi troops marching and Stalin and Hitler looking on approvingly.
If you are still reading this "review", I humbly thank you, dear reader, and recommend this book to you, if you are a Literature buff like myself and if you want to discover the 1957 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, Albert Camus.
Book Review: either you get it, or you don't (yes, it's a truism -so?)
Summary: 5 Stars
regarding the book: my rating of five stars is self-explanatory, and no further review is needed.this "review" was actually prompted by some of the pseudo-intellectual garbage being tossed out in other reviews here. i'm simultaneously annoyed and saddened when folks attempt to disguise their own ignorance with name-dropping, or mispelled vocabulary that could have easily been gleaned from the pages of the "Obscure Word of the Day" calendar...>i appreciate a bad review - when it's well done. everyone has a right to his/her opinion after all. But . . .
Points:
(1)this book is a translation. if you think it reads a little rough, keep in mind that it was written in french.
(2)the author uses very dry, simple prose. hemingway also used dry, simple prose. hemingway did not write this book. if you want to review hemingway, do so - but wouldn't you be more comfortable doing it in the Hemingway section?
(3)who expects poetry or lyricism in an existentialist novel about a frenchman with no conscience? i would be horrified and offended if this book were made beautiful. beautiful is for "paradise lost" and God. Meursault doesn't believe in God.
i believe that anyone would be perfectly justified in hating this book. it could honestly be called "depressing" or "utterly pointless", and it is, i assure you, completely bereft of any emotion higher than hunger or sexual attraction. Many of us would say, "That's the point. It's existentialism." If existentialism isn't your cup of tea, you will hate this book, and you will be right for hating it.
HOWEVER
i am loathe to see a good book trashed by someone too simple to understand it. my plea is this: please don't destroy what you don't comprehend. If you must write a bad review, do it with style; make us all feel your pain. Give us details, evidence, and facts so that we can learn to hate with a vigor to rival your own! That way, we know that you truly read and understood the book . . . and thought it totally sucked eggs.
agh, enough ranting -
"The Stranger" is, in my opinion, one of the greatest books ever written, but that's just my opinion. Either you get it, or you don't.
Book Review: A magnificent book, pity about some of its readers...
Summary: 5 Stars
I have never felt the need to comment on reviews posted by others on this site, but I feel that Ted Rushton's review (below) of The Stranger is a disgrace and I am amazed that Amazon have seen fit to publish his offensive and ill-informed half-witted drivel. Anyone who can use the moronic term "surrender monkeys" in a review of a book should confine themselves to the latest piece of trash by Frederick Forsyth and steer clear of authors of the calibre of Camus, whose ideas are clearly beyond him.Even if Mersault could be seen as exemplifying the attitudes of the French people - and he clearly exemplifies nothing of the sort - Mr Rushton's anti-French tirade crumbles when you consider some facts he omits to mention. Firstly, Camus himself was active in the resistance during the war and also edited, at considerable risk, the clandestine journal Combat. Secondly Camus' The Plague is an allegory of occupation and resistance and, despite Mr Rushton's assertions to the contrary, exhibits considerable moral bravery. Then he should consider Sartre's Roads to Freedom trilogy, three books which concern themselves unflinchingly with issues of engagement, commitment and resistance.
In any case what philosophy could be more brave than existentialism, a philosophy that rejects the safety net of God and all other transcendental metaphysical fairy tales and insists that man is morally responsible for his own actions and the consequences thereof?
And by the way, as an Englishman who has travelled in France I can assure Mr R that the French do not hate the English and we - apart from a few tabliod reading idiots - do not hate them either.
The Stranger itself is one of the great books of the 20th Century: a masterful study of a man who refuses to conform to the false values and hypocrisy of mass self-assured organised society and ultimately pays the consequences for his bravery in refusing to "fit in". The court room scene is one of the finest pieces of writing you will ever come across, and the book as a whole is beautifully written, intensely moving, and ultimately uplifting.
Buy the book and ignore Mr Rushton's vile "review"