The Stranger in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Sep 16, 2009 Jeff Scott rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001books, fiction, surreal, existentialism, short-books

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I have wanted to read this for some time. I guess the book is an example of existensialism or absurdism, which the book is quite absurd. Meursault, the main character, doesn’t seem to be affected by anything. He doesn’t seem to notice any difference in his life after his mother’s death. He will marry his girlfriend if she wants him to, but doesn’t love her. He befriends a man who beats his girlfriend and also helps him do it by tricking her. He is more annoyed about the bright sun or the heat ra I have wanted to read this for some time. I guess the book is an example of existensialism or absurdism, which the book is quite absurd. Meursault, the main character, doesn’t seem to be affected by anything. He doesn’t seem to notice any difference in his life after his mother’s death. He will marry his girlfriend if she wants him to, but doesn’t love her. He befriends a man who beats his girlfriend and also helps him do it by tricking her. He is more annoyed about the bright sun or the heat rather than any physical threat. He, in fact, kills a man because he intensifies the heat at him. During his murder trial, he is prosecuted for his uncaring attitude not so much that he murdered someone. His uncaring nature, in the end, is his downfall. It makes the book altogether very strange, which there seems to be many philosophical points and allusions, but the character is so unlikable his prosecution seems fitting.

I was more annoyed at his lackadaisical attitude towards everything. It’s not even that the stranger has no morals, but has the attitude that we are all going to die anyway, so what? What’s the point of all that noise and discomfort of feelings and caring and belief if that dark wind that is death will come in and swoop down upon us eventually.
This book is a bit of a downer.

“It occurred to me that somehow I’d got through another Sunday, that Mother now was buried, and tomorrow I’d be going back to work as usual. Really, nothing in my life had changed.” P.17

“And each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing.” P.39

“I answered that, of recent years, I’d rather lost the habit of noting my feelings, and hardly knew what to answer. I could truthfully say I’d been quite fond of Mother—but really that didn’t mean much. All normal people, I added as an afterthought, had more or less desired the death of those they loved, at some time or another.” P. 42

He led off by remarking that I had the reputation of being a taciturn, rather self-centered person, and he’d like to know what I had to say to that. I answered:
“Well, I rarely have anything much to say. So, naturally I keep my mouth shut.” P. 43

As I usually do when I want to get rid of someone whose conversation bores me, I pretended to agree. At which, rather to my surprise, his face lit up. P. 45

…in the long run one gets used to anything. P. 50

Of course, I had to own that he was right; I didn’t feel much regret for what I’d done. Still, to my mind he overdid it, and I’d have liked to have a chance of explaining to him, in a quite friendly, almost affectionate way, that I have never been able really to regret anything in all my life. I’ve always been far too much absorbed in the present moment, or the immediate future, to think back. P.64

Only one incident stands out; toward the end, while my counsel rambled on, I heard the tin trumpet of an ice-cream vendor in the street, a small, shrill sound cutting across the flow of words. And then a rush of memories went through my mind—memories of a life which was mine no longer and had once provided me with the surest, humblest pleasures: warm smells of summer, my favorite streets, the sky at evening, Marie’s dresses and her laugh. The futility of what was happening here seemed to take me by the throat, I felt like vomiting, and I had only one idea: to get it over, to go back to my cell, and sleep ... and sleep. P.67

Living as he did, like a corpse, he couldn’t even be sure of being alive. It might look as if my hands were empty. Actually, I was sure of myself, sure about everything, far surer than he; sure of my present life and of the death that was coming. That, no doubt, was all I had; but at least that certainty was something I could get my teeth into—just as it had got its teeth into me. I’d been right, I was still right, I was always right. I’d passed my life in a certain way, and I might have passed it in a different way, if I’d felt like it. I’d acted thus, and I hadn’t acted otherwise; I hadn’t done x, whereas I had done y or z. And what did that mean? That, all the time, I’d been waiting for this present moment, for that dawn, tomorrow’s or another day’s, which was to justify me. Nothing, nothing had the least importance and I knew quite well why. He, too, knew why. From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing toward me, all my life long, from the years that were to come. And on its way that breeze had leveled out all the ideas that people tried to foist on me in the equally unreal years I then was living through. What difference could they make to me, the deaths of others, or a mother’s love, or his God; or the way a man decides to live, the fate he thinks he chooses, since one and the same fate was bound to “choose” not only me but thousands of millions of privileged people who, like him, called themselves my brothers? Surely, surely he must see that? Every man alive was privileged; there was only one class of men, the privileged class. All alike would be condemned to die one day; his turn, too, would come like the others’. And what difference could it make if, after being charged with murder, he were executed because he didn’t weep at his mother’s funeral, since it all came to the same thing in the end? The same thing for Salamano’s wife and for Salamano’s dog. That little robot woman was as “guilty” as the girl from Paris who had married Masson, or as Marie, who wanted me to marry her. What did it matter if Raymond was as much my pal as Céleste, who was a far worthier man? What did it matter if at this very moment Marie was kissing a new boy friend? As a condemned man himself, couldn’t he grasp what I meant by that dark wind blowing from my future? ... p. 75
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Feb 02, 2020 Amanda rated it liked it

Shelves: ap-literature, 3-stars, fiction, teacher-reads, classics, classics-contemporary, format-audible

Spring 2020;

This is one of those weird ones, where because of my degree I know this is a wonderful (like 4.5 grading) example of existentialism, but on the Amanda Scale of what I like we're further down (like 2-3), so take that as you may. I'm glad to have checked it off my list, but I'm, also, really glad not to need to read it again, because mleh, existentialism is still not my bag. ...more

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