[A_D_E_P_T]

As it happens, I recently re-read The Stranger -- the last time was in 2006, so it was essentially fresh.

The first half of the short book is easily on-par with any of the great masterpieces of literature. It was written in a direct, vivid, gripping, and yet somehow languorous style -- something almost paradoxical. It was also very attuned to the aesthetics and flow of the outside world, but inattentive to the narrator's inner life -- insensitive and, in a sense, essentially masculine in a non-performative way. As a purely aesthetic work, it is truly excellent.

The second half falls apart catastrophically. The key scenario, the book's turning point, is contrived almost beyond belief. The trial is a farce on several distinct levels -- you can criticize it from almost any perspective, and you'd be right. (There's a well-known Orientalist critique which is just the tip of the iceberg.) And the close of the book brings with it a number of unreliable narrator problems, which make the book as difficult to resolve as time-travel fiction.

My impression was that it worked wonderfully as pure prose, and that Camus should probably have written travel journals a la Gerard Nerval. As philosophy, though, it was hopelessly muddled, badly contrived, and confused.

[halperter]

At least from my perspective, the trial is meant to be contrived and a farce. From Meursault's perspective (which I agree that he can be an unreliable narrator) everything happening around him is inconsequential; he reflects that death-even of someone so "close" to him as his mother-doesn't matter as the end would always come. Meursault is on trial for his disposition, rather than the actual murder. The prosecution argues that Meursault is guilty due to his aloofness rather than any discussion of the murder (the defense openly questions whether Meursault is on trial for the murder of the arab or the murder of his mother!). At least for me, this difference was what _The Stranger_ was about; this inherent clash between indifference and the human rejection of the "gentle indifference of the universe". The fact that Meursault's unreliable narrator aspect comes about of the confrontation between the priest(?) and himself makes me think that Meursault too was hiding under this coating of lucidity, where he (and others who pretend to be stoics in the face of the absurd) will eventually break down. I reccomend reading _The Myth of Sisyphus_, especially the third and fourth parts, for Camus' explanation of the absurd hero.

Also, could you link the critiques? They sound interesting and I'd like to read them.

[A_D_E_P_T]

The problem as I see it is in the fact that the book describes the world very naturalistically. The first half of the book is basically Proust, if Proust were less introspective and didn't care to inflate his word count. It's actually rare to find a book where the events of day-to-day life -- running to catch a tram, or spending a lazy Sunday afternoon on one's balcony -- are relayed with such clarity and directness.

Then the murder happens -- which was a highly contrived and even quite ridiculous scenario, in that (a) Mersault's party was quite literally being stalked by an armed gang, (b) Mersault separated himself from the pack and was menaced by one of his stalkers, who was armed with a knife, (c) the naked knife was in the man's hand, as that man was blocking Mersault's path, (d) there were no witnesses, and (e) Mersault was a Frenchman in colonial French Algeria.

Not 1 in 10000 times does that go to court for murder, and not 1 in 1000000 times does it result in the death penalty.

But, anyway, back to my point: The minute the murder happens, we're yanked out of the naturalistic world and thrust directly into the world of Kafka's The Trial. Nothing makes sense any longer. What once was so true-to-life becomes something akin to the hallucinatory descent of divine justice -- a bad trip, a fever dream. "Yeah, you're off to the guillotine because you didn't cry at your mom's funeral. What kind of monster are you?" The most parsimonious interpretation is that the narrator has simply lost his mind.

Don't even get me started on the fact that every reviewer thinks that Mersault was executed, when that never actually happens in the book, and would result in him not being able to write the book in the first place. (Further confused by the variety of tenses used in the construction of the prose.) The book, which is written something like a memoir, ends with his appeal still pending, and the prison chaplain "sure of its success."

As to the critiques, the Orientalist one is in Edward Said's "Culture and Imperialism" but I don't think that the full version is online. As I recall, it basically concerned point (e) above, and noted that the trial would not have happened -- so the notion of the trial may be a sort of cope.

[halperter]

Your analogy of divine justice struck me as rather fitting! Before the trial, the magistrate brandishes the cross to Meursault and demands that Meursault believe that he will be forgiven, lest the magistrate's life lack meaning. Meursault, although "forced" into saying that such a god exists, denies that such a god, a divine judgment, could give life meaning. His position reflects Camus' as Camus believes that hope of finding meaning (god) is ultimately just a way to postpone nihilism, not to overcome it. The point of the trial wasn't to be logical or make sense, as the irrational instinctual human response to the absurd is what characterizes the trial. There's a shift in the jury when Meursault states that he shot the attacker a few times, then a few times again when they were on the ground. Again, Meursault's trial is a reflection of the human struggle against the absurd. Some bring god, others bring human ethics and emotions, but it is ultimately humans dealing with the absurd irrationally. For the execution point, I find that it actually doesn't matter whether the execution has gone through or not. Meursault already denies any sense of hope (reflecting his position as the absurd hero), rather, embracing the absurd. It is a bit weird if there would be a focus on the end result, which I don't really think matters, to the reader nor Meursault. Addressing the juxtoposition of the first and second parts, I think the first part was an exploration of the absurd hero's life, and the second part was more of the reaction to the absurd hero by society. I'm not the smartest, so I find it hard to fit the distinction. At least, I enjoyed reading the novel :D

Again, maybe this is just cope for bad writing but the fundamental absurdity of the trial, which you have clearly shown, is one of the points of the novel. It's more a philosophical treatise disguised as a novel really. The prose is supposed to reflect someone who is a stranger to us, and the plot is supposed to evoke feelings of incredulity into the reader!

P.S. -> thanks for the critiques!

[A_D_E_P_T]

> Meursault already denies any sense of hope (reflecting his position as the absurd hero), rather, embracing the absurd. It is a bit weird if there would be a focus on the end result, which I don't really think matters, to the reader nor Meursault.

This is emphatically not the case, though! Not only does he not deny any sense of hope, he dwells on his hope. He practically lives on it.

I'll quote from the book:

"There were two other things about which I was always thinking: the dawn and my appeal. . .

"Then all day there was my appeal to think about. I made the most of this idea, studying my effects so as to squeeze out the maximum of consolation. . .

"I gave myself leave, to consider the other alternative; that my appeal was successful. And then the trouble was to calm down that sudden rush of joy racing through my body and even bringing tears to my eyes."

The prison scenes mostly concern how he alternates between clinging to hope and distracting his mind. He merely claims to lose hope in the book's very last paragraph, and imagines a spectacular public execution. (Something else that's quite weird in itself, as the French banned public executions in 1939 and the book takes place in the 1940s.)

> I think the first part was an exploration of the absurd hero's life, and the second part was more of the reaction to the absurd hero by society.

This is by no means clear, as I don't think that Mersault is a well-defined "absurd hero" (VERY subtle differences in framing, and more introspective narration, would have you believe that he's the perfect bourgeois citizen!) nor is the "reaction by society" at all credible.

[navane]

I read it for the first time a couple months ago. How I remember the prison scenes was that he felt the emotions happening buy he didn't connect to them. His emotions had as little meaning to him as the trial had, as the murder had, as his girlfriend had, and as his mother had. He just describes what's going on, and because he's locked up in a cell the only thing going on is inside him, but still he does not connect to it. He didn't connect to the world that was outside him, and he doesn't connect to the world that's inside him.

To me the weirdest part of the book, that I find out of character, is that he went along to write that letter for his neighbor, and to aid his neighbor at the police station. If you care so little about anything, if you're that cool, why don't you pass on that weird neighbor. Just close the door without saying anything and go smoke your sigarettes in the window, you poser.

The only way I can make his acts rhyme is if he's just telling himself how cool he is, but he's a actually a social outcast too cool for school who only wants to hang out with people he thinks are cool, e.g. the "bad boy neighbor". That guy was a certified woman beater. And that's the guy he chooses to associate with?

If anything this is the character Dennis of Always Sunny was based on, especially his highschool years.

[ludicrousdispla]

I've only read it once, which was last year, and I thought Meursalt's indifference to his life and those around him was then directed back on to him through the trial (which I didn't consider absurd at all.)

In that way he is more representative of the society that has placed him on trial than anyone else in it.

[rectang]

It’s been a while, but I recall finding The Plague more compelling than The Stranger.

While I agree with Camus’s philosophical points about the absurdity of existence and the indifference of the universe, within the scope of our tiny little lives there is morality and meaning. Taking action to address the suffering caused by an epidemic is meaningful. So are the deaths of an Arab or one’s mother, and the premise that a human would be so alienated that they would feel nothing at them is unconvincing, even if the universe doesn’t care.

There was an essay in The Guardian a couple days ago on a related topic, positing that the essence of the self is the biological body including the brain, rather than the isolated mind. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/30/alive-...

[georgemcbay]

> It’s been a while, but I recall finding The Plague more compelling than The Stranger.

> While I agree with Camus’s philosophical points about the absurdity of existence and the indifference of the universe, within the scope of our tiny little lives there is morality and meaning.

I'm pretty sure later-life (relatively, since he died pretty young) Camus would agree with you. The way I view it, The Stranger was him diagnosing the problem of existential absurdism and The Plague was his answer to what you do about it after he discovered it himself as part of the French resistance.

The Stranger is, IMO, mostly interesting to see how his own views changed over those ~5 years and shouldn't really be an introduction to his philosophy.

[nchmy]

Yes, this is the mistake almost everyone makes - stopping at "life is absurd!". The rebel and the plague show how to do something meaningful in spite of that.

I've always pointed the Absurdists to his nobel prize speech as a quick way of showing them that they don't have the slightest idea of what he was talking about. The cognitive dissonance is generally too great, and the leave in a huff.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1957/camus/spee...

[mkovach]

I agree. Camus' work was a larger project. One he sadly never finished.

His works (essays, short stories, plays, etc.) build on one another, gradually unfolding an argument: first confronting the absurd, then asking how one should respond to it, and later exploring what it means to live and act in spite of it.

[firasd]

When Martin Shkreli first burst onto the scene it reminded me of the trial a bit. Like I really believe a lot of the negative polarization he received was due to his smirk rather than due to his drug pricing per se

[esikich]

Nah, he was a scapegoat so the rest of big pharma could continue to do the exact same shit he did. He was just too noisy about it. "Justice served, we got all the bad guys!"

[janpeuker]

Speaking of the orientalist critique I recommend The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud