I should be depressed right now.
After all, I just blew through Albert Camus’s The Stranger. Doesn’t that come with long, thin cigarettes and a spiral into existentialist angst?
Not for me it didn’t. I haven’t spent one second staring out the window muttering “nothing matters.” If anything, reading L’Étranger was a liberating experience.
This was actually a reread for me. The first time was all the way back in my sophomore year of high school. Back then I didn’t get it. My mind was occupied on more important things – like goofing off, whom to ask to homecoming, and what my friends were up to.
Basically all I remembered was that the main character was a weirdo, and he died at the end.
And so The Stranger remained on my shelves collecting dust until I finally decided to give it another go 14 years later. It’s a slim volume. Not the least bit intimidating. Which made it the perfect palate cleanser between the door stops fantasy novels I’ve been reading.
The Price of Flaunting Social Norms
My first impression: Damn this guy can write.
And this coming from someone who read the English translation. The prose is beautiful and sparse. Camus doesn’t waste a word on superfluous, flowery language. But he is careful to include very precise details that set the scene and let the reader fill in the rest. He makes me want to learn French just to read it in the original.
I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn’t mine anymore, but one in which I’d found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells of summer, the part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie’s dresses and the way she laughed.
Even though our protagonist, Meursault, tells his tale in the first person, you can immediately pick up on the vast distance between him and his tale. Camus handles this brilliantly; the anesthetized prose reflects the distance between Meursault and society at large.
A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so. She looked sad. But as we were fixing lunch, and for no apparent reason, she laughed in such a way that I kissed her.
How Meursault handles his isolation becomes a central theme of the book. On the surface there’s nothing “wrong” with him – nothing that would cause him to be an outcast. He has a steady job, a few friends, and a summer fling named Marie who’s way more into him than he is into her.
What drives the tension?
It’s Meursault’s inability to behave how society tells him he “should.” His greatest offense isn’t that he’s a murderer; it’s that he’s unable (and at times unwilling) to bend to social norms.
This makes Meursault more of an antihero than anything else. Those are my favorite kind. And we readers get to watch that anti-heroism grow. In the beginning Meursault is naive. He’s mostly befuddled by society’s negative reactions to his “strange” behavior. But by the end he’s utterly defiant – refusing to compromise who he is just to appease social graces.
Another theme that struck me was how base physical sensations can overrule our better judgment. Time and time again, Camus describes the immense heat and light beating down on our poor antihero, stripping away the mask society wants him to wear:
All that heat was pressing down on me and making it hard for me to go on. And every time I felt a blast of its hot breath strike my face, I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists in my trouser pockets, and strained every nerve in order to overcome the sun and the thick drunkenness it was spilling over me.
These physical sensations often come right before the major plot points in the story. Meursault doesn’t want to be disrespectful toward his dead mother. He’s simply exhausted, so he nods off at her funeral vigil.
Because The Stranger is touted as the great existentialist novel, I can’t overlook that angle either. That philosophical bent – that nothing matters, and it’s up to us to create our own meaning – resonated stronger on my teenage read than this one.
Maybe it just strikes us differently at different stages of our life. An angst-filled teenager would be captivated by passages like this:
I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn’t done that. I hadn’t done this thing but I had done another. And so?
This time around, the existentialism stuff was mostly old hat for me. What I found a lot more interesting was the impact of unwritten (but very real) social norms – and the consequences for defying them.
I can understand why The Stranger would be depressing for some people. I haven’t found another novel that so accurately captures how society’s norms can oppress us, and tempt us to turn away from our true nature. (If you have, I’d love to hear from you!)
To me, the conclusion of the novel is ultimately heroic. Yes, society may judge us not on our character but our defiance – or adherence – to social norms. But we are just as free to reject that judgment and make our own rules.
For everything to be consummated, for me 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.
Meursault’s greatest danger comes from making people uncomfortable. He doesn’t believe what they believe or act like they act. In many ways, he serves as a foil of what people could be if they didn’t concern themselves with all these unwritten social rules.
Are You Living Your Own Life?
The Stranger got me thinking just how pervasive this is in my own life.
Which norms are guiding me now?
Where did they come from?
How come people freak out if you’re a little weird? (Okay, I live in Austin, so it’s a lot weird, but still…)
I believe our deepest obligation while we’re here is to be – and live – true to ourselves. And often that truth makes a mockery of the conventional lives most people lead.
What will happen if you rock the boat?
Defy
Here’s a single, defiant act you can try right now. Turn off your phone. Sit down on your porch. Fold her hands on your lap and don’t do anything except think for the next 20 minutes. Create.
It sounds like such a simple thing, and it is. But in a world where we’re rushing from one dopamine hit to the next, mindlessly responding to society’s signals instead of our own, it can be a revolutionary act.
Live the life you want to live.
If you don’t define what that looks like, society will step in, and you probably won’t like the answers.
Don’t be afraid of being a little strange.
All of us have this power within us. To be like Meursault and laugh at the snarling crowd, secure in the knowledge that we’ve been true to ourselves.
The Stranger is a super fast read (only about 120 pages). You’ll finish it quickly, but you’ll think about it from time to time, whenever your moral compass guides you away from society’s conventions. Highly recommended!
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The Stranger by Albert Camus: Finding Life After Alienation – Corey Pemberton