The Stranger

I created a group of prompts that will appeal to a wide variety of readers (you) and thoughts (yours). Because I know there are different reading comprehension levels among you (including speed), I want to be as fair as possible in giving each of you a chance to deliver your best analysis. You should find that most of the prompt ideas have been touched upon in lecture recordings. Each should, in some way or another, strike a note of familiarity in your mind. Whichever you choose, remember that what must be evident in your writing is engagement with the text, a close analysis, and ample use of quotes from the novel. The prompts may be answered directly or taken as guides. Hence, they are broad. Opinion in some places is fine and is expected. I believe it would be wise to read the “Preface to the Stranger” and “Camus was not an existentialist” to help spark thinking, etc. This is Camus in his own words, not speculation. Remember to put the title of the novel in italics!

READ ALL OF THEM FIRST, BEFORE YOU DECIDE. THERE’S A REASON FOR THIS.

1. Camus is quoted as saying The Stranger is not existential, or that he is not an existentialist. I furthered this by stating that the novel and Meursault are absurd. Citing examples, show how the novel can be qualified as such. Where are there instances in the novel that you find it to be (or Meursault to be) odd or absurd (think of the places that made you/us laugh). He refuses to lie, and that might be the place to begin.

2. How does Meursault’s overall personality—as discussed—and the decisions/choices he makes in life lead to his ultimate fate? Meursault appears indifferent/passive, but again he refuses to lie. How does Meursault′s personality and the things he does in Part 1–how he is about Mother, affair with Marie shortly after Mother dies, his friendship with Raymond and the letter he writes–impact the way he is prosecuted in Part 2 and ultimately sentenced to death?

3. The pause between the first and next four shots at the end of Chapter 6. What was it, in your thinking? In a very important moment in Part II, Meursault is asked about it by the examining magistrate, but he never says, or can’t explain or answer. This though is in keeping with his refusal to lie. The shooting is an important moment in the novel, but it′s not the shooting alone, as much as the fact that he pauses, then fires four more times, that should stand out to you as reader. In several instances throughout Part I, Meursault echoes something he tells you in chapter 1, after the nurse says something to him. She says: ′“If you go too slowly there’s the risk of a heatstroke. But, if you go too fast, you perspire, and the cold air in the church gives you a chill.′ I saw her point; either way one was in for it″ (12). This is the reader′s first entry into the true world and mind of Meursault. And he says this same thing, ′either way one was in for it′, in different ways three or four more times throughout the novel. Is the pause between the shots connected? Go too fast＝blam, blam, blam, blam–then pause＝slow. You see? Connect these two, but show the places, too, where it′s clear that Meursault more or less feels there is no real point to existence. ″Either way one was in for it.″ Either way we all in the end die. So why not live? Why not help Raymond in Chapter 3 write a letter that will ultimately hurt a woman and change Meursault′s life forever; why not go out with Marie the day after mother died? Why not kill a man? In this, though, you must maintain a truthful portrait of M. He′s not a terrible person, not callous, not a monster, and I want to make sure you do not see him that way. If you do, go back and read Camus′s own words in the Preface. He has friends, he cares, he tells the truth, he′s honest.

4. The sky/nature/weather as a literary device in The Stranger. How does nature lend itself to the atmospheric feeling of the novel? I would focus in particular on Chapter 6 of Part One and the apocalyptic writing Camus uses. There is so much to draw on here.

5. Two characters (not main), whom you feel lend deeper significance to the novel than their roles indicate and why. Is the natural world a minor character in this novel?

6. This idea may seem like the easiest one but it’s perhaps most challenging. In other words, really think about whether you are comfortable in your writing to take this on: write a paper in which you discuss how Meursault himself would function in today’s 2021 society. You may incorporate the pandemic here. This could be an incredible paper, creative, insightful, urgent, current and relevant, but you would need—just as with the prompts above—to cite extensively from the novel/quote from the novel in order to justify your assertions. Prompt 1 asks you to write about ways in which the novel is absurd, and that might be worth considering here, too, for prompt 6. Again, Meursault refuses to lie. It’s not that he “cannot” lie, but “refuses”. Look at our society now: some might suggest there is more lying than ever. Platitudes, phoniness. Are these things necessary to get by, survive? I mean now more than ever. We see and want to be seen through glass now, a lens (hence my snow globe reference in class on 7/2), which allows perhaps for some distortion. Meursault has no distortion. Purity. How would he navigate today′s world?

Reading source: https://www.macobo.com/essays/epdf/CAMUS,%20Albert%20-%20The%20Stranger.pdf

Other sources:
Preface to THE STRANGER, by Camus, 1956 American University Edition

This will be vital to your understanding of Meursault and the novel. The wise writer incorporates it into their paper.

Preface to The Stranger

″I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical: ″In our society any man who does not weep at his mother′s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.″ I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game. In this respect, he is foreign to the society in which he lives; he wanders, on the fringe, in the suburbs of private, solitary, sensual life. And this is why some readers have been tempted to look upon him as a piece of social wreckage. A much more accurate idea of the character, or, at least one much closer to the author′s intentions, will emerge if one asks just how Meursault doesn′t play the game. The reply is a simple one; he refuses to lie. To lie is not only to say what isn′t true. It is also and above all, to say more than is true, and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than one feels. This is what we all do, every day, to simplify life. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings, and immediately society feels threatened. He is asked, for example, to say that he regrets his crime, in the approved manner. He replies that what he feels is annoyance rather than real regret. And this shade of meaning condemns him.
For me, therefore, Meursault is not a piece of social wreckage, but a poor and naked man enamored of a sun that leaves no shadows. Far from being bereft of all feeling, he is animated by a passion that is deep because it is stubborn, a passion for the absolute and for truth. This truth is still a negative one, the truth of what we are and what we feel, but without it no conquest of ourselves or of the world will ever be possible.
One would therefore not be much mistaken to read The Stranger as the story of a man who, without any heroics, agrees to die for the truth. I also happen to say, again paradoxically, that I had tried to draw in my character the only Christ we deserve. It will be understood, after my explanations, that I said this with no blasphemous intent, and only with the slightly ironic affection an artist has the right to feel for the characters he has created.″
–Albert Camus, 1956, American University Edition of The Stranger

Camus was not an Existentialist, The Stranger is NOT existential
Albert Camus, the author of The Stranger, is on record in an interview from November 1945 (see image below) stating that he is ″not an existentialist″. You may find it odd that I am pointing out for you something that doesn′t exist within the book and that I do not want to see in your papers, but I do so because many people who have an idea of The Stranger without having read it (or even having read it) seem to associate the novel and the author with existentialism. You may have read the novel in HS and had an English teacher who framed The Stranger for you as ″existential.″ No, friends, no. The Stranger is absurd. That′s all you need to know. If you qualify it as existential…well, you won′t, because it′s not. And do not try to argue that it is. It′s absurd. The novel is absurdism. Read, please, what is contained in the paragraph in the image below.
If you use any of it in your papers, here is the information for your citation:
From An interview with Jeanine Delpech, in Les Nouvelles litteraires, November 15, 1945

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