Camus: The Stranger (A Student Guide: Landmarks of World Literature) [Paperback]

Patrick McCarthy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 19, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0521539773 | ISBN-13: 978-0521539777 | Edition: 2

Patrick McCarthy analyzes The Stranger, one of the vital texts of existentialism and twentieth-century literature, in the context of French and French-Algerian history and culture. McCarthy examines how the work undermines traditional concepts of fiction and explores parallels and contrasts between Camus's work and that of Jean-Paul Sartre. Providing students with a useful companion to The Stranger, this second edition features a revised guide to further reading and a new chapter on Camus and the Algerian War. First Edition Hb (1988): 0-521-32958-2 First Edition Pb (1988): 0-521-33851-4

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Stranger is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camus's compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity (and remains a staple of U.S. high school literature courses) in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt--all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of The Stranger, however, is that it's not mired in period philosophy.

The plot is simple. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. The trial's proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities--that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mother's death and then attended a comic movie the evening after her funeral are two ostensibly damning facts--so that the eventual sentence the jury issues is both ridiculous and inevitable.

Meursault remains a cipher nearly to the story's end--dispassionate, clinical, disengaged from his own emotions. "She wanted to know if I loved her," he says of his girlfriend. "I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." There's a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. It's undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with "the gentle indifference of the world" remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it. --Ben Guterson --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

The new translation of Camus's classic is a cultural event; the translation of Cocteau's diary is a literary event. Both translations are superb, but Ward's will affect a naturalized narrative, while Browner's will strengthen Cocteau's reemerging critical standing. Since 1946 untold thousands of American students have read a broadly interpretative, albeit beautifully crafted British Stranger . Such readers have closed Part I on "door of undoing" and Part II on "howls of execration." Now with the domestications pruned away from the text, students will be as close to the original as another language will allow: "door of unhappiness" and "cries of hate." Browner has no need to "write-over" another translation. With Cocteau's reputation chiefly as a cineaste until recently, he has been read in French or not at all. Further, the essay puts a translator under less pressure to normalize for readers' expectations. Both translations show the current trend to stay closer to the original. Marilyn Gaddis Rose, SUNY at Binghamton
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 124 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 2 edition (January 19, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521539773
• ISBN-13: 978-0521539777
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.3 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #563,076 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Nobody Counts--Not Even Yourself August 25, 2006

By Martin Asiner

Format:Paperback

There are few opening lines in literature more famous than the ones that begin THE STRANGER: "Mamam died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from home: `Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday." These lines are spoken by Meursault, who is the protagonist and narrator. Albert Camus uses Meursault as a symbol of the nihilism that was then sweeping a Europe that was engulfed in a conflict that promised only a continuation of the death and destruction that began with the Blitzkrieg in 1939. In such times of chaos, there was a tendency for Europeans to grow used to the thought that the next breath could be their last. A corollary of that was that if you bought into that philosophy, you also insisted in living in the here and now. Tomorrow existed only as an intellectual curiosity. Yesterday existed only as a prelude for today. Meursault is the embodiment of a generation of conquered French who learned to accept without a blink even the previously emotionally shattering loss of one's mother.

Following his mother's death, Meursault quickly puts his mother's death and funeral behind him. He swims, dates, finds a lover, and kills a man for no logical reason. And all these events happen one after the other. He is arrested, tried, and convicted for murder. His execution is the penalty. Before, during, and after the trial a variety of people try to understand Meursault's life. Why did he show no grief at his mother's death? How could he so quickly go on with his life? And the biggie: Why did he kill his victim? No answer to any is given. And so the novel ends with a stunning epiphany by Meursault. As he awaits beheading, he perceives the relation between the universe and himself. The universe has no logic. Life has no meaning. The lack of logic in the universe guarantees that everything in the universe, including himself, is governed by chance, which means that any occurrence could just as easily not have happened as it did, thereby proving all that we see is an illusion of fact. In such a universe, as logic goes out the window, it takes meaning with it. Life and death and order and disorder are interchangeable. To be born means only to experience the NOW. There is no "after" the NOW. Death thus has no meaning for Meursault. Many readers of this and other novels of Camus call him an existentialist, a tag which he denied. Yet, in the inexplicable actions of Meursault, Camus paved the way for several generations of youth who even now shout out that today and tomorrow are synonymous.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Dispassionately Compelling May 22, 2008

By J. Wasilewski

Format:Paperback

Like most of Camus' works, The Stranger's plot is simple but the meaning is trivially existentialist and compelling. The Stranger begins with the death of narrator Meursault's mother. After napping on the bus to her retirement home, Meursault is disengaged and unmoved by the vigil and funeral procession, and continues to be until the finale of his trial.

Meursault appears insensitive throughout The Stranger and lives for pleasure in the moment. When asked by ladyfriend Marie if he loves her, he responds nonchalantly, "...it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." Meursault, however, does have feelings for her, but chooses not to acknowledge them.

When faced with the conflict of killing a man for being a threat to his friend, Meursault's "live in the moment" persona erupts inside of him enough to pull the trigger five times and not panic. Throughout the lengthy period of time Meursault spent in prison, he continued to be indifferent, unmoved, and dispassionate. Though he did not feel like a criminal, he still struggled to come to terms with his disposition.

The end of the novel is disconcertingly troubling. Meursault fights to disengage his feelings from Marie as she sits in the visiting room of the prison, and struggles to choke back words of defense for himself during the trial. He listens to the prosecutor demean his image and is powerless over it. Finally, Meursault feels like a criminal, but convinces himself that he will be spared despite his murderous crime. However, Meursault is sentenced to a public execution and consequently becomes even more dispassionate than he had been. His final thoughts of resignation were impersonal and repugnant, due to the fact that Meursault had become entirely convinced that his world was truly a physical one and he had reached the inevitable end.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece July 19, 2011

By Nick A. Bowman

Format:Paperback

"The Stranger" is a short, easy-to-read masterpiece. After reading this, I read "The Plague," which pales in comparison. "The Plague" is about 100 pages too long. In "The Stranger," Camus writes simple, concise sentences, which push the story on. In "The Plague," Camus writes long, detailed paragraphs which detract from an already slow story.