The Stranger

Title: The Stranger by Albert Camus

Summary: Meursault's, a clerk before the Second World War in Algiers, France learns of his mothers death. He attends her funeral, but is unable to view her body. He returns home and helps his friend Raymond by writing a break-up letter to his supposedly unfaithful Moorish girlfriend. Later on a beach, the two find the ex-girlfriend's brother and an Arab friend. Raymond is wounded by a knife, and Meursault returns later with Raymond's gun when the sun gets in his eyes and he accidentally kills the Arab, but he later shoots his body again. Meursault is arrested, and shows no remorse whilst on trial, so he is seen as an unemotional killer. Sentenced to execution by beheading, Meursault is sent a chaplain in an attempt to get him to ask for forgiveness but Meursault sees God as a waste of his time.

Quotes:
She said, “If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church.” She was right. There was no way out.

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.

I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn't dissatisfied with mine here at all.

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. 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.

Mama died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.” That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

Vehicles:
Understatement: Meursault is constantly grossly under emphasizing many dramatic points in his life (i.e. his appears relatively calm about the death of his mother).

Symbolism: The sun can be seen as some type of symbol for society's expectations or judgments of an individual, constantly bearing down on a person sometimes causing them to do foolish or unlikely things (such as shooting an individual)

Pathos: Meursault's emotion of lack thereof can be used to dry an instill some form of frustration or anger in the audience at his utter lack of concern for seemingly anything.

Irony: Meursault's unorthodox look on like can drastically differ from what we expect (when Marie takes the stand, he immoderately ponders on how wonderful her chest looks at that moment).

Conflicts:
The need for emotion vs The simple desire to exist
Society's expectations of how an individual should be vs How that person simply desires to exist
The desire to pursue an afterlife vs the desire to concentrate on what is real and at hand

Subjects:
Death
God
Remorse/Grief

Characters:
Meursault
Marie Cardona
Raymond Sintes
Chaplain
Magistrate
Salamano
Celeste
Prosecutor
Arab

Themes:
The importance of the material, physical world
The absurdity of the universe and human society