The Stranger (Cliffs Notes)

Rating:
Summary: Unstanding the Absurdity of Camus' "The Stranger"
Review: Gary Carey's Cliffs Notes for "The Stranger" are almost as long as the existential novel by Albert Camus. Actually, the length of the novel makes it very attractive as a choice for students to read and playing The Cure's song "Killing an Arab" would probably pique their curiosity as well. Carey begins with a short Life of Camus followed by a couple of pages on Camus and the Absurd, both of which provide useful background before you actually read the novel. Unlike most of the little yellow books with the black stripes, the Critical Commentaries section does not distinguish between summary and commentary elements, integrating the two as it goes chapter by chapter through the novel. Carey ends with brief Character Analyses of Meursault, Marie and Raymond. The strength of this volume is Carey's analysis of the novel, which works best if you read the notes right after you have read each chapter. However, Carey does not deal with existentialism as much as I believe is necessary when dealing with the writings of Camus. While many students are happy to deal with notions of the absurd, finding it quite compatable with the post-modern works that are so abundant today, even more like to deal with the themes of existentialism. Unfortunately, there is not much here along those lines, so you will have to look elsewhere for such material.

Rating:
Summary: Mersault, an existential stranger
Review: When my English teacher first issued out the novel to our class, I thought the novel was going to be a very suspendful and interesting book. But it turned out that a lot of my classmates did not like the book as I expected. Personally, I think this book was not that bad as I thought. The character Mersault was a little bit annoying at the beginning when he showed no emotion toward his mama's death. He seemed to care less what others thought of him. The fact that he was an atheist really showed why he had strongly refused to listen to the chaplain at the end of the novel. He was the kind of man that really stuck to his belief of existentialism without being shaky. I was surprised that nature had a big impact on Mersault. In everything he saw around him, colors of nature were always involved. However, it was kind of unfair for him to die at the end because he had killed an Arab which he himself did not want to. According to his answer, the sun forced him to commit a crime. Though, it sounded vague. But we need to know that this man was imprisoned by nature and by his existentialism belief. His physical needs were more important than shedding feeling toward anything. I believe what Mersault said that the sun was the reason why he had killed the Arab. He himself was innocent and shouldn't have died just because he showed no feeling toward his mama's death. That's just stupid and ridiculous.