Rating: 
Summary: existentialism?
Review: Upon starting this book I thought it odd that a person such as Mersault could not shed a tear at his own mother's funeral. Our A.P. English class read this together and only 2 people, myself and another, I think actually enjoyed this book. When we discussed it, everyone had comments against it, but I stuck in there and supported it. This is a wonderful, eye-opening novel. I never really understood existentialism, but when I started this book I researched the subject on my own and found it very fascinating. Camus did a beautiful job writing this and I applaud him. Mersault begins as an empty, emotionless man and transforms, be it late, into a man with emotions pouring out of him.
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Summary: Great book from beginning to end
Review: The translation from Justin O'brien, i felt, was the better translation;however, this translation is not bad. There are not enough words to express the way i felt about this book. The way Mersault went about life gave the whole novel almost a serial atmosphere as mersault's actions were unpredictable and irrational leaving mersault speechless when asked why he killed the arab. From the moment he pushes the trigger, it is a line which mersault has crossed and can no longer return from. On the other hand, what does it matter if we all are destined to die? This is what Mersault realizes. With all the actions Mersault commits, he never apologizes. Once he pulled the trigger, it was in fact "another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing" Once Mersaults time comes to face the guillotine, he only wants time to himself when the priest attempts to sympathize Mersault but, Mersault does not want to bother with god and becomes mad while strangling the priest "in a joy of ecstacy and rage", until the guards push him away and Mersault relaxes and prepares for his fateful end with the guillotine. It's too bad Camus was only with us for a short time. The greats are always gone too soon.
Rating: 
Summary: The Stranger: Outsider or Weirdo?
Review: I am being forced to read L'etranger in High School. I am in French Immersion so we have to read it in it's original French text. Let me tell you one thing about Albert Camus: he was definately a genius. Let me tell you another thing: Meursault is not a genius. I agree, he doesn't "play the game" well, but doesn't he eventually learn how to play? It's a psychological masterpiece but it's not for your every-day-Joe. John-Henry-next-door probably won't appreciate Albert, but your brainiac second cousin might eat it up. Check it out, decide for yourself.
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Summary: Translation not as strong as previous ones.
Review: _The Stranger_, of course, is worthy of five stars. The translation of it is not; Stuart Gilbert's translation of the _L'Etranger_ is worthy of five stars.
Rating:
Summary: perhaps the best book i will ever read
Review: this is the existential bible. i am so fulfilled by this novel, words hardly express my feelings towards camus' masterpiece. mersault is a hero, despite what others call him. i don't know what to say - this is a beautiful novel, brilliantly written and extrememly effective. perhaps it is most mistaken b/c many readers do not understand existentialism and its beauty. perhaps many fail to recognize the literary devices present in the novel, including foreshadowing, irony, symbols, irony, absurdities, irony. as camus said, "a man is sentenced to death for not crying at his mother's funeral." the absurdities of life and irony society is wonderfully presented through the stranger. i recommend it to all who are willing to dedicate time and effort to understand and realizing its beauty.
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Summary: The original slacker...
Review: When I shut Camus' "The Stranger", my mind was hushed. It was a very odd book that made me think. Unsure of the books meaning, I read some of the reveiws here, and, slowly, and opinion began to form in my mind. First off, Mersault, the narrator, is the most passive, static symbol I've ever encountered in literature. The nearest analog would be Billy Pilgrim from Vonnegut's "Slaughter House Five", I suppose, but Mersault is a different animal all together. His entire world is bloodless, and, using modern brain theory, left hemispheric; lineal, rational. Yet, it is this very bloodless existance that Camus is objecting to, at least in my reading of the novel. Mersault is a slacker, neither good nor bad. He is simply there. Sure, he's intelligent, but he's got no insight. He's caught in a reality beyond his control, a material reality that never changes. He's pleasent, interested in others, but unemotional and detatched. The only thing he responds to are changes in his material organism; heat, low blood sugar. That sort of thing. In a way, Mersault is no different from the other characters in the novel caught in life's games. The judge and lawyers, society at large, all seem to condem him, as easily as they'd have accepted him if there hadn't been a murder. Mersault's main problem is that he does not move a finger to change his life. Like a pure Aristotle, filled with cold scientific detatchment, he simply observes, never interfering with a reality that has become a lifeless, bloodless, material trap. Even though he sees the lawyers playing a game with his life that could result in his death, he does nothing to stop it. We, who've seen the murder through his eyes, understand that Mersault felt treatened by the Arab and his knife. We know he did not pre-meditate the murder. Yet he murdered. He did it coldly, but not in cold blood. Yet he doesn't make a move, becomes a pawn in a pointless 'game' between the self-righteous magistrate and the less talented defender. The question that troubled me time and time again, and probably everyone else who's read the book, is why? Why not take an impassioned stand? Why not inveigh against the absurdity of reality, why not fight for life? Why be happy to be imprisoned in society's little game of good versus evil? Why would Mersault not feel sad during his mother's funeral? Mersault simply allows life to work on him, observes what he sees coldly and accurately. His observations about the foolishness of the law, the fact that even the most self-important 'doormen' in this life are still inmates, all ring true. He notices how opposites fit together, yet depend on the other for their existance; Salmano and his dog; the magistrate and the defense; good and bad. Remeber how dejected Salamano felt after his dog, the cur he'd despised, was lost...This strange, dialectic stasis holds the world together. In some way, since Mersault is neutral, he is beyond it all, yet, like all men, is caught in its web. In the end, he becomes serious about the game, and secretly hopes that his execution will be attended by a crowd of spectators, howling in execration. In effect, what I feel Camus is trying to do in the "Stranger" is much more involved than the reading most others here have given the book. He's giving us a symbol of the limits of rational, Aristotilean thought. Pure science has given us the bomb, turned humans into machines. It has made western man maybe a little more intelligent than the animalistic Raymond, but at the expense of depriving him of a reality deeply alive, awash in blood and emotion. Our intelligence has made us robots, unable to see the face of God in the stones that imprison us, which the preist, probably the only truly passionate and sympathetic character in the book, hopes that the listless Mersault, the most modern of men, could see.
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Summary: what Camus himself said about The Stranger
Review: A lot of people are confused and have wrong notions about what The stranger is about, here's what Camus himself said about it, and is in my opinion the best explanation, "...the hero of the book is condemnd because he doesn't play the game. In this sense, he is an outsider to the society in which he lives...you must ask yourself in what way Meursault doesn't play the game. The answer is simple: he refuses to lie. Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, everyday to make life simpler. But, contrary to appearences, Meursault doesn't wnat to make life simpler. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings and society immediately feels threatened."Albert Camus, January 8 1955
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Summary: The existentialist bible
Review: Compared to the "otherr" essential existential text: Nausea, this one is the heads up winner. I have been a study of existentialism for four years and I have read each work twice and presented a paper over the poor quality of Sartre's attempt at the existential novel (not to say his other works are not worth the time, quite the contrary, "No Exit," in my opinion, is one of the geast works ever put on the stage). Rather Camus' work encompases the wholeo f exsistential theory without dragging the reader down into his political ideologies along the way. This is a true masterpiece of literature.
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Summary: I'm not quite sure what I think of this one...
Review: The first time I read this book, as a high school sophomore, I detested it. Now, two years later, being forced to read it over for an English class, I still cannot write that I enjoyed it or found it profound in any way. All I do know is that this time around, though not having taken a liking to the work, I do RESPECT it. I do not see Meursault as any sort of hero. Nor do I completely understand the concept of existentialism. I read many of the online reviews and noticed that many others did not seem to really grasp the concept of existentialism either. The first reviewer asks "Is the protagonist a sociopath..?" That is something I had considered while reading the book. In the Ward translation, page 100, Meursault admits "I had never been able to truly feel remorse for anything." A sociopath (pyschopath) is one who feels no guilt, one with an underdeveloped super ego. If so, and Meursault is a sociopath, how can he be regarded as a hero, or as "at the mercy of society." He is responsible for his own actions. People tend to forget that he killed a man and deserved, if not a death sentence, one of life imprisonment. Such a man as he would be a constant threat to society. One reviewer points out that the root of Meursaults name means death. I saw the symbolism, but it annoys me when my friends tell me how much they enjoy the book, yet they have missed such details. I do not see how they can appreciate the book except for on a superficial level. All things considered, I found the book dry and overrated, but am left with a new sense of understanding. Who knows, maybe the third time around I'll give it another star. That is, if I am ever forced to pick it up again.
Rating:
Summary: masterful
Review: existentialism brokered to fit a minimalistic nature within a man, a detailed foray of the solidarity that each person invariably edges towards.
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