The Stranger

Rating:
Summary: Being a spectator of one's own life
Review: We are taught, at least through western institutions, to apply sense in everything that happens around us and to us. The "sense" of things is of course there to begin with. By trying to "apply sense" to them, that is, to make our own sense of them we might be not seeing them for what they really are.
The Stranger is a person who is literally watching his own life unfold without taking any passionate or particular emotional interest in it. It is as if he is having a peculiar out of body experience without being in a trance.
Many of the people who've read this book find it absurd (as is evident by the reviews of it here in Amazon as well). That's because they do what i mentioned above, they try to apply their own sense to it, and that is the real absurdity.
Life is not one path and it's not monodimensional. The "logic" that one person applies might be sheer madness for the next and so on. Camous's hero is a person detached from his surroundings. He finds it hard to understand why some people think this or the other thing, he finds it equally hard to share emotions that qualify as "normal". He is comfortable in his own world of indifference and becomes uncomfortable when the worlds of others interfere with his. That's what he is or how he is.

When the Stranger becomes a murderer it really comes as no surprise really considering the process via which this happens. Anything could happen to him as he doesn't resist the flow of things, he avoids friction and paradoxically this avoidance of friction that he so intensely pursues leads him to direct confrontation with his environment because of his crime. And this crime is dealt with by the Stranger the same way he's dealt with everything else: he is a spectator of that too.
Camous uses the trial of the Stranger brilliantly. The trial is of course nothing more than a platform the author utilises to bring across a clearer image of the Stranger. And as the final curtain is about to fall the reader is subjected to a very controversial view of the world. Which is? It's just "let me be"...

I think that the reason The Stranger maintains its charm and importance even today (which means that it still touches the pulse of the times) is exactly because our societies are increasingly becoming full of Strangers, full of Spectators, and those who deny it should be accused of hypocrisy. This is not accidental. And, exactly because it is NOT accidental this book remains as important as the day it was first published. Why are we like this? Why have we become what we've become? Is this really our potential? Indifference? Is this all?

Existentialist rhetoric and questions some might say. True, but defining our existence is something most of us are not good at. The questions might be old but they haven't been answered, not in the past 50 years, not in the past 20 centuries. The Stranger asks them too. He's not the only one.

Rating:
Summary: Most singular character I've read
Review: The Stranger is a very unique book. Mersault, the main character, is an amoral person, who floats through life as things seem to happen to him without plan or purpose. He eventually commits a murder, in a manner that it is not clear why.

To me, it was a tale about sense and judgment. The author created a microcosm, inside the character, of what the world would be like if there were no morals. The bonds existing between human beings are removed, and all that is left is an empty and unemotional person.

I highly recommend it, as a picture of where the world would be if we removed the shared experiences of humans.

Rating:
Summary: The Stuart Gilbert translation is better
Review: Title says it all, the Stuart Gilbert translation is much better. I'd give the Gilbert translation five stars. Do you self a favor and gat that one.

Rating:
Summary: Absurd Freedom
Review: The Stranger is as beautiful as any work of art can hope to be.
It is in the latter parts of the book, where Mersault's words have a lyrical power not seen previous, that the English translation achieves the haunting effect that must be even more prevalent in the French. The first thing readily obvious is that the character has no emotional connection to what he experiences; he simply experiences. Thus, Camus utilizes an American style, terse and detached. Some reviewers were off put by this. "How could he not care that his mother died? " Attaching immorality to Mersault merely shows a total misunderstanding of the book.
Camus believed in "absurd freedom," life has no inner value and is futilely cut short, but it is up to us to determine our life in such uncertainty. If one doesn't interpret life, emotion doesn't exist. But the values that society has incriminate you if you don't conform. They make you strange. They take no account of individuality.
That is the peril of the main character after a bizarre series of events on a sun drenched beach.
The power of Camus is that even though he creates such a bleak, hopeless human situation the characters still go on as best they can, perhaps even attaining happiness. "One must imagine Sisyphus happy," to quote The Myth of Sisyphus.
That is also the power and beauty of mankind.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting read...
Review: The Stranger was an interesting book that addressed many ethical and human issues regardless of it's brief nature. Meursault, he main character is attacked by the very society that created him. He's a man accused of reacting and not reacting. As a reader, you have a strong emotional understanding or a man who reacts to the world without a "normal" emotional response. Overall, I recommend the book to anyone who is looking for a book that confronts human nature from many angles.

Rating:
Summary: Apathy at its best
Review: I studied this book in my 12th grade English class and it was certainly interesting. I think all of us found it challenging to imagine a life so detached from emotion but there is no denying the interesting characteristics of this book and I highly reccommend it.

Rating:
Summary: The Stranger
Review: The Stranger starts out with the main character, Monsiuer Meursault finding out that his mother had died. Meursault was a low income hard worker who could not support his mother at home, so he sent her to an old peoples home in the country. This was the first of his so-called sins used against him later. At first it would seem as though Meursault wasn't sorrowful of his mothers passing, but Meursaults main foible was that of his taciturn nature and unwillingness to show emotion. Later in the story he commits murder in a vehement moment of rage. All of a sudden he is thrown in to a trial with a magistrate. All of Meursaults little mistakes are brought to the attention of the jury, including the fact of his unresponsiveness to a priest and religion as a whole.

This author did a great job writing this book and showing how society can tear a person apart using small insignificant mistakes. The author throughout the book shows exactly what Meursault is thinking plus his views on certain matters. The author also points out the flaws of religion and how God is not for everyone and should not be pushed upon by someone. I picked up this book not knowing what it was and enjoyed how Camus could fit all this into a book that is less than 140 pages. It was a quick easy to read story. It was insightfully written and give credit to Matthew Ward for translating it into English so well.

Rating:
Summary: either you get it, or you don't (yes, it's a truism -so?)
Review: regarding the book: my rating of five stars is self-explanatory, and no further review is needed.

this "review" was actually prompted by some of the pseudo-intellectual garbage being tossed out in other reviews here. i'm simultaneously annoyed and saddened when folks attempt to disguise their own ignorance with name-dropping, or mispelled vocabulary that could have easily been gleaned from the pages of the "Obscure Word of the Day" calendar...>i appreciate a bad review - when it's well done. everyone has a right to his/her opinion after all. But . . .

Points:
(1)this book is a translation. if you think it reads a little rough, keep in mind that it was written in french.
(2)the author uses very dry, simple prose. hemingway also used dry, simple prose. hemingway did not write this book. if you want to review hemingway, do so - but wouldn't you be more comfortable doing it in the Hemingway section?

(3)who expects poetry or lyricism in an existentialist novel about a frenchman with no conscience? i would be horrified and offended if this book were made beautiful. beautiful is for "paradise lost" and God. Meursault doesn't believe in God.

i believe that anyone would be perfectly justified in hating this book. it could honestly be called "depressing" or "utterly pointless", and it is, i assure you, completely bereft of any emotion higher than hunger or sexual attraction. Many of us would say, "That's the point. It's existentialism." If existentialism isn't your cup of tea, you will hate this book, and you will be right for hating it.

HOWEVER

i am loathe to see a good book trashed by someone too simple to understand it. my plea is this: please don't destroy what you don't comprehend. If you must write a bad review, do it with style; make us all feel your pain. Give us details, evidence, and facts so that we can learn to hate with a vigor to rival your own! That way, we know that you truly read and understood the book . . . and thought it totally sucked eggs.

agh, enough ranting -

"The Stranger" is, in my opinion, one of the greatest books ever written, but that's just my opinion. Either you get it, or you don't.

Rating:
Summary: All difference must be eliminated. Do away with the stranger
Review: I read this book once when I was young and then again two years ago. Two different translations: the first one I read was called The Outsider, the second one, The Stranger.

Now we are reading it in French and discussing it in class. The writing is much more beautiful in French.

In year 2000, there was a survey amongst 6000 French readers. The question was: " Which book, do you think, is the best of 20th century? " French readers picked L'Étranger. I agree. The Stranger is, in my opinion, the best book written in 20th century. The complexity of human nature tackled with the simplest of writings. It is beautiful to read, heart-wrenching to contemplate.

And which book has ever been able to beat this opening line:

"Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas."

("Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.")

If I could compare this book (and its protagonist) to any other book I've read, I would choose Graham Greene's A Burnt Out Case and its architect Querry.

We are not very good at dealing with the different, the outsider, the stranger. And since there is more of us, we find a way of making them miserable, not letting them be, forcing them to be like us, trying to neutralize them, to make them ordinary, to reduce them. When they slip, we use the opportunity to get rid of them for good. (In the case of Graham Greene's Querry, he didn't even have to slip. We can always make things up.)

Meursault killed a man. In his trial we say, in fact try to use it as evidence, that he did not cry in his mother's funeral.

We are merciless when it comes to the different. I know, by first hand experience, how cruel we can be when we encounter the stranger.

Rating:
Summary: The Book was alright.
Review: I think this book was not amuzing in any such way. It made me feel disgust for the narrator. Especially with the fact that the story begins with "Mama died today- or maybe yesterday." Through out the whole novel he does things that are not humane and his actions are presentable. Even though this book is short and not detailed I think there was more meaning behind it though.