He Dies For The Truth ?

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	• The Stranger Albert Camus Vintage, 1989 - 144 pages average customer review:based on 519 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Made me squirm...

Nihilism...existentialism...theory of the absurd...I don't which category this book technically falls into, all I can say is that it made me squirm. The protagonist of the novel was a very calm person, quite detached in fact, but ironically it is his calmness which unsettled me.

Is this what life really is all about? Does it have no meaning, no purpose? Are there no morals? No God? I don't know...I'll let the philosophers and thinkers debate that. I can't alter my beliefs now, but the book provided me a window into all the things which I don't believe in.

I would certainly recommend it to anyone and everyone.

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He Dies For The Truth ?

Camus claimed in an interview that the main character who is "the stranger" died for the truth. The reader can make their own judgement. I thought it was more complicated than that.

Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) was a French writer and philosopher. He is often associated with existentialism, but Camus rejected any ideological classification. Camus was a young recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature when he became the first African-born writer to receive the award in 1957. He died in a car crash only three years after receiving the award. He was a social activist and Communist, and fought with the French resistance in WWII. Later he rejected Communism.

I like his work because he combines realism with the rational versus the irrational. He creates an interesting combination of intense and compelling plot along with political and moral ideas. His trademark contribution was his idea of the absurd, "the result of our desire for clarity and meaning within a world and condition that offers neither, which he explained in The Myth of Sisyphus and incorporated into many of his other works, such as The Stranger and The Plague."

The Stranger is short, just over 100 pages. It is about a North African man probably in his late twenties or thirties, called Meursault, and his girl friend Marie, and a neighbor Raymond.

Without giving away the plot, the story follows the reactions of Meursault to the death and the funeral of his mother. He puts on no airs or false fronts, and acts in a way he thinks is honest. Others interpret his emotions as being deeply flawed.

The reader can judge if Meursault is honest or flawed.

I liked the short novel. It has a certain bite to it and it grabs the reader and holds the reader through the whole novel, right to the last page. The story is both unusual and plausible. Camus makes his philosophical point in the 120 pages.

It is an outstanding piece of writing, and it is far less complex and easier to understand than some of his other works.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

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