Today I woke up and thought, what would up my hipster street cred? Reading The Stranger by Albert Camus, which is surprisingly a very short book. This edition is about 119 pages, and the font is fairly large and widely-spaced. So it's an extremely quick read.
The book is also very simple in terms of how it is written. This could be due to the fact that it was translated from French, but also because according to the introductory notes, Camus was trying to imitate an "American" style: short sentences in the form of statements, thus making the story faster-paced, etc...
Anyways, it's so simple it feels natural--not in a directly-in-the-head Ulysses type deal, but in a "Oh, I can relate to this thought, or his overall detachedness, or this or that", without really trying. I know I've praised authors on this before, but this time by the end I got a little bored with it... Maybe because the main character lacked real emotion and empathy? I mean, he is the titular stranger. He's a stranger to the people around him, including family and his lover, as well as the whole human structure of government, society, and so on. But it hurts his appeal, although his numbed "surprise" at things is something I can relate to and probably most everyone can for certain situations. This lack of emotion also prevents certain catharsis from occurring. For example, the book starts when Meursalt learns of his mother's death. He goes to her rest home, stays at the vigil, goes to the funeral, and goes home--because you've just met him, you think he's in shock. But he's like that the whole time. He never really gets upset about his mom's death--I think that might be what bothers me the most. And that's one of his grievances, he gets pissed that people would be so upset over her death and cry over it because she lived happily. Which I can see--but it also feels fake and almost like a justification for him not feeling anything over his mother's death. I'm biased because I'm very close to my mother, but he just... to be so blase about it... It just agitates me.
...And I wouldn't ride on him putting his mother in a home or anything, and I think during the trial (I'll get to it later) it was messed up that everyone kept on focusing on that instead of what he was being tried for, but I mean... I mean... That's your mother. Okay, don't cry for her life, but I think he was looking at it through a narrow lens (see above). Cry for the fact that she is your mother and now she is gone and she should have meant something to you. I mean--is what I'm saying making sense, or...? Well, let's get on with it. Sorry about that big monster paragraph.
No... Just kidding. One more problem with the style. Because it's so--um--easy, for lack of a better word, it was hard for me to stay invested. By the end my eyes were just sliding over whole paragraphs. When the chaplain/priest/whatever the proper title for him would be showed up, I was just cruising because I knew that's when some huge revelation or something was going to come through, and I didn't like the main character enough or think he was a good enough character to find what he was saying worth my time. I mean, I could empathize with him sometimes, just kind of muddling through life, being surprised in a numb way at new situations and the passage of time, but... He just... I don't know, he didn't seem like a character who would have a lot of feelings or opinions on anything (other than the clear lust he feels for his girlfriend, you never get anything from him, really), so it was almost like he didn't deserve that emotional explosion at the end. And I've tried subsequently to go back and read it, but I can't focus well on it... Anyways, he still is kind of an asshole. There, I said it. Yeah, being a human isn't great, but that's no reason to turn into an insufferable jerk. His last paragraph of speech where he's yelling at the Chaplain (that actually spans a few pages) is just like some "mad at dad" middle schooler/early teenager. Oh you're so tough. Go buy a Nightmare Before Christmas t-shirt and read a... Well, read an Albert Camus book.
Oh man. Sorry for the rants. I didn't even hate the main character until I started writing this. But he is such a... Ugh, he makes me so mad, taking it all in in retrospect. So! Um--How did the main character end up in this situation with a chaplain? Well, I've already said that the book starts with his mother's death. The book starts out with him going to her funereal, and then coming back to work. Actually, he obsesses about having to ask his boss for days off and focuses on that more--just that weird obsession alone reminded me of Gregor Samsa, from Kafka's The Metamorphosis, but that connection goes away.
Anyways, like I said, he never mourns, but makes detached observations of life around him, mostly. For example: his two neighbours, one he probably genuinely cares about (probably, because it's damn hard to tell with him), and one who has a gross mange-y dog. The guy beats his dog all the time because it walks too fast or too slow for him, but he has real affection for the dog deep in his heart, and when it goes missing you see that. (Not saying you should beat your dog, though!) He also meets with a women who used to work with him that he was attracted to. They start having a mostly sexual relationship, which I think is a point brought up in court, or somebody freaks out about around then--that Meursalt would enter a sexual relationship (or a romantic one) so close to his mother's death. That's one thing I can defend him on, however: maybe, following his mother's death, he wanted to feel alive, needed in some way, wanted to revel in the life still around him... But in retrospect, it seems more like he was just kind of horny. Oops.
His neighbour that he cares about, Raymond, has a girlfriend who steps out on him, so he beats the tar out of her. He is not taken into custody because it is the 1940's, but over the next few days he notices that the girl's brother and several of his "Arab" friends start tailing him. When Raymond and Meursalt are together at a friend's beach house, they accidentally come across this group--they attack Raymond with knives and fists and he is injured. Meursalt, later, goes back to the same place where they found the group and sees just the brother alone. He took Raymond's gun so Raymond would not do anything irrational following his assault--and ironically fires five shots into the brother, killing him, with no explanation, on a complete spur of the moment. You can pretend that he was doing it as payback for assaulting Raymond, or as a warning, but he claims the overwhelming heat made him do it, so...
So he is caught for his murder, found guilty and put into jail. He has an appeal waiting, but it's pretty much known that it won't go through and he will be executed anyways. Get this, by guillotine! Apparently guillotines were used for death sentences in France until 1981. Damn, France.
So yeah. There's a pretend ambiguous ending, but the ending is pretty much sorted out. I know Blogger doesn't give the reader any concept of how posts are being written, or the time frame in which they are written, but I took a day's break between writing the above and what I'm writing now. I think my main problem with the theory that makes Meursalt (that life is just a random mixing of sensory feelings and emotions and such) is that that's not how people are. I mean you only have to be alive to know that that's not true, that people aren't like that (except, perhaps, if you have some sort of mental disability, but we are never given any hints that Meursalt should be seen in that way, even if he is the titular stranger and is seen by even himself as different from everyone else... I think to say something like that would be putting words in Camus's mouth).
So onto things I've noted from the book that I haven't mentioned already in my numerous angry rants!
First of all, the book starts off with a quote from the Medieval play Everyman, which I thought was a curious choice, mostly because it has been, for the most part, forgotten... (It's a passion play, or some other type whose popularity pretty much died once people realized they should bathe in their own waste, so it's not really common for a group to put this one on today...) But after reading I realized that the people who printed the edition of Camus's book are of Everyman's Library. Oooops. (If you're curious, the quote is "Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, in thy most need to go by thy side". Although I remember the general idea of the play, I don't remember who says this, and I don't want to go looking for the book that it is in at this very moment... I think it might be Everyman's Soul, or Knowledge or Wisdom or some other positive personification...)
I honestly don't have anything till Meursalt shoots the Arab halfway through the book (the book is divided as his life is: before and after the murder). Really, I talked about a lot of what I thought might be interesting to mention already... Anyways, here's the quote: "My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and the sun. I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more shots at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness" (Camus 57). This is the part of the book that's the most skillfully written, in my opinion. Although looking at it again, the bullets lodging without a trace bothers me... Of course there were wounds left behind, unless the guy is made out of Jell-o...
The next part of the book comes right after this. Now, I borrowed this book from the library, and someone left behind a Post-it on the page for part two that says "Question everything that you believe to be true..." (Actually, this would make a great hipster photo...) When I just kind of flipped through the book prior to reading it I cam upon this page and was very intrigued, as I'd imagine anyone would be. Unfortunately... The book is kind of disappointing... And I would not connect it with the Post-it note's statement, either. Maybe that was the point of the book and I missed it, but it seems as though there are better books to put such a note in... That said, I will not be taking the note out.
In the courtroom Meursalt first refers to himself as a stranger or an outsider-looking-in (though, again, it is obvious he has really felt that way or was that to begin with), when he sees all the usual journalists and bailiffs and policemen greeting each other warmly... And then the jury and people observing are talking too... "...He gave the policeman a warm handshake. I noticed then that everyone was waving and exchanging greetings and talking, as if they were in a club where people are glad to find themselves among others from the same world. That is how I explained to myself the strange impression I had of being the odd man out, a kind of intruder" (Camus 81). I think this is the first time that he is consciously aware of that feeling which has existed even in his narrative--the feeling made apparent to him because of, or cemented by, the fact that he is actually detained from these people physically and because of his gained status as a criminal (a murderer, no less!).
Um... Let's see... My next note was in his sentence... "...The presiding judge told me in bizarre language that I was to have my head cut off in a public square in the name of the French people" (Camus 102). Note that it's "bizarre language" and not "a bizarre language". I missed that the first time and was very confused. (He probably meant "legalese", as it were...) But yeah. Guillotines! Like I said, used in France until 1981! Damn, France. Daaamn.
Um... Yeah. I already complained about the end, and the ideas behind it. My last thing to say regarding this was that it occurred to me to look up Meursalt's name in French. Meur means murderous, meurs means die, and salt is just salt (all according to Google translate. We have a French/English dictionary in the attic but... Yeah, that's not happening). So, did Camus put meaning behind his name on purpose? Maybe. Maybe it's just a common French name (or was in the early twentieth century). So that's it for me on Albert Camus's The Stranger!
MLA Citation information: Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Trans. Matthew Ward. Everyman's Library: United States, 1993.
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