The Stranger

Summary

The Stranger is a short novel in two parts narrated by Meursault, a young shipping clerk in Algiers in French Algeria, who reports what he sees and feels in plain, flat sentences and seldom explains himself. Part One, in six chapters, covers about eighteen days. Meursault receives a telegram that his mother has died at the old people's home in Marengo, some fifty miles from Algiers. He keeps the night vigil beside her closed coffin, drinks coffee with milk, smokes, and dozes; at the funeral the next day he walks behind the hearse in blinding heat with Thomas Pérez, an old man who had been his mother's companion. He does not weep and does not wish to see her face. The following day he goes swimming, meets Marie Cardona, a former typist from his office, and takes her to a comedy film. He comes to know his neighbors: old Salamano, who beats and curses his mangy dog and grieves when it runs away, and Raymond Sintès, a man of doubtful reputation who asks Meursault to write a letter luring back a mistress he means to punish. Raymond beats her, and Meursault agrees to testify for him with the police. Meursault declines a post in Paris offered by his employer and tells Marie that he will marry her if she likes, though he does not think he loves her. On a Sunday at the beach cottage of Raymond's friend Masson, the three men fight two Arab men, one of them the woman's brother, and Raymond is cut with a knife. Later Meursault walks back alone toward a spring, holding Raymond's revolver. Dazed by the sun, he sees the Arab's knife flash and fires, then fires four more times into the motionless body. Part Two, in five chapters, covers nearly a year in prison. The examining magistrate waves a crucifix and is baffled by Meursault's lack of belief and remorse. Meursault adjusts to prison, rereads a newspaper story about a man murdered by his own mother and sister, and receives a visit from Marie. At the trial in Algiers the prosecutor dwells less on the killing than on Meursault's conduct at the funeral, and the director of the home, the caretaker, Pérez, Marie, Raymond, Salamano and the café owner Céleste testify. He is condemned to be beheaded in a public square. In his cell he refuses the chaplain three times; when the priest insists, he seizes him by the collar and pours out his conviction that nothing matters but this life and its certain end. Afterward he feels at peace and wishes only for a crowd of onlookers at his execution. Gallimard published the novel in Paris in 1942, during the German occupation. Stuart Gilbert's translation appeared in 1946 and Matthew Ward's in 1988. The library holds no text; the novel remains under copyright.

Plot or Argument

• Part One, Chapter 1: The vigil and the funeral

  Meursault travels to the home at Marengo, sits through the night beside his mother's coffin among her elderly friends, and follows the procession in the heat with Thomas Pérez, showing little visible grief.

• Part One, Chapters 2–3: Marie, Salamano and Raymond

  The next day he swims with Marie Cardona and they become lovers. He observes his neighbor Salamano and his dog, and agrees to write a letter for Raymond Sintès, who wants to humiliate his mistress.

• Part One, Chapters 4–5: The beating, the dog and the offer

  Raymond beats the woman and the police intervene; Meursault agrees to vouch for him. Salamano loses his dog. Meursault turns down a transfer to Paris and tells Marie he would marry her if she wished.

• Part One, Chapter 6: The beach

  At Masson's cottage the men clash with two Arab men and Raymond is wounded. Meursault returns alone in the glare to the spring, sees the knife catch the light, and shoots the man once and then four more times.

• Part Two, Chapters 1–2: Examination and prison

  The examining magistrate questions him about the pause between the shots and brandishes a crucifix. Marie visits; Meursault learns to pass time through memory and sleep, and finds a newspaper clipping about a murder within a family.

• Part Two, Chapters 3–4: The trial

  Witnesses describe his calm at the funeral, his swim the next day and his friendship with Raymond. The prosecutor argues that he buried his mother with a criminal heart; the court sentences him to death by guillotine.

• Part Two, Chapter 5: The chaplain

  Awaiting execution and his appeal, Meursault refuses the chaplain, then breaks out in anger against him. Calm returns, he thinks of his mother, and he accepts his life and death without hope of another world.

Characters

• Meursault, narrator and protagonist

  Young office clerk in Algiers, truthful to a fault and indifferent to social expectation, who kills an Arab man on a beach.

• Marie Cardona, lover

  Cheerful former typist from his office who becomes his girlfriend and asks whether he will marry her.

• Raymond Sintès, neighbor

  Man of doubtful reputation who draws Meursault into his quarrel with his mistress and her brother.

• Salamano, neighbor

  Old man who abuses his mangy spaniel for years and is desolate when it is lost.

• Thomas Pérez, mother's friend

  Elderly resident of the home who follows the hearse and faints in the heat.

• Céleste, café owner

  Restaurant keeper where Meursault eats, who testifies loyally that the killing was bad luck.

• Masson, Raymond's friend

  Owner of the beach cottage where the fatal Sunday is spent.

• The Arab, victim

  Unnamed brother of Raymond's mistress, killed by Meursault at the spring.

• The examining magistrate, official

  Judge who questions Meursault and confronts him with a crucifix.

• The prosecutor, official

  Lawyer for the state who makes the funeral the center of his case.

• The chaplain, priest

  Prison chaplain whose visits provoke Meursault's final outburst.

Lessons

• Judged for what he did not feel

  Meursault's trial is ostensibly about a killing, but the prosecutor builds his case on the vigil, the coffee, the cigarette, the swim and the comic film. Camus asks how far a society judges a person by whether he shows the expected feelings.

  • Which witnesses at the trial describe the funeral, and what details do they stress?
  • Why does the prosecutor say that the funeral and the killing are connected?
  • Is it fair to judge a man's character by how he grieves?

• The absurd

  In The Myth of Sisyphus, published the same year, Camus described the absurd as the clash between the human longing for meaning and a silent universe. Meursault lives inside that condition without naming it, until the chaplain's visit forces him to put it into words.

  • What does Meursault value in the physical world: sun, sea, Marie, food?
  • How does the sun affect him on the day of the funeral and on the beach?
  • What does he discover in his last night that he did not know before?

• Honesty without kindness

  Meursault refuses to say what he does not feel: he will not claim to love Marie, to regret his act more than he does, or to believe in God. Camus later wrote that his hero is condemned because he will not lie. Yet the same honesty coexists with indifference to Raymond's mistress and to the man he kills.

  • What does Meursault answer when Marie asks if he loves her?
  • Why does he agree to write Raymond's letter?
  • Is truthfulness a virtue when it is not joined to care for others?

• Faith offered and refused

  Both the magistrate and the chaplain press the claims of Christian faith on Meursault, the one in anger, the other in pity. His refusal is the book's climax, and Camus lets each side speak; the chaplain's sincerity and his offer of prayer are as real as Meursault's rejection.

  • How do the magistrate and the chaplain differ in their approach?
  • Why does the chaplain call Meursault his son?
  • What answer could a Christian reader give to Meursault's final speech?

Context

Camus was a pied-noir, a Frenchman born in Algeria, then administered as part of France, where European settlers and a much larger Arab and Berber population lived side by side in largely separate worlds. The novel's Algiers of offices, tramways, beaches and cafés is the one Camus knew from his youth. The book appeared in occupied Paris in 1942 and was read alongside his essay The Myth of Sisyphus (December 1942) as the first part of what Camus called his cycle of the absurd, with the play Caligula.

Composition

Camus began notes for the novel in the late 1930s, drawing on an earlier abandoned novel, A Happy Death, and finished it in Paris in May 1940. Gallimard published it in June 1942 on the recommendation of André Malraux among others. In a preface to an American school edition in 1955 Camus summed up the book by saying that in our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral risks being condemned to death, and that his hero is condemned because he refuses to lie.

Reception

Jean-Paul Sartre's long review, Explication de L'Étranger (1943), helped establish the book. Readers soon linked Camus with Sartre's existentialism, a label Camus rejected, preferring to speak of the absurd and, later, of revolt. Christian readers, Marxist critics and later Algerian writers have read the book in different ways; Kamel Daoud's novel The Meursault Investigation (2013) retells it from the side of the unnamed victim's brother. Stuart Gilbert's 1946 translation was the standard English version until Matthew Ward's of 1988, which restored the French word Maman in the opening sentence.

Comparisons

• camus-the-plague

  The Plague moves from Meursault's solitary absurd to Rieux's solidarity in revolt against suffering; both books are set in Algerian coastal cities.

• camus-the-fall

  Meursault refuses to perform remorse he does not feel, while Clamence performs endless confession; together they show Camus's lifelong interest in judgment.

• the-trial

  Josef K. never learns his charge, while Meursault knows his act but is judged for his character; Camus wrote an essay on hope and the absurd in Kafka's work.

• crime-and-punishment

  Raskolnikov's killing ends in repentance, the Gospel and Sonia's love; Meursault's ends in a refusal of the chaplain and a peace found in the indifference of the world.

• the-death-of-ivan-ilyich

  Tolstoy's judge, facing death, discovers that his correct life was false and finds light in compassion; Meursault, facing death, affirms the life he had and rejects consolation.

• notes-from-underground

  Both narrators stand outside the conventions of their societies; the Underground Man rages and analyzes himself, while Meursault barely reflects until the end.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The details Meursault notices at the vigil and funeral: the coffee, the cigarette, the heat, the old people.
• The sun and the light throughout Part One, culminating on the beach in Chapter 6.
• The crucifix in the examining magistrate's office in Part Two, Chapter 1.
• How the prosecutor uses the funeral at the trial.
• Meursault's outburst at the chaplain and the calm that follows.

Key terms and names

Meursault

The narrator, a clerk in Algiers whose refusal to pretend feelings he lacks becomes the real subject of his trial.

Marengo

The village near Algiers where Meursault's mother lived in an old people's home and where she is buried.

The absurd

Camus's name for the confrontation between the human desire for meaning and a world that gives no answer, set out in The Myth of Sisyphus.

Examining magistrate

The French judicial officer who investigates a case before trial; here he presses Meursault about God and remorse.

Pied-noir

A person of European descent born in French Algeria, as Camus and his characters were.

Maman

The French child's word for mother, which Meursault uses throughout; Matthew Ward kept it in his translation rather than rendering it Mother.

Content note

Recommended for older high school students with guidance: the novel includes a killing, a man who beats his mistress, a sexual relationship outside marriage, a death sentence and the narrator's rejection of religious faith.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What does Meursault do during the night vigil and the day of the funeral?
2. Comprehension How does Meursault become involved in Raymond's quarrel, and what happens at the spring?
3. Comprehension What do the witnesses say at the trial, and what sentence does the court pronounce?
4. Interpretation Why does the prosecutor spend so much time on the funeral rather than the killing?
5. Interpretation What role does the sun play in Meursault's actions on the beach?
6. Interpretation What does Meursault mean when he says in his last chapter that he had been happy and still was?
7. Big Question Is it possible to live honestly without hope of any meaning beyond this life, and what would such a life cost?

Faith Connections

• Ecclesiastes 1:2-11 (Scripture)

  The Preacher's meditation on vanity and the sun that rises and sets over endless labor parallels Meursault's sunlit world without purpose, though Ecclesiastes ends by commending the fear of God.

• Luke 23:39-43 (Scripture)

  The two criminals crucified beside Christ respond differently in the face of death, one mocking and one asking to be remembered; Meursault's refusal of the chaplain can be read against this scene.

• 1 Samuel 16:7 (Scripture)

  Man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart; the trial judges Meursault by outward signs of grief, which raises the question of who can truly see the heart.

• Pascal, Pensées (the wager and the diversion fragments) (Great Conversation)

  Pascal argued that the prospect of death should drive a person to seek God, and that diversion hides this from us; Meursault faces death directly and reaches the opposite conclusion, so the two make a sharp dialogue.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: If a man is judged not for his act but for his failure to display the feelings society expects, then justice has become a ritual that condemns honesty; Meursault's trial, in which the funeral weighs more than the killing, makes this case.

Rhetorical device: parataxis. Throughout Part One Meursault reports events in short, unconnected declarative sentences, as in the opening lines about his mother's death, leaving causes and feelings unstated.

Debate: Resolved: that Meursault was condemned more for his indifference than for his crime.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Argue whether Meursault changes between the opening chapter and the final chapter, using his responses to his mother's death, Marie and the chaplain.

Comparison with Crime and Punishment: Compare the endings of The Stranger and Crime and Punishment: how does each killer face judgment, and what does each find?

Medical Lens

The novel opens in an old people's home and turns on the absence of conventional mourning, which the trial treats as evidence of a criminal nature. Some later readers have offered retrospective psychiatric readings of Meursault's flat affect and detachment; these are interpretive and sit uneasily with Camus's own account of a man who simply refuses to lie about his feelings. The killing on the beach is narrated as a near-dissociative experience of heat, light and sweat, and the prison chapters describe adaptation to confinement and the contemplation of execution.

• Part One, Chapter 1

  The vigil among the elderly residents of the home at Marengo and the funeral procession, in which Pérez collapses in the heat.

  Aging Senescence Grief Death Dying
• Part One, Chapter 6

  The sun, glare and sweat that overwhelm Meursault as he approaches the spring and fires the revolver.

  Altered States
• Part Two, Chapter 5

  Meursault's thoughts on the guillotine, the chances of a successful appeal and the dawn on which the condemned are taken.

  Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Compare the account of the funeral in Part One, Chapter 1 with the way witnesses and the prosecutor retell it at the trial, and explain what the retelling changes.

• Fiction

  Write Marie's account of her visit to the prison and her day in court, in her own voice.

• Classroom

  Hold a mock trial in which students prosecute and defend Meursault only for the killing on the beach, excluding all testimony about the funeral, and discuss whether the verdict changes.

Further Reading

• The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus

  Camus's 1942 essay on the absurd, the philosophical companion to the novel.

• The First Man, Albert Camus

  Camus's unfinished autobiographical novel of an Algiers childhood, published in 1994.

• Albert Camus: A Life, Olivier Todd

  Detailed biography drawing on Camus's papers and correspondence.

• The Meursault Investigation, Kamel Daoud

  Algerian novel of 2013 told by the brother of the man Meursault kills.