Thoughts on The Stranger

      I liked this book. It was a quick, easy read, and had many things to reflect on philosophically (the best kind of reflection, in my opinion). However, I was just TOO stranger-esque. If the goal of the book was to make the reader very uncomfortable by encountering a very inhuman narrative, not just an inhuman main narrator, it was accomplished. The overall lack of emotion was striking, and the cool approach to life was not at all realistic, even among the minor characters. In fact, the only person who struck me as having normal human emotions was Perez, whose emotion was mocked in a way.
I think one thing that did not get enough attention in our class discussion was Meursault's relationship with his mother. The first line is about her, so she obviously means something to him, even if the feeling is not traditional love for one's mom. I think that he does care about her, he just cannot express it in ways understandable to the rest of society. For example, smoking at the funeral and not looking at her corpse. The court treats these actions as proof that he must be exterminated, but he simply thinks that once she is dead, why should it matter whether or not he smokes there? It all amounts to the same thing.
I would finally like to address Meaursault's revelation. The way I see it, he thinks that life has no other meaning beyond the act of being alive, which is the supreme hope and goal of humans. This makes it even more intriguing that he is dubbed inhuman, since he is the only person who knows what it means to be human. I think the main difference between Meursault and the others is that they are passionate about life while remaining ignorant about this truth about humans, while Meursault only starts caring once he realizes that its what he should do. (I'm assuming that he is correct in his newfound philosophy.)
To wrap up, I found The Stranger  a very good book in that is was easy to follow and was extremely intriguing, but it was too strange to enjoy in itself. On a side note, I cannot believe how many times i have used the word "strange" to describe this book... veeerrrryyyy interesting. While I don't personally agree with Meursault's beliefs (or, to quote a less politically correct friend, "F*** Meursault"), I think that the realization he comes to complicates the book, thus improving the difficulty of interpreting the novel. When we factor in what was going on at the time in France, the question of what Camus is trying to say become exponentially more intriguing. (I use that word a lot too with this book, but that's a good thing.) My overall opinion: The Stranger did not have very impressive prose or plot, but is great if you want to spark a heated debate on deep stuff.