Publisher’s
write-up (translated / paraphrased as necessary):
‘When the bell rang again, when the door opened, the
silence in the room approaching towards me, the silence, and this strange
feeling I had when I notice the young journalist before turning my eyes away. I
didn’t look towards Marie. I did not have the time because the president had
told me in a strange way that my head would be guillotined in a public place on
behalf of the French people…’
Note: I read the
book in French
I had come to
know that The Stranger is a classic in French from Albert Camus from the owner
of a bookstore in a lovely small town in Côte d’Azur where I bought this book.
Unfortunately, I had never heard of this book or the writer but I found the
subject and the plot to be interesting when I had heard it.
Our society has
a lot of rules, some of them unwritten and very often, a person ends up on the
wrong side of the society if these rules are not followed. The plot concerns
Meursault, a person who is very different from the average person in the
society. This did not affect his life till the day he needed to face the law.
The story starts
with the death of his mother who is in an asylum. However, what concerned
Meursault more than his mother’s death was whether it would be appropriate
to smoke a cigarette in front of his mother’s corpse and was simply annoyed
that most guests around were old. He returned to normalcy immediately after the
funeral, be it his work, his relationship with his new girlfriend, etc. He then
accepts to be a witness to testify against an Arab girlfriend of his neighbour
Raymond following a discord between the two. Following these events, Meursault
eventually ends up committing a murder, and problems over his attitude and
indifference in general start to become a problem in front of the judge.
The author has created
an interesting character in Meursault, who is an anti-hero with whom the reader
does not share much sympathies from the outset. Even if he is not like the
other people in the society (for example, he doesn’t cry for his mother’s
death), one can only think if it is a reason good enough to be condemned,
especially where a lot of people think that his indifference is an even bigger
issue than the murder he had committed. The author made me think on this
aspect, and of course, I did find the attitude of Meursault bizarre but at the
same time, not following a societal convention the violation of which harms
nobody else should not lead to condemnation – and I found it very interesting
that these aspects made me regain sympathy for Meursault during the course of
the plot which he had lost immediately after the start.
I liked the
manner in which the author brought out how Meursault’s detached himself from
every dire situation, and what had in fact helped was his indifference with
people and the world at large. He remained complex as much as he was
indifferent, he was not someone who could be termed a misanthrope either. Much
as he was a character very well created by the author, he was also the only
character and no other character in the book had even a reasonable level of
depth.
The plot took
place in Algeria, before its independence and even though the Arabs have a
rather important role in the plot, I did not like the manner in which the author
had dehumanised them – none of the Arab characters had names, no witness was an
Arab (which I found to be odd), etc. One could argue that perhaps that was not
the intention of the author, considering the second part was narrated by
Meursault, it merely brings about the divide between the native population and
the French settlers. However, I struggle to arrive at giving a benefit of doubt
to the author in this case. I understand that there is a novel from Kamel Daoud
– ‘The Meursault Investigation’ –
where the author has given a character to each of the Arabs in the plot of The Stranger and retells the plot, and
right now, I am inclined to try out this novel. Coming back to the location of
the plot, much as it was in the city of Algiers, whether it was Algiers or any
other city in the world, there would have hardly been a difference to the plot
as the author hardly used any facets of the city in his plot.
To conclude, it
is a deep and interesting novel, I am sure that a person with an excellent
level of French (unlike the pidgin French I muster) might enjoy Meursault’s
defence of his positions and views better. I hope it is not lost in translation
in the English edition. On that note, I award the book a rating of seven on
ten.
Rating
– 7/10
Have
a nice day,
Andy
Andy
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