The Stranger

Synopsis

Meursault, a French Algerian clerk, attends his mother's funeral, begins a relationship, and on a hot afternoon shoots a man on a beach. The second half of the novel is his trial, in which he is condemned less for the murder than for failing to grieve properly.

Editorial review

Camus' short novel is a perfect introduction to existentialist literature, and a master class in tone. Meursault's affectlessness is not nihilism — it is the refusal to perform the emotions society expects, and the novel turns that refusal into a tragedy and a freedom at once.

Key takeaways

• 1

  Society punishes failures of performance as harshly as it punishes acts.

• 2

  The 'absurd' is the gap between the human demand for meaning and the world's silence.

• 3

  Honest indifference is more disturbing to social systems than dishonest passion.

• 4

  Mortality clarifies values when little else can.