Book of the month: January - The Stranger

I finished reading The Stranger by Albert Camus yesterday. Since I had already read a lot of reviews about this book on Amazon, I decided to read both the introduction and the translator's note for this. And I am sure that reading these made a difference in my understanding of this book.

The story is very simple. Yet when you start thinking about it, it is very complex and upsetting. A young man named Meursault. Here is the main story, picked up from Wikipedia:

"At the start of the novel, Meursault attends his mother's funeral, where he does not express any usual emotions that such an event often induces. He is asked to see the body of his mother but refuses to do so. The novel goes on to document the next few days of his life through the first person point-of-view. He then befriends one of his neighbors, Raymond Sintès, whom Meursault aids in dismissing his Arab girlfriend because Raymond suspects her of infidelity. Later, Raymond and Meursault encounter her brothers on a beach. Raymond gets cut in a resulting knife fight. After retreating, Meursault returns to the beach and shoots one of them in response to the glare of the sun. Consequently, "The Arab" is killed. Meursault then fires four more times into the dead body.

At the trial, the prosecuting attorneys seem more interested in the inability or unwillingness of Meursault to cry at his mother's funeral than the murder of The Arab, because they don't believe him capable of remorse. The argument follows that if Meursault is incapable of remorse, he should be considered a dangerous misanthrope who should be executed in order to set an example for others who consider murder."

As I read this book I became more and more troubled by Meursault's personality. He seems to belong to a world where satisfying immediate physical needs is all that matters. He is emotionally detached from everything else and is able to "reason" and explain his detachment. Throughout this book Camus uses the phrase: "It doesn't really matter."

What disturbed me most about this book was the fact that I could see shades of myself in Meursault's character. Often I am doing things, knowing well that I am doing the wrong thing, but I do not stop myself. It is like "It doesn't really matter." Often I have done things just to risk the backlash, which brings some excitement to my life. This thought is disturbing in itself. But I think its not as bad as it seems. For someone with a simple life as mine, an occasional risk seems to indicate a very mundane and lifeless existence. However I am sure that people who live a more active life in fact take more of such risks because they are hooked on to it.

Anyway, I saw in Meursault shades of many people I know. But his emotional emptiness disturbed me. From the beginning he seemed to be an accident about to happen. And the worst does happen. For Meursault, dying now or twenty years from now is the same thing. Not for me. I feel that it makes sense to be prudent.

This was a very good to have read. I am picking up Jack Kerouak's On the Road next.