"the stranger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

in The Journal of Religion, 1956

^^^^^^^^^^THE STRANGER: CAMUS AND THE SUN

The sun, experienced with such pagan receptivity in the early essays, again dominates these passages of The Stranger and unifies them insofar as it symbolizes violence and destruction. The key to this symbolical use of the sun lies in the metaphysical intention that animates Camus' work. The entire novel is an allegory of that absurd universe which Camus had described elsewhere--The Myth of Sisyphus--in philosophical terms. Meursault is the symbol of man perpetually estranged in the world and this conception is reinforced when Camus, lending the sun this potent destructive influence, absolves man from responsibility--and hence from guilt--by reducing him to something less than man, to the status of an irresponsible element in nature.

-S. Beynon John, "Image and Symbol in the Work
of Albert Camus," in French Studies, 1955

^^^^^^^^^^THE STRANGER: CAMUS'S VISION

The final pages [of The Stranger] remain unclear even after several readings. Camus' intention is clear enough: he is asserting that life has value and meaning even when it appears most valueless and meaningless; he is trying to find a way to repudiate the implications of his own vision of the human predicament. Yet all he can do is to counter this vision with an abstract argument, and since he is a man of honesty and intellectual integrity, he will not permit himself a glib argument. The result is an obscure one... that carries far less conviction than the strong nihilistic bias of the book as a whole. What remains after you have put The Stranger down... is a cry of despair and the memory of a writer doing his best to say no to the pronouncements of his own voice.

-Norman Podhoretz, "Solitary or Solidary?"
in On Contemporary Literature, 1969

^^^^^^^^^^THE STRANGER: MEURSAULT AND SOCIETY

Society as Camus portrays it is as duplicitous, capricious, and lethal as fate, with one vital difference: fate makes no claim to rationality, while society does make one. Once Meursault has been labeled a "criminal," all of his previous actions that have seemed merely eccentric are brought against him as evidence of a heinous personality by the witnesses who gave no indication of judging him so harshly before his crime. There is implicit in The Stranger the theme that no matter how innocent a life one may have led, once he has been judged guilty of a crime, society sanctimoniously hastens to reinterpret all his past actions in a guilty light. It would be a mistake, however, to interpret the novel, as the jacket note of an American translation does, merely as the story of "an ordinary little man... helpless in life's grip." Although Meursault does describe himself as being "just like everybody else," this represents a certain irony on Camus' part... for it is clear that Camus meant Meursault to be something more than a normal citizen whose minor eccentricities are turned against him because a freakish stroke of fate has caused him to commit a crime. Meursault is a social rebel.

-Donald Lazere, the Unique Creation of Albert Camus, 1973

^^^^^^^^^^THE STRANGER: MEURSAULT AND THE READER

The second part of the novel is concerned with the enigmatic problem of Meursault's act, a problem as puzzling to Meursault as to the reader. Of the usual interpretations, Camus makes short shrift, presenting them ironically in Meursault's semi-burlesque interviews with the prosecutor, magistrate, and lawyer, and in his account of the trial. The first person narrative now establishes a strange dissociation between the facts and feelings Meursault had previously described, and the attempts made by others to interpret them coherently. A definite shift in perspective is introduced: the reader finds himself in the position of judge, jury, and privileged witness. He and Meursault alone know the facts. Camus has thereby put upon him the burden of an explanation Meursault is unable to furnish. Self-critical and self-correcting, the novel rapidly moves towards its end.

-Germaine Bree, Albert Camus, 1959

^^^^^^^^^^THE STRANGER: CAMUS AND HEMINGWAY

The so-called "Americanness" of The Stranger is a false trail. Camus stated afterwards that he had used Hemingway's techniques in order to portray a character who is "ostensibly without awareness." But Camus was always willing to admit that he had submitted to influences and he often exaggerated their importance; it was part of his desire to be honest and nice. Only a few passages of The Stranger are written in the manner of The Sun Also Rises. As Meursault stands on his balcony he surveys the street; he limits himself to visual observation and does not reconstruct what he sees. Even this owes less to Hemingway than to Camus' evolution. He had always noted the details of Algerian popular life. Previously he had lapsed into sentimentality but he had schooled himself to write more objectively.

-Patrick McCarthy, Camus, 1982

^^^^^^^^^^THE STRANGER: CAMUS'S STYLE

Each sentence is a present instant, but not an indecisive one that spreads like a stain to the following one. The sentence is sharp, distinct, and self-contained. It is separated by a void from the following one.... The world is destroyed and reborn from sentence to sentence. The sentences in The Stranger are islands. We bounce from sentence to sentence, from void to void. It was in order to emphasize the isolation of each sentence unit that Camus chose to tell his story in the present perfect tense.

-Jean-Paul Sartre, "An Explication of The Stranger," 1947

THE END