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

The conflict between the desire to live and the fact of death is a dominant theme in The Stranger. Most people, Camus is saying, accept the day-today events that make up existence without asking themselves: Why am I doing this? The only answer, he says, is that nothing we do has any long-lasting meaning. We die, the universe goes on. Nothing fundamental has changed. Later in his life Camus changed his thinking to add that within this framework, our actions can still be important because we can affect the lives of other persons. We must behave as if life has meaning.

2. BENIGN INDIFFERENCE OF THE UNIVERSE

Our lives are brief compared to the permanence of the universe. Images of sun, water, earth, and sky give pleasure to fleeting moments of our lives. But they can turn dangerous and destructive. The natural forces do not have empathy for us or care. They are neither good nor evil; they are simply there, and they go on being there long after we are gone. To accept this philosophy is to live in a world without God. Meursault can accept this and lives with the sensations, both pleasurable and painful, of sun and wind, of caresses, of smells and sights. Yet his incapacity to look beyond the sensation of the moment leads him into a pattern of action that changes his relationship to all these sensations, and in prison he is deprived of all that has made his life enjoyable.

3. IRRELEVANCE OF SOCIAL, RELIGIOUS, OR PHILOSOPHICAL VALUES

a. Ritual. Meursault is viewed as an outcast because he doesn't weep at his mother's funeral or feel guilty because he put her into a nursing home. Society has developed patterns of behavior for given moments in our lives, whether or not we have the requisite feelings. Meursault could have lied about his feelings at any time and made his ordeal easier.

b. Religion. Society also turns against Meursault because he doesn't believe in God or the possibility of an afterlife. This attitude leaves him open to the charge that he has no basis to deter him from wrong action; it also leaves him without conventional hope.

c. Love. Meursault says that he was "fond" of his mother. He loved her the way people love their mothers. He says to Marie that he does not really love her but will marry her if she wants. Love isn't important to him. Love, Camus is saying, and its institutionalized symbol, marriage, have been created by society and have nothing to do with how people really feel. Some readers argue that Meursault is incapable of loving anyone, while others claim that Camus is attempting to define love as the physical pleasure one experiences with another person.

There are several kinds of love in this book. Note Salamano's love for his dog. Look, too, at Raymond's love for his girlfriend. Are these relationships involved with negative as well as positive feelings? Some readers feel that Meursault refuses to accept the possibility of feeling love because he recognizes the pain involved in such a relationship. (Raymond's relationship with his girlfriend and Salamano's with his dog seem to involve more pain than pleasure.) Camus poses the question whether or not a relationship that involves pain as well as pleasure is worth the trouble. Do you feel that this is an accurate interpretation of love?

d. Justice. During the trial scene in Part Two, everyone participates in some sort of game, except Meursault. He is just a spectator at his trial. We first meet the idea of justice in Part One, as Raymond seeks revenge on his girlfriend for being unfaithful to him. And again, when the Arabs attack Raymond, it is to punish him for beating her up. But during the trial, no one makes any real effort to discover why Meursault has acted the way he did. Ask yourself whether Meursault would have been found guilty of killing the Arab if he'd cried at his mother's funeral. In his summing up, the prosecutor says that he doesn't blame Meursault, because he has no soul. But as a pathological killer, he's a danger to society and must be removed. The fact is that Meursault has killed a man with apparent ease and without remorse. Is the prosecutor right? Is Meursault a dangerous man and is justice served in this trial?

4. COMMITMENT

Meursault is characterized as a person who has no commitment to anyone or to anything except his own small pleasures and the necessities of the moment. He drifts without thought into minor activities--his affair with Marie, his friendship with Raymond, his comforting of Salamano. He finds it easier to say yes than no. Yet, when pushed, he will not lie about his motives, even though to say what is expected of him would clearly make people more sympathetic to his ordeal. As you read, keep in mind these questions: What is the purpose of acting when you know you will die? Are you responsible for anyone's actions other than your own? How committed are you to your own ideals and to what extent would you defend your feelings and beliefs?

^^^^^^^^^^THE STRANGER: STYLE

Camus's style is simple, clear, and direct. He's not writing an intellectual essay on a philosophical theme (as he did in The Myth of Sisyphus) but a novel that deals with his philosophical preoccupations. In order to do this, he has created recognizable characters and placed them in realistic situations. The clarity of style is the perfect instrument to convey the thoughts of the narrator (Meursault), who is attempting to find order and understanding in a confused and confusing world.

Some readers point out the overall subdued quality of Camus's style. Others compare his vocabulary to that of a child. Notice, also, the brevity of most of the sentences--which are also childlike--and the absence of complicated grammatical constructions. Camus describes objects and people but makes no attempt to analyze them. His attention is always fixed on the concrete nature of things. He uses words cautiously as if he were somehow suspicious of abstract terms. He also makes no attempt to analyze concepts such as love and religion, but reveals his thoughts about them by telling us Meursault's responses. (Note the conversations between Meursault and Marie about marriage and the exchange between Meursault and the chaplain about God.)

Occasionally, Camus's style and use of vocabulary become more complex, more vivid. Notice the scene where Meursault kills the Arab. The stillness of the natural world suddenly explodes; it's as if the universe has split in two or some other major catastrophe has just taken place. The heat is "pressing" against Meursault's back and the "cymbals of the sun" are "clashing" on Meursault's skull. The world begins to vibrate and change, in the same way that Meursault's own life will change now that he's finally performed an act for which he must take responsibility.

Camus's language is often repetitive; the same phrases and images reoccur throughout the novel. Natural images--the sun, sea, and wind--appear in different guises at different times. Before killing the Arab, for instance, Meursault acts as if he's waging a battle with the sun--the same sun that gave him such pleasure earlier in the day. Phrases like "Having nothing better to do" and "I had nothing to do" are used frequently to establish Meursault's indifference toward his own experience. As you read, pick out other words and phrases that appear regularly and try to figure out their significance.

The Stranger was originally written in French. The widely read American edition, translated by Stuart Gilbert, is faithful for the most part to the tone of the first-person narrator. Be aware, however, that the translator makes many changes in the original text. For example, in the nursing home scene in the opening chapter, Meursault asks the doorkeeper if he would turn off one of the lamps in the mortuary. Gilbert translates the answer, "Il m'a dit que ce n'etait pas possible" ("He told me it wasn't possible.") as "'Nothing doing,'" indicating a direct quote from the doorkeeper, which, however, is not in Camus's original version. At the end of Part One, while describing Meursault's reaction to the sun before he kills the Arab, Camus writes, "Tout mon etre s'est tendu" ("My entire being became tense"), which Gilbert translates with considerable latitude as "Every nerve in my body was a steel spring." In the second paragraph of Part Two, Chapter II, Gilbert translates "...j'ai senti que j'etais chez moi dans ma cellule et que ma vie s'y arretait" as "I realized that this cell was my last home, a dead end, so to speak." A more literal translation would read, "I felt that my cell was my home and that my life had stopped there." Gilbert also takes considerable liberty with Camus's sentence structure and paragraphing.

^^^^^^^^^^THE STRANGER: POINT OF VIEW

All the events of The Stranger are seen through the eyes of the narrator, Meursault. The story is told in the first person and traces the evolution of the narrator's attitude toward both himself and the rest of the world. At first, Meursault makes references to his inability to understand what's happening around him, but often what he tells us seems the result of his own laziness or indifference. He's frequently inattentive to his surroundings. His mind wanders in the middle of conversations. Only rarely does he make value judgments or express opinions about what he or the other characters are doing. You learn that he doesn't like policemen or brothels, but otherwise he seems to accept experiences without differentiating among them.

At the trial, in Part Two, you learn what the other characters think of Meursault. Yet even these testimonies are filtered through Meursault's observations, and sometimes you have the impression that he's barely listening.

Some readers think the book would have been more successful if it had been told in the third person by an omniscient narrator. The characters, they argue, are merely fragments of what people are really like, and it's difficult for readers to sympathize or identify with people about whose past they know so little. (Of the characters whom Meursault encounters, only Salamano's past is revealed in some depth.) Other critics feel that the past of the characters are irrelevant and that Camus's main purpose would be lost if the story were told in any other way. The Stranger, they argue, is the unfolding of one person's way of viewing his surroundings, more than a study in relationships between people.

As you read, ask yourself whether it was wise for Camus to tell the story through Meursault's eyes and why he chose to do so. Don't assume that Camus and Meursault are interchangeable; remember that Meursault--though he sometimes seems to be the mouthpiece of the author's view of the world--is a fictional character and must be interpreted accordingly.

^^^^^^^^^^THE STRANGER: FORM AND STRUCTURE

The Stranger consists of two parts.

Part One deals with approximately three weeks in Meursault's life, and ends with his killing of an Arab. In this part, we see Meursault at his mother's funeral, at his job, puttering around his small apartment. He begins an affair with Marie and drifts into a relationship with his neighbor, Raymond Sintes. Then he commits the murder that will result in a sentence of death.