The Stranger by Albert Camus

Albert Camus wrote The Stranger in the years following World War II, during a period of heightened tensions between France and Algeria. The novel tells the story of a man named Meursault, narrated from a first-person perspective.

The story opens with a jarring announcement: “Today, Mother died. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” A horrifying event, met with a complete absence of emotional reaction. From the very beginning, Jean-Paul Sartre’s preface alerts the reader that the narrative is heavily influenced by existentialist philosophy. Yet, Camus himself rejected this association, aligning his work more closely with the philosophy of the Absurd.

Meursault is a man detached from everything that others hold dear, indifferent to the world around him. But if he is so indifferent, then who truly is the stranger? Why does the novel bear this title? Is alienation born from indifference, or is it indifference that springs from alienation?

Early on, we discover that Meursault has lost his mother. Predictably, he remains indifferent — so much so that he is unsure of the exact day she died. At the funeral, no sign of grief is visible; he moves through the rituals as though they are meaningless formalities. He observes the condolences of others without understanding their significance — gestures that, for everyone else, are laden with deep meaning.

Meursault is a conscientious employee and a law-abiding citizen, yet by sheer coincidence, he finds himself cast in the role of a murderer. In a confrontation that hardly concerned him, and which he regarded as trivial, he takes a man’s life. Suddenly, society transforms him from a harmless office worker into a monstrous figure.

Looking back on his actions, Meursault is the same man who showed no grief at his mother’s funeral, who indulged in pleasures soon after her burial. The fight that seemed so insignificant leads him to commit an unforgivable act. Seen through this lens, Meursault is no longer merely indifferent; he is perceived as a man void of human feeling, a murderer unmoved even by his mother’s death.

For the court, this is enough to deem him deserving of execution — at least within the logic of the novel, if not from a personal standpoint. Yet even when facing trial, accusation, and ultimately a death sentence, Meursault remains indifferent. He is unaffected by anything that shapes his fate. He is a stranger to his own world.

When asked why he committed murder, Meursault simply replies: “The sun was in my eyes.” To the judge and the courtroom, this answer seems ridiculous, even insulting. Perhaps you, too, would smile at the absurdity. Yet for Meursault, it is the only truth — stark and unembellished. Had the sun not blinded him, the Arab man might still be alive, and we would be hearing a very different story.

What others perceive as absurdity — what the judges interpret as mockery — is, in fact, the raw, unfiltered truth.

The second part of the novel is more dynamic and vivid than the first. The atmosphere grows more intense, the character portrayal deepens, and Meursault’s internal monologues evolve from dry recollections into something more alive, more like storytelling.

In the first half, the narrative tone is stark and emotionless. But by the end, as Meursault becomes certain of his fate and his impending execution, a richness of sensation seeps into the prose. The language turns more lyrical, the descriptions gain vibrancy, and it feels as if Meursault, in the final hours of his life, is seeing the beauty of the world for the very first time.

This is the journey Camus lays out in The Stranger — a path that begins in utter indifference and ends in a kind of redemption. A man who feels no emotional connection to societal norms, traditions, or moral expectations, in his solitude and isolation, ultimately discovers a profound and beautiful world within himself.

This is the philosophy that Camus explores through his novel, a philosophy so striking that it compelled Sartre to write an introduction for the book. The Stranger, much like Nausea, stands as a philosophical novel — and it is this very work that cemented Camus’s place alongside Sartre as one of the major figures of existentialist literature