L’Etranger by Albert Camus -10 out of 10

 L’Etranger by Albert Camus

10 out of 10

 

 

This is a fundamental chef d’oeuvre, included on the Norwegian Book Clubs list of Top 100 Works in World Literature, compiled with the Nobel Institute and the participation of luminaries, giants like the regretted Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie, John Irving https://thegreatestbooks.org/lists/28 which has an interview in the format that the under signed has just finished reading – well, it is actually a splendid audiobook read by the sublime Michael Lonsdale – and we find details on the author, such as the fact that he has declared he is not the protagonist of the book – though there is surely his image in there…

 

The rebel at the center of this narrative is alienated, he is against institutions that pronounce la peine de mort, execute people, the church – he refuses to find absolution, religious peace at the end when the pere – and he refuses to call him father, since he is not his parent – tries to mention sin, repentance and the quest for serenity before the final countdown…which reminds yours truly of Fyodor Dostoevsky and the theme of the man who has been condemned to death and would rather live on a rock, a small one at that, miniscule to be more precise, than die…an experience that Dostoevsky himself had been through, once he had been condemned to face the execution squad and then he was paroled, at the last moment…

This magnum opus could not have a more striking start ‘today my mother has died…Today or yesterday. I am not sure, I have received a telegram, ‘mere decedee’…the style is abrupt, as if cut with a hatchet – I think in the aforementioned interview they use a similar expression, at least sounds like it in French – and it is clear right from the beginning that the main character really is a Stranger, in that he is far away from his mother and he had been for the past three years, ever since she has been sent to an asylum, where he has lost interest in her – true, he is disengaged from everything, life has little, if any meaning for The Stranger aka Meursault, who is indifferent when asked about marriage by Marie and he is detached from society, does not have a desire to move to Paris from North Africa, when asked by his patron

 

As he arrives at the asylum for the burial of his mother, Meursault is overwhelmed by fatigue -his physical incapacity, the limitations of his body will be used to explain the most important events, his general behavior…when there is an inquest over the murder, he explains that ‘it was the sun’- and looks indifferent, he does not cry – there is a woman that had been a friend of the mother who cries, desperate that she has lost a friend and there is nobody for her now – and the manager, employee of the funeral company and the friend of the mother are quite appalled by the absent son, to the extent that they will testify later at the trial, making the point for the prosecution that this is a man without feelings, showing no love for his deceased parent.

The next day, he meets Marie and they enjoy the beach, swim in the sea and go the cinema, where they see a movie with Fernandel, a comedy…this will also be used in court, as evidence that the accused had just buried his mother and the next day, he watches a comedy, takes the sun in and then a strange woman to his home and all this proves how indifferent he is…Albert Camus would explain "In our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death." I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game.’

 

L’Etranger has a neighbor, Raymond Sintes, who has a reputation of being a ‘maquereau’, a pimp that claims this is not true, he complains about this woman that he pretends he pays, providing her with money which she then spends with her friends and he is outraged  whys is she not taking a half day to work for some more money – and wants the main character to be his friend, son copain, to write a letter to her and then, after he slaps the poor victim around, beats her, he wants Meursault to testify at the police station that Raymond had ‘felt the absence of the woman’, a testimony meant to help with his case…

Instead of taking a stand, helping the victim, or at the very least express condemnation and outrage at the violence, The Stranger is in fact trying to highlight that Raymond had extracted some punishment – if only for this, he deserves the guillotine…this is just a hyperbole, a joke in the dark, morbid, depressing, alienating mood of L’Etranger – and he would accept the idea that the maquereau is his mate and from here tragedy ensues, which is to say Hazard, Accident, Coincidence plays such an enormous part in the tragedy of the antihero and in the lives of us all, this being one of the main points of the narrative, if not the most important one…

 

Is it actually so absurd as to defy belief, if we were not to look at the news and see the American Congress occupied by domestic terrorists, brought in by the very stable genius aka their president no less, Russia’s leader claiming the leader of the opposition had tried to kill himself with military grade poison gas – because if his people had wanted to do him in, Navalny would be dead – when in fact the astute, extremely brilliant opposition figure – who has the courage of Superman to return to the land of the tyrant – has called one of those involved in the secret operation and the killer admitted that they had placed the poison on the…underpants of Navalny.

Raymond Sintes has a conflict with the relatives and friends of the woman he had abused and beaten and they wait outside the building, as Meursault and Marie join him to go to the beach – in other words, the Stranger has been looking for trouble and if we associate with such goons and thugs, we are looking for trouble…though on the other hand there is that joke about Judas, I think, where one refers to the company the traitor kept…what good did it do to him to be with Jesus and the Apostles, he still did the son of God in.

 

Furthermore, as the three companions reach the beach – incidentally, Marie talks about marriage and the Absolute Indifference, Alienation of the protagonist is again exposed, for he says more or less that this is of no consequence to him and if another woman, with the same context would ask him, he would give the same answer – the Arabs appear on the beach again, there is a confrontation and things seem to follow a more peaceful path, only to offer the readers a surprise, though the paroxysm of the killing is shaken by the fact that the sun, heat and the exhaustion of Meursault, together with hazard play an overwhelming role, since the Stranger has in fact nothing against the Arab, who has a knife, but nevertheless, the situation could have been handled differently, using a warning