MEETING THE STRANGER YET AGAIN
An old book came back to me this week as I crossed the world again on a sudden trip to India.
In my late teens in India’s Chennai, I was enrolled at the Alliance Française and I remember reading the works of French writer Albert Camus during class. A “French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist,” Camus was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44. I remember that I had little appreciation for Camus’ work or philosophy at that time; I was too young to understand what he was trying to get at or ponder the larger questions of life. Existentialist philosophers explored questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence and at 19, I could not even see beyond the end of my nose. Where was I going to ponder the reason and significance of my existence?
I think it’s important to return to the literature we once read at different points in our lives. Our own life experiences inform our response to a certain work, and today I’m certainly in a more mature place to think about Camus’ ideas.
I remember how I was moved by one of his other works about a year ago: The Plague (La Peste) , also translated by Stuart Gilbert, was a powerful work about how one town in Algeria was decimated by the plague. The novel stresses the powerlessness of the individual characters to chart their own course and destiny; I felt its relevance so many decades after it was written for I was reading it right after the worst of Covid-19. In particular, I was moved by his prose in that work and I have certainly relished The Stranger (L’Etranger) for some of the same reasons. It’s a terrific piece of writing and the laconic indifference of the main character is portrayed brilliantly.
Marie came that evening and asked me if I’d marry her. I said I didn’t mind; if she was keen on it, we’d get married.
Then she asked me again if I loved her. I replied, much as before, that her question meant nothing or next to nothing—but I supposed I didn’t.
“If that’s how you feel,” she said, “why marry me?”
I explained that it had no importance really, but if he would give her pleasure, we could get married right away. I pointed out that, anyhow, the suggestion came from her; as for me, I’d merely said, “Yes.”
Then she remarked that marriage was a serious matter.
To which I answered: “No.”
We meet Meursault, a young man who is the epitome of impassivity. “Whatever” is the word that comes to mind when I think of this man, a French gentleman in Algiers when we meet him first in The Stranger. By the time the story begins, his mother has passed away in a home and we go there and we watch his unaffectedness throughout her funeral service. In contrast we run into an elderly gentleman whom his mother befriended in the home. We watch him crumple with sadness at having lost the love of his life. Meursault, the dead woman’s son, on the other hand, is “whatever.” This lacuna in feeling is shocking and it sets the stage for what is to come in the story.
The utterly illogical moment that marks Meursault’s trajectory in this novel is altogether unbelievable. The man who had the most reason to be upset, Raymond, walks away from the scene at the beach but Meursault, however, is consumed by the heat of it. He nurses some inexplicable feeling about the two Arabs who challenge Raymond and him, Meursault, at the beach.
It struck me that all I had to do was to turn, walk away, and think no more about it. But the whole beach, pulsating with heat, was pressing on my back. I took more steps toward the stream. The Arab didn’t move. After all, there was still some distance between us. Perhaps because of the shadow on his face, he seemed to be grinning at me.
I waited. The heat was beginning to scorch my cheeks; beads of sweat were gathering in my eyebrows. It was just the same sort of heat as at my mother’s funeral, and I had the same disagreeable sensations—especially in my forehead, where all the veins seemed to be bursting through the skin. I couldn’t stand it any longer, and took another step forward. I knew it was a fool thing to do; I wouldn’t get out of the sun by moving on a yard or so. But I took the step, just one step, forward. And then the Arab drew his knife and held it up toward me, athwart the sunlight.
I remember how this book would figure so much in class discussions at the Alliance, especially in comparisons with Eugene Ionesco’s plays. Both these writers based their works on the philosophy of absurdism which claims that existence as a whole is absurd. Arguments in favor of absurdism delve into human insignificance in the universe, on the role of death, and on the irrationality of assuming that there is some ultimate purpose in a human life.
The Stranger is riveting, especially in the latter half. While the murder seems entirely illogical and unwarranted, we find ourselves taking the side of the alleged murderer as the court case itself descends into chaos. The world of the court starts conflating Meursault’s behavior after his mother’s death with his callous proclivity to commit murder. The whole world conspires to seal his fate.
What I found especially moving is how as his life in prison becomes more and more menacing and troubled, Meursault actually is in complete control of his faculties. He makes no excuses for himself and is able to see his own actions objectively. This fact, too, becomes grist to the jury’s mill as the story winds to its shocking end.
On page after page, I felt the contrast between a man who is unmoved and indifferent towards ideas of “the creator” and one who is entirely taken in by nature and all of god’s creations. This is manifest in some evocative lines about the beauty of a town Meursault loves so much. For me passages like the one below were among the most memorable takeaways of The Stranger.
As I was being taken from the courthouse to the prison van, I was conscious for a few brief moments of the once familiar feel of a summer evening out-of-doors. And, sitting in the darkness of my moving cell, I recognized, echoing in my tired brain, all the characteristic sounds of a town I’d loved, and of a certain hour of the day which I had always particularly enjoyed. The shouts of newspaper boys in the already languid air, the last calls of birds in the public garden, the cries of sandwich vendors, the screech of streetcars at the steep corners of the upper town, and that faint rustling overhead as darkness sifted down upon the harbor—all these sounds made my return to prison like a blind man’s journey along a route whose every inch he knows by heart.
A wonderful and personal review of a powerful book.