The Stranger

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  oh my, i didn't know. i didn't know that there was a brand of freedom that felt like this. that it could be so hopeless. i envy meursault. he disappeared, which is what i do all the time by reading and watching a bunch of movies. maybe i'm working too much, but i completely see how absurd the world is the way meursault sees it. "[...] as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent" (93). everything just is.
  i gues... (show more)

  oh my, i didn't know. i didn't know that there was a brand of freedom that felt like this. that it could be so hopeless. i envy meursault. he disappeared, which is what i do all the time by reading and watching a bunch of movies. maybe i'm working too much, but i completely see how absurd the world is the way meursault sees it. "[...] as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent" (93). everything just is.
  i guess i should explain the story a little. meursault is a clerk and the first part of the story is so elaborately descriptive toward everyday events until one hot day on a beach where meursault kills an arab for seemingly no reason. now i know a lot of people wanna talk about why he killed this man for no reason but i dont care if there is a reason, in fact i hope there is none. it's absurd, and it's supposed to be. after he knocks "four quick times on the door of unhappiness" he goes to trial. this trial is just as absurd as meursault's view of the world and it reinforces the evolution of his disconnect. it may seem hopeless that nothing we do can prevent the inevitable (death) but i think it's comforting. it's almost like god. once this mechanism is realized it's easier to accept and work within its confines. once we realize gravity is near inescapable we can run faster along the ground instead of wasting energy trying to flap our arms like wings. ok that does sound a little depressing, but growing up feels like settling and once that sediment is settled the water is clearer. (show less)

   

   

  by Facebook User on Apr 07, 2009 at 10:06PM

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  The simplicity of this novel is but a mirage. The novel uses, as Camus and translator Ward say, an "American method" of writing. Short sentences, bare bones, the type of writing that rarely grips me (only at the hands of the masters: Hemingway and Bukowski come to mind); but here I am anything but distracted--this prose is clear as a blade or gun caught in the glare of a hot Algerian sun.

  The depth of the novel is its attraction however, and it all falls (on first reading) in th... (show more)

  The simplicity of this novel is but a mirage. The novel uses, as Camus and translator Ward say, an "American method" of writing. Short sentences, bare bones, the type of writing that rarely grips me (only at the hands of the masters: Hemingway and Bukowski come to mind); but here I am anything but distracted--this prose is clear as a blade or gun caught in the glare of a hot Algerian sun.

  The depth of the novel is its attraction however, and it all falls (on first reading) in the last handful of pages of hammering thoughts, the anvil being bruised against the last barrage of sound before departure.

  The conclusion is an innocence and peacefulness found nowhere else. Honest. Clear. And in a sense, a profound answer to modern man. (show less)

   

   

  by Dylan Mirek Popowicz on Aug 06, 2008 at 07:03AM

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