The Stranger
Ratings1,258
Average rating3.9
An amazing piece by Camus that gives a fictional representation on the absurdist ideas seen in the essays of Camus.
Being oblivious is dangerous.
Being self-aware will keep you in line with the heard.
There's safety in conformity, whether it's fair or not.
i started a new anxiety med which is making my adhd worse which is making it nearly impossible to sit down to read but i wanted to stick to my goal of reading a classic a month this year & im very glad i picked up this one. will absolutely have to reread after some time passes
i often get frustrated reading translations because i always feel like i'm missing out on ideas/expressions in the original language that have been lost. without knowing if this is actually true, it felt like this translation retained the authors intent & the heart of the words
“People's lives have no grand meaning or importance, and their actions, their comings and goings, do not affect the world.”
“One always has exaggerated ideas about what one doesn't know.”
This book affected me. I cannot get it out of my head and couldn't read anything else while I was reading this one. Few books stay with you forever and this is one of them!
There are tons of great reviews so I will suggest going through them and definitely read this book, it changes you!
Listening to the audio book doing reps and reading the book drinking protein shake, this book has taken me through friendship, love and being a passive presence in someones life
Feels mean to say Dostoyevsky did it better but... I can see how this appeals to angsty teenage nihilists. Still a very good book though (that probably merited more time), so four stars seems fair
Pretty great. I really liked how Camus described the environment and individuals so deeply. I really felt like I was in the same room with Meursault. I felt that he was a compelling character and I can understand his indifference at times and find myself being indifferent to major things in my life, or am I understanding my indifference incorrectly but rather as a firm belief in spiritual hope? I really enjoyed the religious ideas discussed as well.
Engrossing first half but by the end I felt really underwhelmed like nothing much worthwhile resulted from an otherwise interesting premise.
while i didn???t understand it at first, i eventually saw the method in the madness. i read this at the perfect time, it helped me understand my past relationships more and even some of my own feelings. next time, i???ll read it in french.
Read this while trying to work through my thoughts on Arrest of a Stone Buddha (a game that blends French nihilism with Hong Kong action... definitely an interesting combination). It's a very compelling and enraging book, I think if I'd read this as a depressed teen alongside Myth of Sisyphus it would have been an instant favorite.
A decade later I don't have much use for nihilism and find the exercise here cloying and unmoving. I will give it props for being the type of philosophy I so strongly disagree with that reading it does prompt me to think a hell of a lot about why I am so put off, which I suppose is the purpose of philosophy in a way.
it was fascinating to see how the events of a casual day could come back to bite you in the future. it was an interesting read but to be fair, it got a bit boring by the end and i just stopped caring. maybe i am just not smart enough to read the message conveyed by the book or i just dont care enough to
“Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths matter to me or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives of people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? [...] Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people.”
It would be a lie if I said that I didn't find myself on the verge of crying as I reached the very last pages of the book. But yeah, I didn't cry. I don't know why I didn't. But maybe it just didn't matter much if I cried.
4.5/5
American Psycho, but an actual nuanced take, and a book. An interesting observation that needs to steep before I can pass judgement.
Not the Billy Joel song. Everyone knew his name. Not much stranger. 3/5
I picked it up, and only paused my reading to sleep, upon reaching Part Two. Each line, each character, each description felt incredibly deliberate. The book's prose beckoned me to ingest and digest its meaning, interwoven within the thoughts of one of many interpretations of the Absurd Man. Here, he is Mersault, who, instead of grappling with events like his mother's passing, is more concerned with annoyance (at least during Part One). Where his absurdity lies is in his lack of truth. This is hinted at by his lawyer, who references his case as one where everything and nothing is true. He lacks values. He lacks feelings. His life is ruled by whatever seems more convenient, and, therefore, lacks agency or conviction. Living things are all the same to him- dog and man, violent criminal and honest proletariat. This being his nature confounds those around him, and bemuses the reader. Ironically, the guy is annoying in his avoidance of annoyance. However, that is the point. We accompany him as he notices this about himself, as the people in the courtroom react to his appearance, words, and actions. He realizes he is hated. Finally, after a revealing tangent verbally clawed out by a narrow-minded priest, he takes solace in being hated.
This is a very interesting tale, one I may have to pick up again to fully grasp. I enjoyed it.
Was superbly written. I would give the writing 5 stars, but the main character was just so painfully bland . I know this is intentional, I know that one could teach an entire course dissecting his thoughts and actions, but I really couldn't bring myself to care.
I wouldn't even call the narrator unlikeable, really. I felt nothing for him, nor about him. The world he lived in though was intensely interesting, and I found every other character in the book to be more worthy of a story about them than the narrator.
TL;DR I cared more about whether or not the old man ends up finding his dog than whether or not the main character has his head knocked off in the middle of the town square and quite frankly to construct a story where that's the case takes talent in and of itself...
This isn't my kind of book. It's an philosophical, absurdist journey through the eyes of someone who is lonely, alienated, and detached from society. While I enjoyed some moments in the first part of the book, it lost me in the second half.