I just read "the stranger" by Camus

share your views on the book, too!

it is easier to write about what you feel rather than what you don't and Camus, i believe, wrote even that beautifully. Meursault has thoughts and opinions about what happens around him but chooses not to vocalize them more often than not. He never acts on them and gives very few reactions, 'only speaks when he has something to say'.

I also think that Meursault's Maman is the spirit of God for him and he does not believe in God because God too, like Maman, is gone. But God's hand was withdrawn from his head when him and his mother found themselves devoid of each other when they stayed together too and even if the hand no longer remains he still remembers the words and lessons. Like when he remembers something his mother used to say and agrees. he no longer believes in god because, to him, there is no meaning left in life and he does not believe in the existence of someone who brings meaning to life. That is why he describes what happens as though he is removed from the position mostly, as if merely just the narrator and that is why we know not what his name or age is. because it holds no meaning.

Meursault is a man of values and is painfully and constantly true to himself. He does not abandon his opinions just for the sake of being in any one's good graces. He stands by what he believes like a pillar unbroken by any force that comes. He is mundane, unrelatable and shows no empathy yet in his dullness, is so interesting that i could not keep the book down.