Product Description

Patrick McCarthy analyzes The Stranger, one of the vital texts of existentialism and twentieth-century literature, in the context of French and French-Algerian history and culture. McCarthy examines how the work undermines traditional concepts of fiction and explores parallels and contrasts between Camus's work and that of Jean-Paul Sartre. Providing students with a useful companion to The Stranger, this second edition features a revised guide to further reading and a new chapter on Camus and the Algerian War. First Edition Hb (1988): 0-521-32958-2 First Edition Pb (1988): 0-521-33851-4

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81895 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 124 pages

Customer Reviews

This Kindle edition is by Patrick McCarthy not by Camus
The description and customer reviews provided with this Kindle edition refer to Camus's The Stranger not to this book, which is Patrick McCarthy's analysis of The Stranger. I purchased it thinking that McCarthy was the translator. That is not correct. This volume does not contain Camus's book, which is apparently not available for the Kindle.

NOT WHAT IT APPEARS TO BE!
This book is NOT Camus's "The Stranger"! It is a literary review of the work, and NOT the work itself. If you are looking to read Camus's "The Stranger" DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK! I feel that Amazon should refund/not charge for those who buy this book thinking they are going to read Camus!

NOT CAMUS "THE STRANGER" NOT NOT NOT!

Nobody Counts--Not Even Yourself
There are few opening lines in literature more famous than the ones that begin THE STRANGER: "Mamam died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from home: `Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday." These lines are spoken by Meursault, who is the protagonist and narrator. Albert Camus uses Meursault as a symbol of the nihilism that was then sweeping a Europe that was engulfed in a conflict that promised only a continuation of the death and destruction that began with the Blitzkrieg in 1939. In such times of chaos, there was a tendency for Europeans to grow used to the thought that the next breath could be their last. A corollary of that was that if you bought into that philosophy, you also insisted in living in the here and now. Tomorrow existed only as an intellectual curiosity. Yesterday existed only as a prelude for today. Meursault is the embodiment of a generation of conquered French who learned to accept without a blink even the previously emotionally shattering loss of one's mother.

Following his mother's death, Meursault quickly puts his mother's death and funeral behind him. He swims, dates, finds a lover, and kills a man for no logical reason. And all these events happen one after the other. He is arrested, tried, and convicted for murder. His execution is the penalty. Before, during, and after the trial a variety of people try to understand Meursault's life. Why did he show no grief at his mother's death? How could he so quickly go on with his life? And the biggie: Why did he kill his victim? No answer to any is given. And so the novel ends with a stunning epiphany by Meursault. As he awaits beheading, he perceives the relation between the universe and himself. The universe has no logic. Life has no meaning. The lack of logic in the universe guarantees that everything in the universe, including himself, is governed by chance, which means that any occurrence could just as easily not have happened as it did, thereby proving all that we see is an illusion of fact. In such a universe, as logic goes out the window, it takes meaning with it. Life and death and order and disorder are interchangeable. To be born means only to experience the NOW. There is no "after" the NOW. Death thus has no meaning for Meursault. Many readers of this and other novels of Camus call him an existentialist, a tag which he denied. Yet, in the inexplicable actions of Meursault, Camus paved the way for several generations of youth who even now shout out that today and tomorrow are synonymous.