In this blog post, we’ll examine Camus’s death in 1960, his Algerian background, his impoverished childhood, and how ‘The Stranger’ and ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ reveal his literary stature and the shift in existentialist and absurdist literature.

Camus and the End of Existentialism: Questioning the Meaning of Life

In the history of modern French literature, 1960 is regarded as a significant turning point. This is because in January of that year, Albert Camus (1913–1960)—who had been the leading figure of existentialism and the theater of the absurd for the previous two decades—died in a car accident alongside the family of Michel Gallimard, the editor at Gallimard Publishing. Camus’s death was widely accepted as the symbolic end of the era of existentialist literature.
After publishing ‘The Stranger’ in 1942, Camus followed it up the next year with ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, a series of publications that came to be regarded as a landmark event in literary history. His work, alongside that of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), epitomized the intellectuals who spearheaded new debates, and each of his steps garnered significant attention in the literary discourse of his time.
Camus was twenty-nine when he published ‘The Stranger’ with Gallimard. This was a time when the entire world was caught in the maelstrom of war, and more than half of France was under German occupation. The Vichy regime had ceded the north to Germany, while the Resistance was active primarily in the south. The turmoil and anxiety of an era marked by ongoing persecution and genocide of Jews served as a backdrop shared by many writers. However, in many cases, childhood experiences and circumstances proved more decisive in shaping a writer’s identity than the realities of their youth.
As is well known, Camus was born in 1913 not in metropolitan France but in the colony of Algeria. His father came from a family in Bordeaux, and his mother from a family in the Balearic Islands. His father enlisted in World War I in 1914, was wounded in the Battle of the Marne, and died while undergoing treatment; his remains were buried in a cemetery in Normandy and never returned to Algiers. Camus was unable to retain any memories of his father.
His mother, who was hard of hearing, found it difficult to communicate; after losing her husband at an early age, she returned to her parents’ home to live with her family, carrying the emotional trauma of her loss. Living with her strong-willed grandmother was a difficult environment for the children, but despite her pain and loneliness, his mother cared for her children with silence and affection. Camus revealed these childhood hardships in various ways in his first collection of essays, ‘Betwixt and Between’ (‘L’Envers et l’Endroit’), and he deeply reflected on the close connection between poverty and love—a connection that, on the surface, appears contradictory.
Poverty was a decisive factor in shaping Camus’s life and outlook. In his 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech, he also paid tribute to his elementary school teacher, Louis Germain, who recognized his poverty and encouraged his studies. He stated on numerous occasions that without the encouragement of his teachers, it would have been difficult for a boy from an extremely poor background to grow into a writer.
Teachers played a significant role in Camus’s ability to become a writer. In particular, Jean Grenier (1898–1971) was a mentor and friend who greatly influenced Camus’s philosophical and literary explorations during his university years, and the two remained in contact throughout their lives. Camus’s experiences in elementary and middle school, as well as his journey to high school, are vividly depicted in his posthumous work, ‘The First Man’ (‘Le Premier Homme’).
Paradoxically, poverty also made Camus a success story of the French public education system. Although Camus laid the foundation for his literary career on the periphery—juggling theater and journalism in colonial Algeria—the process by which ‘The Stranger’ was published by Gallimard following reviews by several writers demonstrates the cultural openness of the French intellectual community. Subsequently, when Sartre—a prominent figure of the time—offered a sophisticated commentary on ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, Camus was recognized as a notable author in the field of existentialist literature.
However, Camus’s poverty and hardships were not merely a matter of his personal circumstances. Many writers of his generation shared similar experiences. For example, Romain Gary (1914–1980), who was born in Lithuanian territory under the Russian Empire and emigrated to France to become a writer, and Roland Barthes (1915–1980), who lost his father in childhood and suffered from tuberculosis, both faced significant hardships on their paths to the literary world. The philosopher Paul Ricœur (1913–2005), also born in 1913, lost his father during World War I and was taken prisoner during World War II, remaining confined in a camp until after the war. In this way, poverty and loss were shared experiences of an entire generation.
Meanwhile, French society had laid the foundation for modern culture through free universal education since the Third Republic of the 1870s, and the previous generation of writers born during the Belle Époque—including André Gide, Paul Valéry, Marcel Proust, and Paul Claudel—brought that culture to full bloom. The next generation, having experienced the turmoil of World War I during their adolescence, expressed their anxiety and awareness of the world through experimental poetry, such as Surrealism.
Writers born in the early 20th century explored the anxiety of human existence based on their childhood experiences of war, but their approaches diverged into various schools of thought, including existentialism, psychoanalysis, and structuralism. In particular, the “Camus Generation”—those born in the 1910s—shared the trauma of having lost their fathers to the war; some grew up outside the framework of the French educational system and breathed new life into French literature. While Camus was from Algeria, Romain Gary was from Russia, and Marguerite Duras was from Indochina; their literature was inevitably culturally and linguistically innovative.
This background contrasts with the phenomenon after World War II, in which Nouveau Roman writers focused on formal experimentation rather than an exploration of life itself. While many of Camus’s contemporaries directly explored the hardships of life and the problems of existence, the Nouveau Roman focused more on innovation in form and narrative techniques, demonstrating a distinct literary trend.

Camus and the Quest for the Meaning of Life

Writers of Camus’s generation explored the meaning of life. Camus, in particular, begins the preface to his essay collection ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’—which complements ‘The Stranger’—by exploring the meaning of life. Here, Camus writes, “There is only one truly serious philosophical question: suicide. To determine whether life is worth living or not is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy.” For Camus, the exploration of the meaning of life was both the goal of philosophy and the goal of literature.
The central theme of ‘The Stranger’ is also the exploration of the meaning of life. The protagonist, Meursault, is mired in the meaninglessness of life and even displays a nihilistic attitude, stating that “life is not worth the effort.” However, after experiencing his mother’s death and being sentenced to death for a accidental murder he committed, he is paradoxically confronted with the question of the meaning of life.

The Structure of the Novel and the Issues Revealed in the Trial

The first half of the novel follows a young Frenchman living in Algiers who socializes normally with other French people until one day he unintentionally kills an Arab man and is brought to trial; the second half is devoted entirely to that trial. However, during the trial, as the motives for the killing of the Arab man are examined, moral and religious judgments regarding the protagonist’s character take precedence over legal reasoning.
The reason this seemingly simple incident becomes complex and ambiguous is that, throughout the trial, Meursault largely disagrees with the judgments passed on him and presents his own unique rationale. While public attention focuses on issues such as his motive for killing the Arab, his usual moral character, and whether he respects tradition and custom, Meursault shows little interest in such evaluations. Instead, he questions the basis of those evaluations, their legitimacy, and, more fundamentally, the meaning of the various values that make up the world.

The Fusion of Literature and Philosophy

In his youth, Camus pursued both philosophical research and literary studies. Like Sartre, he viewed philosophy and the novel as closely intertwined, writing in ‘The Rebel’ (‘L’Homme révolté’) that a true novelist must be a philosopher. Of course, ‘The Stranger’ is a work of literary fiction, and Meursault does not engage in lengthy philosophical speculation within it.
Compared to the works of Proust or Sartre from earlier eras, ‘The Stranger’ displays a transparency that seems almost devoid of philosophical speculation. The protagonist, Meursault, is a man who distrusts language and knowledge and finds happiness in nature and the senses. The thoughts and actions that occasionally surface from his taciturn demeanor hint at a philosophy of life; because these hints are always implicit, they require careful empathy and interpretation. Therefore, it would be premature to understand the meaning of this novel simply by linking it to ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’.

The Philosophy of Absurdity and Rebellion

The philosophy of absurdity and rebellion constructed by Camus is richly developed in his philosophical essays. However, his philosophy is a philosophy of life that explores the meaning of existence, rather than a philosophy of knowledge that pursues rigorous ontological analysis or a solid metaphysics. Since his novels and plays embody philosophy through action rather than discourse, the reader must interpret the implications embedded within the literary form and style.
As a result, readers encounter passion and love—aimed at overcoming life’s existential doubt—rather than abstract concepts. Camus always took a detour around philosophy to return to life itself. Published in 1942, ‘The Stranger’ and the soon-to-follow ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ became symbolic representations of modern life in the mid-20th century and beyond, resonating deeply with readers worldwide.

Modernity, Fear, and Rebellion

Meursault’s predicament—in which he could offer nothing more than the flimsy excuse that he fired the gun because of the sunlight—evoked empathy as a portrayal of the individual’s response to fate in the face of an oppressive civilization masquerading as rationality. Amid repetitive labor and an inescapable daily routine, an individual’s life resembles the fate of Sisyphus, who must endlessly push a boulder up a hill.
Furthermore, ‘The Plague (La Peste)’ vividly demonstrates, through the concrete terror of the plague, that it can be more than just a disease—it can also be an ideological pathology—and how difficult it is to maintain human dignity in the face of such terror. These works embody the message of the “rebellious human” who resists rather than conforms to collective ideology. However, at the root of all these philosophical and literary explorations lie the mysteries of life that a boy from an Algerian slum had to bear personally.

Reflections on Ideology, the Individual, and Rebellion

The inevitable suffering an individual endures in the face of society transcends religion and ideology. The era in which Camus lived was a chaotic time marked by intense conflict between capitalism and communism. Many of his literary contemporaries were once involved in communism, and Camus himself had sympathized with communism during his youth. However, he placed greater value on the truth of individual lives than on any collective or ideology.
After becoming a writer, Camus’s greatest challenge was the ideological debates he engaged in with writers who sided with communism or socialism. These debates sometimes extended to the Algerian War, but throughout all of them, Camus upheld individual freedom above ideology. Rather than speaking of death—the end of life—he asks the fundamental questions about the beginning of life: What is life, and how should one live?

Philosophical Nature and Literary Voice

Camus shed light on various aspects of life through the concept of the absurd, but the absurd is not the conclusion of philosophy—it is the premise. Since the very conditions imposed on human beings are absurd, the question is how to live that absurd life. His answer is rebellion. Collective resistance against an existing, irrational system takes the form of revolution, but the reason revolutions fail is that they become mired in collective ideology without the continuous rebellion and self-reflection of individuals.
Strictly speaking, the ideas revealed in works such as “The Myth of Sisyphus” and “The Rebel” are closer to arguments stemming from personal reflection than to philosophical rigor. What is presented there is not so much a universal theory as the passion and contemplation of Camus, the humanist. His literary essays are imbued with the image of the “thinking reed”—the Pascalian human—and traces of the Nietzschean figure striving to overcome absurdity and anxiety through passion and rebellion. The fact that his own voice is passionately infused into every piece of his writing is what makes him so compelling.

A Short Literary Career and Autobiographical Reflections

Camus’s literary career lasted less than twenty years. Although he received the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of forty-five, he felt anxious about embarking on new work. The issues of his childhood—the absence of his father and his mother’s silence, poverty and love, solitude and solidarity, and other contradictory elements—always remained with him. Underlying all of this is the Mediterranean philosophy of human destiny and the blessings of nature.
After experimenting with personal reflection in his early prose, Camus conceived of an autobiographical project to reconstruct his own life—much like Meursault’s statement at the end of ‘The Stranger’ that he wanted to live “a life I can look back on.”
As a result, ‘The First Man’, which remained an unfinished manuscript, was published in 1994—long after the author’s death—and brings together childhood experiences that had been scattered across various works and memoirs. These recollections allow readers to sense the author’s personal breath and serve as a secret repository offering a glimpse into the original experiences that gave rise to the images flowing through his works.

Autobiographical Writing and ‘The First Man’

However, this is, after all, a rough draft, not a finished work. No one can know what form this autobiographical writing would have ultimately taken as a finished work. For the hasty reader or scholar, this serves as raw material in which to trace the traces of Camus’s personal experiences. However, just as ‘La Mort heureuse’—the early draft that preceded ‘The Stranger’—shares several commonalities with ‘The Stranger’ yet differs markedly in narrative structure and polish, ‘The First Man’ would undoubtedly have taken on a different form had it been completed as a finished work. Nevertheless, the truth that ultimately remains is precisely what Camus was seeking while writing ‘The First Man’. This work—which could have been given a different title—is an exploration of human origins. Most explicitly, it is a quest to find one’s father, a quest to recover lost time by delving into one’s past, and a quest to find the eternal, unchanging, and silent love of a mother; yet, ultimately, it appears to be a literary endeavor aimed at confirming that the primary life granted to every human being gains meaning only when it is formalized through recollection and writing. The “first human” is the primordial human—a being born of absence and death—who, conscious of that very absence and death, charts the meaning of existence as given within nature. In the final sentence of ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, Camus presents the imperative: “We must imagine a happy Sisyphus.” At the end of ‘The Stranger’, Meursault suggests that one can discover the happiness of life by opening one’s heart to the world’s affectionate indifference.
Although Camus wrote autobiographical works with a passionate dedication to both literature and life, he was, ultimately, a writer as an artist. No matter how much he proclaimed and explored the importance of philosophy regarding life, he never forgot that art is perfected solely through form. Therefore, style—as both a literary voice and a formal device—was of paramount importance in his writing. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the success of ‘The Stranger’ lies in its style. It is very significant that he borrowed the hardboiled style of American fiction when writing ‘The Stranger’. Meursault’s rough and matter-of-fact style, which excludes ornate descriptions and emotional expression, is the result of a very conscious choice. However, style here does not merely refer to the first-person perspective or narration using free indirect discourse. Style does not merely contain content and themes; rather, it exemplifies them through form. In ‘La Chute’ (‘The Fall’), he opted for highly flamboyant rhetoric and eloquent discourse, while in ‘The Plague’, he employed yet another form. Furthermore, while writing novels and philosophical essays, he also wrote plays, directed them, and even appeared in them. In this way, he selected styles suited to the literary forms of different genres, always keeping the resulting effects in mind. This is why one wonders how the autobiographical writing he chose for ‘The First Man’ would ultimately have taken shape. The reason ‘The Stranger’, his debut work in the Paris literary scene, is recognized as an immortal masterpiece also lies precisely in its formal appeal. Very little is explicitly stated in ‘The Stranger’. However, when Camus describes, with a lyrical touch, Meursault’s subtly implied attitude toward life and his joyful communion with nature, the direction of his philosophy becomes evident in the rich metaphors revealed there. It is up to the reader to interpret them.

Philosophical Inquiry and Literary Representation

‘The Stranger’, published by Gallimard in its Folio edition, is less than 200 pages long. Despite its brevity, it is a full-length novel divided into two parts—Part 1 and Part 2—comprising six and five chapters, respectively, and unfolding like a play through a series of distinct scenes. Part 1, in which events and scenes unfold centered on the protagonist Meursault’s sphere of activity, and Part 2, in which the narrative unfolds within the confined spaces of a prison and a courtroom, form a structure of near-perfect symmetry. The page counts for each part—85 and 87 pages, respectively, in the Folio edition—are almost exactly divided. Furthermore, character relationships, emotions, and expressions that mirror the structure of the scenes depicted in Part 1 frequently recur in Part 2. Ultimately, repetition and symmetry define the narrative structure of ‘The Stranger’.
Furthermore, the scope of time and space in which the story unfolds is quite broad. Chronologically, Part 1 consists of his mother’s death and funeral one summer, the daily life that followed in the days afterward, and the murder of an Arab man that occurred at the beach where he had gone with his girlfriend and friends; Part 2 consists of the process of his arrest, detention, preliminary investigation, imprisonment in a solitary cell, and eventual trial. The trial, where the main proceedings take place, is held the following summer. In terms of setting, Part 1 is filled with various locations: the nursing home where the mother’s funeral is held; the beach where the protagonist went swimming several times with Marie, who has become his girlfriend; his own room where he spends his daily life; the shipping company located on the waterfront; and the building where he lives with Raymond and the elderly Mr. Salamano. In Part 2, where the events following his arrest unfold, the setting shifts to the investigating judge’s interrogation room, the visiting room, the solitary cell where his thoughts wander, and the courtroom, which spans Chapters 3 and 4. In particular, Part 2 depicts a lengthy process that includes the examination of witnesses during the trial, the cross-examination by the defense attorney and prosecutor, the protagonist’s reflections on possible ways of life and attitudes following his death sentence, his argument with the chaplain, and his final confession—in which he rejects the world’s conventional values, affirms a life of equivalence, and opens himself up to the world.
However, the contrast between the lifeworld of Part 1—open to the natural world outside—and that of Part 2—confined to the prison and courtroom—is not a simple opposition. Part 2 consists of a comprehensive examination and judgment of the life unfolded in Part 1. The trial for the accidental killing of an Arab man is not merely a trial regarding the incident’s accidental nature; it transforms into a judgment of Meursault’s entire moral and value system—including his religious views, interpersonal relationships, and his affection for and duty toward his mother. Furthermore, because Meursault is unable to present a rational justification for the accidental killing based on legal or moral grounds, he is labeled a villain. However, in Meursault’s view, events that cannot be explained by reason, along with ambiguous emotions and unexpected sensations, can intrude into human life at any moment. While reason is a means of explaining life, it cannot fully account for it on its own. This is because life is absurd.
In fact, Meursault’s friends, who take his side, do not fully understand his thinking but do not make a big issue of it either. This is because everyday life and the life given within nature continue seamlessly through a shared silence, even if not everything can be rationally explained or expressed in language. However, the order of reason imposed in the name of civilization, combined with the law and Christian faith, demands that everything be justified in rational language. Meursault experiences life as existing in the present—a moment that is discontinuous in time and disconnected in space—but from a social perspective, an individual’s life is evaluated based on the attitudes and values they exhibit toward family, friends, work, and rituals such as weddings and funerals. Consequently, just as much as the question of why Meursault shot the Arab, ancillary questions—such as why he did not shed tears at his mother’s funeral, why he met a woman during the mourning period, and why he helped a neighbor with a poor moral reputation—emerge as more fundamental issues in the trial.
As the trial progresses, it shifts from actually questioning Meursault’s motives or thoughts regarding the murder to an assessment of his conduct. Thus, the more Meursault becomes alienated from social order, the more the truth of his personal life becomes trapped in unspoken silence and soliloquy.
‘The Stranger’ is a novel in which the young Albert Camus explored the question, “Is life worth living?” In the novel, Meursault states, “Life isn’t worth the effort.” From the very beginning, the protagonist Meursault displays an indifferent attitude toward his mother’s death, and his excuse that he fired the gun “because of the sunlight” leaves the reader unconvinced. However, this does not mean one cannot empathize with the vivid description of the sunlight. The plot of Part 2, which deals with the trial following the murder of an Arab man, consists, at face value, of a chaotic series of interrogations, psychological assessments, and testimonies. Yet Meursault himself has little interest in this unfolding narrative. This is because these discussions unfold independently of him, placing him in the position of an observer or bystander. Meursault’s interest lies elsewhere. He is consumed by deep skepticism and a sense of futility regarding the very meaning of living on this earth.
Meursault does not deeply explore life’s problems with an intellectual attitude. He reveals only glimpses of his thoughts through the rough remarks he occasionally utters or his inner monologues as he lives from moment to moment. Outwardly, he appears taciturn, withdrawn, and emotionally detached, but in reality, while he is not one to express himself directly, he reacts quickly to physical desires, is sensitive to the sensations of nature, and occasionally shows consideration in his relationships with others.
Many aspects of his life and thoughts are shrouded in misunderstanding. That said, he does not fully understand himself either. Crucially, he never explains why he fired a pistol at the Arab man and then fired four more shots. Even through inner reflection, he does not reveal his motives, leaving them as a mystery he himself cannot resolve. However, he accepts that he must bear the punishment for his crime and believes that anyone can make mistakes. His true concern lies not in the crime itself, but in the fundamental question of whether human life, as a mortal existence, is truly worth living. Like a sage disguised as a fool, he presents the paradoxical image of a philosopher who has committed murder.
There are three deaths at issue in ‘The Stranger’. His mother’s death, the killing of the Arab, and Meursault’s death sentence. The account of his mother’s funeral at the nursing home, which unfolds in Chapter 1 of Part 1, reads as a self-contained story. However, at the end of this concluded event, as he returns to his daily life, the killing of the Arab takes place; in Part 2, this murder leads to a moral assessment of Meursault’s entire life, resulting in his death sentence.
In this novel, the narrative centered on death as its conclusion expands from the initial chapters—once they are concluded—to encompass the entirety of Part 1, and then further to the entire novel as it culminates in the death sentence in Part 2. However, the theme of death does not end there. Prior to his mother’s death, there is the presence of his absent father, and the elderly Mr. Salamano, having lost his wife and then the dog he lived with, reveals the losses associated with old age. In Part 2, a news report about a family murder stemming from a misunderstanding is mentioned as an anecdote, and the case of a man who killed his own father is addressed before the Meursault case is discussed. Ultimately, this work comprehensively addresses various forms of death, including death due to old age, accidental murder, murder resulting from a misunderstanding, and the killing of one’s own father.
Nevertheless, even with these various deaths in the background, Meursault’s primary concern is not death itself but his present life. The problem is that he does not place great value on his present life and cannot find meaning in things that society deems important, such as social success, love, or marriage. By failing to attach significance to the moral values or religion expected by society, he is labeled an antisocial and amoral character.
However, as Camus makes clear in the preface to the English edition, the core message he seeks to convey is not a life lived according to social conventions, but a life in which one pursues the true value of existence as an individual and speaks one’s mind honestly. Thus, while Meursault is socially condemned as immoral, he also appears, in a sense, like a martyr in his honest expression of his inner truth.
That said, the ambiguity inherent in the novel is not entirely resolved. The truth that Meursault speaks is not conveyed to others within the work. His truth remains only in his cries and inner confessions, and he is destined to die alone, hearing the world’s cries of hatred. While accepting this situation—dying in solitude, bearing this uncommunicated truth—his attitude of embracing “the world’s affectionate indifference” is imbued with a poignant acceptance of fate.
Facing death, Meursault finally resolves to live a life of value, and only then does he come to understand the attitude his mother adopted in the face of death. Ultimately, living this earthly life with love until the very end, and accepting the world’s silence and indifference even if one is not understood by others—this is the philosophy of the absurd as articulated by Camus.
The philosophy of the absurd signifies a love of fate that originates from an absurd life. Camus acknowledges the disconnects and contradictions between the collective and the individual, nature and civilization, history and existence, and thought and experience; he accepts that life in this world cannot be fully understood through reason. Nevertheless, he asserts that we must live—and that is precisely why we must live all the more. His love of fate transcends logic. Fundamentally, the absurd leads to an ambiguous conclusion, but what matters is the process of moving from the absurd—which is full of contradictions—toward a love of life.
Through his situation facing the death penalty, Meursault comes to realize that life means living while being conscious of death. However, in this novel—where social condemnation of murder is juxtaposed with ontological reflection on death—social condemnation becomes an object of ridicule and fails to offer any new perspective. Consequently, if the reader follows the narrative solely through Meursault’s voice and perspective, they may inadvertently become his “accomplice” and mistakenly believe that the trial was unreasonable and the death sentence an excessive judgment.
The reason this misunderstanding persists is that the novel lacks deep interpersonal conflict. Meursault merely feels a sense of alienation—an inability to connect with social values or moral concepts—but he does not seek to understand others or actively strive for personal change. All his relationships are fleeting and fragmented; he merely reflects on and observes his given life in solitude.
Thus, even when he becomes enraged during a brief argument with the curate at the end and pours out his thoughts on life, he invokes his own poetic imagery like a romantic poet. He advocates living in the present while facing death, without any expectation of an afterlife. This moment of awakening is only confirmed as he resonates with the natural world and comes to understand his mother’s death. This is closer to a philosophical awakening than a literary discovery.
If readers are moved by this scene, it is likely because they empathize with modern people who must live their lives in this world alone, without God. The image of Meursault—lonely, passionate, and somewhat dogmatic—seems to overlap with that of Camus himself in his mid-twenties when he wrote the novel.
Through Camus’s philosophy of the absurd, his distinctive characters, and his unique form and style, this short novel became both a controversial work of its time and a modern classic. Since its publication, it has been the subject of various analyses and studies, including Sartre’s commentary, and particularly outstanding research was conducted during the decade following Camus’s death. Brian Peach has organized the scholarship on this work into biographical, political, sociological, metaphysical, existentialist, ontological, and psychoanalytic perspectives, and has presented particularly important discussions on narrative techniques.
Nevertheless, for the general reader, ‘The Stranger’ tends to be interpreted through the lens of the author’s life, the philosophy of the absurd, or images of the Mediterranean sun. In short, the dominant approach to reading the text has focused on interpreting its ideas rather than on a close reading of the text itself.
Stylistically, the work unfolds in the form of the protagonist’s blunt monologues or diary entries. The sentences are mostly short, and even the longer ones are generally just two short sentences strung together. The vocabulary is also limited. Meursault merely describes the world visually, like an indifferent observer; he reveals almost none of his own emotions and appears indifferent to the emotions of others.
Of course, he is not someone who is completely incapable of reading the emotions of others. He is simply confined to his own field of interest. Although taciturn, he maintains his relationships without difficulty and reacts very sensitively to physical sensations and natural landscapes. His sensory responses are not limited to his sensitivity to sunlight during the scene of the Arab’s murder.
Meursault is a character who finds joy in life—whether in the fields on his way to his mother’s funeral, while swimming at the beach with Marie, or in the sounds and smells of the alleyways on a summer evening in prison. Thus, he is essentially a man of duality. On the one hand, he displays an antisocial personality; on the other, he exhibits a lyrical sensitivity in the presence of nature.
However, when reading a novel, it is not always advisable to focus on understanding the author’s intent or the protagonist’s ideology. This is because, in art, the essence lies not so much in what is being said as in how it is being said. Readers of ‘The Stranger’ find themselves captivated by its enigmatic charm. Composed entirely of the first-person monologue of the protagonist, Meursault, this novel does not engage in abstract speculation but rather presents only concrete actions and sensory experiences. His reflections on events and experiences are brief and sporadic, allowing the reader to easily follow the first-person voice. Moreover, since reading a first-person novel always presupposes an inner connection with the reader, the reader easily empathizes with or identifies with the narrator within the work. Thus, as the reader follows Meursault’s thoughts, they are unwittingly influenced by his distrust of the world’s language, his trust in sensory experience, and his aggrieved self-defense against the power of society’s traditional values. And if one becomes captivated by this primary narrative of the text, a deeper understanding of the novel becomes elusive. This is because it is a space-time staged by the author specifically for the protagonist’s life.
Above all, readers of ‘The Stranger’ who are unfamiliar with the original French text must keep certain things in mind from the outset. First, this work is recognized as having introduced a new sense of tense in modern French literature. It was both pioneering and successful in abandoning the simple past tense (the style of the simple past) traditionally used in French novels and adopting a style that uses the compound past and the imperfect tense based on the present tense. Of course, at the turn of the 20th century, there were works such as Marcel Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’ and André Gide’s ‘The Counterfeiters’ that explored the self and introduced new novelistic forms; Camus carried on this tradition, exploring a style and form suited to the new era. In particular, his skillful use of free indirect discourse—a technique perfected by writers such as Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola, in which the voices of others blend with the narrator’s own—allows him to create subtle shifts in perspective and a fusion of voices in ‘The Stranger’. These subtle effects stem from nuances present in the original French text that are difficult to capture exactly in translation, making it challenging to point them out to readers one by one.
Meanwhile, in this novel, the perspective of Meursault—who lives in the present moment—is overlaid with a perspective that recalls his entire life, and toward the end, the author’s voice intervenes, stepping beyond the narrative to comment on those recollections. Toward the end of the novel—specifically, in the scene where Meursault, enraged by the assistant priest’s words, vents his thoughts—sentences suddenly appear in which the author refers to the novel’s content and addresses the reader directly. While some have viewed this as an authorial error, it can in fact be interpreted as a crucial narrative device. At this point, the narrative perspective moves beyond the gaze of Meursault—portrayed as a taciturn nihilist—to incorporate the voice of a more profound philosopher, revealing Meursault’s life as a novel—an allegory of life itself. Consequently, the reader begins to distance themselves from the first-person Meursault and realizes they must return to the beginning to reread his life and soliloquies. Both Meursault’s life and his soliloquy appear as the theatrical life of a first-person protagonist, and the reader becomes an audience member to that first-person life. At this point, the reader comes to recognize that Meursault, moving beyond his skepticism about life, is affirming his present existence while remaining conscious of death.
“The Stranger” has spawned numerous commentaries and a flood of scholarly papers offering diverse perspectives. Because this work is sophisticated in both form and style, a slow, deliberate reading that carefully follows the linguistic features, tone, and subtle shifts in emotion is essential. Since the novel’s narrative perspective follows the moments when a death row inmate recalls his past as he nears death, it is advisable to read the entire work at least twice to fully understand it. This is because there are scenes where the meaning of events described earlier is not fully revealed unless the reader knows the novel’s ending.
Furthermore, it is only through a second reading that it becomes clear that Meursault’s seemingly casual and indifferent remarks are, in fact, hints revealing his inner thoughts. Without paying attention to the distinctive words and expressions that appear in each section or transition within the text’s intricate structure, readers are easily swept away by a single emotion or the surface-level plot and tend to finish the book as if consuming it quickly.
At first glance, the sentences appear repetitive, the vocabulary limited, and the emotional expression restrained, making the text seem very simple. However, the distinctive use of French tenses and subtle shifts in narrative style consistently reflect the protagonist’s psychology. Moreover, when Meursault turns his gaze toward nature or describes physical pleasure, luminous, lyrical sentences occasionally interject. In short, the voice of the first-person narrator, Meursault, is not monolithic. Since his taciturnity stems from an attitude of listening to silence, the nuances and shifts in his voice are distinct at every moment. His voice operates on multiple layers, splitting apart and then coming back together.