the stranger. albert camus. (199)

the stranger has been on my to-read list forever now.  i had a third grade teacher recommend it to me once and people are always praising it.  but what persuaded me was a book i purchased for "california bookstore day" which took place may 3.  (i will have to do a post on it because my purchases were adorable.) i purchased depressed, repressed, obsessed: 3-panel book reviews by lisa brown.  after reading the review for the stranger, i decided to read it.

this is an excellent review.

and now for my review, i am not sure to make of it.  i at first read camus as a nihilist since menursault didn't care about anything.  but then i read on wikipedia that camus was like anti-nihilism, but this work was suppose to promote his philosophy of absurd, in which the wikipedia page described as "the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any." since i got this analysis from wikipedia, i will discuss my initial thoughts after i had finish reading and then my thoughts with this knowledge.

to start, i wasn't sure how to read menursault, i thought maybe he had aspergers because his social and communication skills were poor.  he was unable to articulate how he felt or what he meant, which the reader sees via his conversations and his testimony during the trial.  he had good intentions he was just unable to manifest them in his speech and actions.  for example, he did love marie, but it was as though she was asking him the wrong questions, he was answering her questions sincerely but he was too literal.  he also seemed to lack social graces as demonstrated in his behavior at maman's funeral which was later used against him at trial.

i also do not know how he got involved in the mess that he did with raymond but he did.  but i guess that is the demonstration of the absurd.  things happen and we don't know how or why but there is no need to look for deeper meaning but just take them as the way life turned out.

as horrible and indifferent, menursault sounded throughout the work, he was right.  nothing really matters, well more like everything do not matter.  i get it.  i was disappointed at first because i didn't have this profound "wow" moment like i thought i was (based on others' love of this work), but my lack of one could because my view of life has absurd tendencies.  every time i stress out about something especially regrets, i have to remind myself that in the grand spectrum of things, it doesn't matter because one day i will die and will cease to exist.  its sound horrible and makes me sound depressed but i think it's just a real outlook on life.  especially since i am an insignificant nobody in the grand spectrum of life.  i mean i have meaning to those around me but after my grandchildren die off, no one will really know me, so the decisions that i make day to day don't really matter.  i mean why do i even have this blog.  why do i even read?  i enjoy it so that should be reason enough.  but i think what camus is trying to address is this need to give significance to actions for this an idea of afterlife.  i don't believe in an afterlife, and i admired menursault for refusing to see the chaplain.  i mean he was going to die, god wouldn't be able to save him now.  and really should god be accepting last minute conversions like that?  i feel like god should be more strict about who he forgives and allowed into heaven especially since these conversion come from fear of death versus remorse of actions, but that is a whole other story.

back to the work.  so yes, i do believe in philosophy of absurd, i do have a tendency to be the opposite and also look for signs from the universe, but i recognize that it is absurd.  we shouldn't put some much value and meaning into things that do not have them but there needs to be a balance, you need to find something that makes you happy and it's okay to give that meaning and value, just not everything.  i don't know if this makes sense, but i guess i shouldn't worry because it doesn't really matter if this blog as value or not, since "existance is meaningless."