The Stranger

replace me

• Talking of Marie, he said: “She’s an awfully pretty girl, and what’s more, charming.”

• After a while Marie tugged my arm and said Masson had gone to his place; it must be nearly lunchtime. I rose at once, as I was feeling hungry, but Marie told me I hadn’t kissed her once since the e…

I don’t get this book so I am mulling it over still. The book is blessedly short.

The protagonist is, Meursault, a young man in Algiers (French colony) sometime before 1942. He has attended and graduated from college in Paris and makes a living doing some sort of bookwork for a company. Presumably he is 25ish though we are never told, nor do we know his first name. His mother is in a “old people’s home” for the last three years, which is some sort of public service the best choice for the indigent mother of a young man with limited means. He seems to be respected for his education and reasonably prepossessing. Our protagonist’s mother dies and he attends her vigil (where they sit together all night) and then a funeral the following day. Because of his exhaustion he drinks coffee and falls asleep that night. At the funeral he attends but does not “make nice.” He returns home and lives his life. He meets Marie and falls into a sexual relationship with her. She wants to marry him and he is willing to marry her - but its not his idea - he has no faith in legal marriage. He meets Raymond who is bad news: a pimp who abuses women. But he continues to grow a relationship with Raymond Eventually, the Arab friends/relatives of the girl Raymond beats up return to get revenge. This happens at the beach and Meursault takes Raymond’s gun for self-defense. He winds up shooting and killing one of the knife-armed arabs. Part 2 of the book begins with Meursault in jail awaiting his trial. And there is not much to it other than the prosecution tries him not on evidence but on character assassination (centered around the his lack of demonstrable grief at the death of his mother, for example, what sort of monster can’t stay awake all night for the vigil!) and his public defender is simply a placeholder. The farcical trial ends in a predestined conviction and the death penalty. The book ends with Meursault visited by a priest who wants him to accept Jesus before his execution (by guillotine), but Meursault isn’t having it; he is an atheist through and through. The world moves on.