The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Stranger is as beautiful as any work of art can hope to be. It is in the latter parts of the book, where Mersault's words have a lyrical power not seen previous, that the English translation achieves the haunting effect that must be even more prevalent in the French. The first thing readily obvious is that the character has no emotional connection to what he experiences; he simply experiences. Thus, Camus utilizes an American style, terse and detached. Some reviewers were off put by this. "How could he not care that his mother died? " Attaching immorality to Mersault merely shows a total misunderstanding of the book. Camus believed in "absurd freedom," life has no inner value and is futilely cut short, but it is up to us to determine our life in such uncertainty. If one doesn't interpret life, emotion doesn't exist. But the values that society has incriminate you if you don't conform. They make you strange. They take no account of individuality. That is the peril of the main character after a bizarre series of events on a sun drenched beach. The power of Camus is that even though he creates such a bleak, hopeless human situation the characters still go on as best they can, perhaps even attaining happiness. "One must imagine Sisyphus happy," to quote The Myth of Sisyphus. That is also the power and beauty of mankind.