History Literature / TheStranger

The first novel of Creator/AlbertCamus, published in 1942—which subsequently launched his writing career.

Throughout the novel, Meursault struggles to understand what everyone around him keeps being so upset about. Rather hilariously, it is not always Meursault's more reprehensible characteristics that people take offense at - his atheism, for example, is noted by the people around him as more offensive than his actions against an Arab. As Meursault ponders the meaninglessness of life, he is genuinely baffled when he begins to understand social concepts like grief, crime and punishment.

In contrast, the [[Film/TheStranger film of the same name]] directed by and starring Creator/OrsonWelles has no connection at all to Camus' book.

* MasturbationMeansSexualFrustation: The guard that Meursault befriends in prison mentions that other prisoners who (like him) miss women find ways to "relieve" themselves.

* ADateWithRosiePalms: The guard that Meursault befriends in prison mentions that other prisoners who (like him) miss women find ways to "relieve" themselves.

* ADateWithRosiePalms: The guard that Meursault befriends in prison mentions that other prisoners, who miss women like him, find ways to "relieve" themselves.

* TheHedonist: Subverted. At first it seems like Meursault only lives for the pleasures of the senses, but the things he enjoys are quite simple: hot chocolate, cigarettes, sex with his girlfriend (he refuses to go to the brothel when Raymond proposes it), walk. Once in prison and deprived of all of his pleasures, it doesn't stop him from being happy.

* LonersAreFreaks: Meursault doesn't think friendship is a very important thing and so, doesn't bother to develop them, even if he hang out with a colleague, it's only to pass time, and he usually spent most of it by himself.

* NoNameGiven: Meursault's victim is known only as "the Arab", emphasising the utter randomness of his crime and his own detachment from it.
** In fact, none of the Arab characters are named, perhaps as an illustraction of the social gulf between them and the ethnically French ''pieds-noirs'' who make up most of the cast.

* NamedByTheAdaptation: The first name of Meursault is Arthur in the 1967 movie.

* TheSociopath: How the court interprets Meursault's [[TheStoic stoic]] demeanour, especially after they find out he's atheist and didn't especially care for his mother. On one hand he fits most of the criteria: he doesn't feel grief, doesn't understand things like love, is in a state of constant boredom and only appreciates immediate pleasures such as hot chocolate, smoking and sex. On the other hand however, he sees no point in lying and is bluntly honest (something a sociopath is mostly ''incapable'' of, [[ManipulativeBastard often manipulating others for their own profit]]), isn't cruel or abusive towards the people around him, is capable of taking responsibility for his own mistakes and knows how [[AGodIamNot insignificant he is]] (while sociopaths are shameless [[{{ItsAllAboutMe}} narcissists]] with a [[{{Pride}} high sense of self worth]]). Plus, he killed the Arab not for amusement but because he doesn't see why he shouldn't do it (so he lacks a moral compass but doesn't actually derive pleasure or satisfaction from it). Some authors argue that he might be in a state of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie Anomie]].

* CutAndPasteTranslation: Matthew Ward's English translation (currently the most popular one in America) spends a good deal of its introduction bashing Stuart Gilbert's (which before his was the ''only'' one available in America.) In the original French, and in Ward's version, the narrator begins as a TerseTalker in the vein of an Creator/ErnestHemingway protagonist, then becomes oddly lyrical after going to jail. Gilbert essentially turns him British, and incidentally rewrites some of his [[CloudCuckooLander odder]] comments to sound more conventional.

* TheHedonist: Subverted. At first it seems like Meursault only lives for the pleasures of the senses, but the things he enjoys are quite simple: hot chocolate, cigarettes, sex with his girlfriend (he refuses to go to the brothel when Raymond proposes it), walk. Once in prison and deprives of all of his pleasures, it doesn't stop him from being happy.

* AuthorAvatar: Camus has incorporated some aspects of his life into his character. The story Meursault tells about his father vomitting after witnessing an execution really happened, to Camus' father.

** Meursault is also one of the rare examples of this trope that follow through with the nihilistic aspect of this philosophy. While Anti-Nihilists typically decide to ascribe their own meaning in the face of a meaningless universe, Meursault is actually pretty ok with this idea and just doesn't care. Indeed, despite believing that everything is meaningless and nothing matters,("I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered") Meursault judges that nothing should be done about it, which is pretty much in total opposition with what the traditional existentialist stands for. Thus Meursault is still able to enjoy and love Life ''in spite'' of it being unjust, pointless and meaningless.

* [[spoiler:TheHeroDies]]: [[spoiler: Though his death is never depicted, he knows in the end that it's coming soon]].

* LonersAreFreaks: Meursault doesn't think friendship is a very important thing and so, doesn't bother to develop them, even if he hang out with a colleague, it's only to past time, and he usually spent most of it by himself.

* NoNameGiven: Meurseult's victim is known only as "the Arab", emphasising the utter randomness of his crime and his own detachment from it.

* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: Ultimately, the World is a Cardboard, as Meursault states in the end:
-->''From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing toward me, all my life long, from the years that were to come. And on its way that breeze had leveled out all the ideas that people tried to foist on me in the equally unreal years I then was living through. What difference could they make to me, the deaths of others, or a mother's love, or his God; or the way a man decides to live, the fate he thinks he chooses, since one and the same fate was bound to “choose” not only me but thousands of millions of privileged people who, like him, called themselves my brothers. Surely, surely he must see that? Every man alive was privileged; there was only one class of men, the privileged class. All alike would be condemned to die one day; his turn, too, would come like the others.''

* StrawmanHasAPoint: However much the ValuesDissonance of the society of the time, and absurdism of the plot dancing around this fact, there is no escaping that Meursault is a man indifferent to human life who killed a person for literally no reason at all and could do so again at any time without thought of consequence. In the face of these facts it is hard to argue that he is not a danger to others.

* BeigeProse: The narrator's tendency to give equal weight to everything - from his mother's death to how he feels about someone at any point in time - leads to this. This was intentional; Camus was intentionally imitating the "manly" American writers who wrote like this, particularly Creator/ErnestHemingway.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: As more than one critic has noted, this book takes place in French-colonial Algeria before independence, and the main character, an ethnically French colonist (in the phraseology of the period, a ''piednoir'') murders an Arab man that he doesn't know and has no reason to kill -- and yet he is arrested and tried for murder [[spoiler: and found guilty, and sentenced to death.]] In real-life colonial Algeria, he probably wouldn't have been arrested, and even if he had been, he almost certainly wouldn't have been found guilty. Of course, in the story it's clear he would probably have been let off if he hadn't admitted being an atheist. That convinces the authorities he's a monster, and it's this he ''really'' gets condemned for.
** See the entry under KangarooCourt; it appears that the particular court that tries Meursault is more belligerent than normal, and appears to be doing whatever it can to find him guilty.

* ADateWithRosiePalms: The guard that Meursault befriends in prison mentions that other prisoners, who miss women like him, find way to "relieve" themselves.

[[quoteright:331:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/l_etranger_albert_camus.jpg]]

Throughout the novel, Meursault struggles to understand what everyone around him keeps being so upset about. Rather hilariously, it is not always Meursault's more reprehensible characteristics that people take offense at-his atheism, for example, is noted by the people around him as more offensive than his actions against an Arab. As Meursault ponders the meaninglessness of life, he is genuinely baffled when he begins to understand social concepts like grief, crime and punishment.

** Meursault is also one of the rare exemple of this trope that follow through with the nihilistic aspect of this philosophy. While Anti-Nihilists typically decide to ascribe their own meaning in the face of a meaningless universe, Meursault is actually pretty ok with this idea and just doesn't care. Indeed despite believing that everything is meaningless and nothing matters,("I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered") Meursault judges that nothing should be done about it, which is pretty much in total opposition with what the traditional existentialist stands for. Thus Meursault is still able to enjoy and love Life ''in spite'' of it being unjust, pointless and meaningless.