The Stranger Theme Card

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Quotes:

• "Then he offered to bring me a cup of coffee with milk. I like milk in my coffee, so I said yes, and he came back a few minutes later with a tray. I drank the coffee. Then I felt like having a smoke. But I hesitated, because I didn’t know if I could do it with Maman right there. I thought about it; it didn’t matter.I offered the caretaker a cigarette and we smoked."
• "It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over that Maman was buried now, that I was goingback to work, and that, really, nothing had changed."
• "Flipping through a file, the prosecutor asked her bluntly when our "liaison" had begun. She indicated the date. The prosecutor remarked indifferently that if he was not mistaken, that was the day after Maman died. 'Gentleman of the jury, the day after his mother’s death, this man was out swimming, starting up a dubious liaison, and going to the movies, acomedy, for laughs. I have nothing further to say.'"
• "They [the jury] had before them the basest of crimes, a crime made worse than sordid by the fact that theywere dealing with a monster, a man without morals."
• "The Arab drew his knife and held it up to me in the sun. The light shot off the steel and it was like a long flashing blade cutting at my forehead. At the same instant the sweat in my eyebrows dripped down over my eyelids all at once and covered them with a warm, thick film. My eyes were blinded behind the curtain of tears and salt. All I could feel were the cymbals of sunlight crashing on my forehead and, indistinctly, the dazzling spear flying up from the knife in front of me. The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes. That’s when everything began to reel. The sea carried up a thick, fiery breath. It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire. My whole being tensed and I squeeze my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave."

Vehicles

• Imagery->Meursault indulges in the pysical world around him
• Flashbacks->remembers his mother telling him stories of the father he never knew
• Paradox-> objective judgement and subjective motivation
• Irony-> the death of his mother doesn't affect him

Conflicts

• Man vs. Society
• Absurdity vs. Normalcy
• Rebelling vs. Conforming

Subjects

• The illegitimacy of authority
• A world without values
• The importance of the individual

Themes

• The realization that not being dead is not the same as being alive leads to enlightenment and the desire to rebel against the societal machine.
• The eminent and inevitable reality of death is something that should not be feared.

Plot

Camus' novel opens up with the death of the narrator's mother. From a start, readers realize that he is different and completely unaffected by his mother's death. He goes through a series of obstacles which end up in society questioning his moral values towards the end. He starts dating his girlfriend and questionable fiancee Marie, becomes entangled in the middle of a confrontation between his neighbor, Raymond, and his strumpet and her Arab brother, and ends up shooting the Arab. This all leads to a trial where the magistrate, prosecutor, and chaplain become misled in their assumptions about Meursault's morals. The novel ends with the death of Merusault.

Title's Significance

The title, The Stranger, is exemplary of the relationship between Meursault and society, as well as Meursault and himself. To both himself and society, he is a stranger because makes a decision to not conform or follow any rules.

Major Characters

Monsieur Meursault, Marie, Raymond, Arab, Monsieur Perez, the prosecutor, the chaplain, the magistrate