My Thoughts on The Stranger

Albert Camus — Finished August 6, 2026

Meursault is, quite literally, a stranger.

From the very beginning, something about him feels off. His mother dies, and he barely reacts. He goes back to his normal life as if nothing happened. People ask him to be their friend, to help them, or even whether he loves them, and his response is almost always the same: it doesn’t really matter.

At first, I couldn’t understand him. How can someone be so indifferent to everything?

Then comes the murder.

Meursault blames the sun, the heat, and the overwhelming pressure of the moment. But what really caught my attention wasn’t just the first shot. It was the four shots that followed.

It reminded me of something I sometimes do myself: when one thing goes wrong and ruins my plans for the day, I think, “Well, the day’s already ruined,” and end up wasting the rest of it.

Obviously, the situations are completely different, but that irrational way of thinking felt strangely familiar.

The trial was probably my favorite part of the novel.

Instead of focusing entirely on the murder, everyone becomes obsessed with Meursault’s behavior at his mother’s funeral. He didn’t cry. He didn’t act the way society expected him to. Suddenly, that becomes evidence of what kind of person he must be.

What fascinated me even more was how the prosecutor and his lawyer kept interpreting Meursault’s actions and speaking on his behalf, while he seemed almost disconnected from his own trial.

It felt like everyone was trying to give his life a meaning he had never claimed it had.

Near the end, Meursault begins hoping for an appeal or a pardon. And this was something I really liked.

For someone who claims that nothing matters, he still wants to live.

I don’t see this as a weakness in the writing. Quite the opposite. No matter how indifferent someone is, the instinct to survive doesn’t simply disappear. Even Meursault finds himself imagining a future.

But his final confrontation with the chaplain brings everything back to his philosophy. He rejects the idea that his life needs some greater meaning, and by the end, he seems to accept the indifference of the universe.

His final wish, to be met by a hateful crowd at his execution, was one of the strangest and most powerful endings I’ve read.

One comparison I couldn’t stop thinking about was White Nights by Dostoevsky.

Both stories follow lonely, disconnected men, but they’re almost opposites.

The narrator of White Nights escapes reality through dreams and imagination. Meursault doesn’t seem interested in escaping anywhere. He doesn’t dream of another life. He simply exists.

And that contrast made The Stranger even more interesting to me.

I still don’t completely understand Meursault, and I don’t think I agree with his worldview. But maybe that’s exactly what made this book so memorable.

A strange book about a strange man, and one that left me with more questions than answers.