Justify the title of The Stranger or The Outsider

Justify the title of The Stranger or The Outsider

or

Evaluate Meursault as a stranger or outsider

Being a French, Albert Camus preferred to write The Outsider in French. The problem of translating Camus first and most famous novel begins with the title L Estranger which could be variously rendered as The Foreigner or The Stranger or The Outsider. These translations do have opposing nuances of meaning. The Foreigner suggests cultural difference, The Stranger suggests social isolation and The Outsider suggests the personal behavior of an idiosyncratic person who acts in such a way as to be set apart from others. Thus, the appropriateness or the justification of the translation of the title and Meursault’s role needs to be analyzed.

Our main character, Meursault, is a French man living in French Algiers. In some senses, this makes him a foreigner to the land. But the text establishes that in fact his family has lived there for several generations. Viewed in this light, Meursault is no more a foreigner to French Algiers than third generation American’s are foreigners in the US. More likely Meursault is a metaphorical foreigner.

The previous analysis is based on the word foreigner but the same thing applies to the tittle The Stranger. Meursault is a stranger among other people because he is totally isolated from other people- mentally, emotionally, spiritually and at the end of the novel physically. He’s a stranger or quite possibly he’s the stranger. Matthew Ward, in his brilliant recreation of this masterpiece of the absurd, has chosen to call it, The Stranger, perhaps to emphasize the alienation of the principal character and narrator Meursault. Incidentally Camus first idea for the title was L’Indifferent.

Meursault’s detachment personified, it easy to argue that he’s a foreigner to society, to common human customs- he is an outsider. In his avant propos, Camus recalls that he had previously described Meursault and his role in life as an outsider. Camus says that Meursault is man who refuses to play the game, the game of Aeschylean phrase ‘sport’ of God.

The Outsider as it relates to a person’s behaviour and its results whcih is what the novel is most about, How Meursault acts in an absurd world and the consequences of his actions, this in a world where the Sun behaves absurdly while at one time being helpful and at another time being destructive.

The fact is we do not know much more about Meursault. Even, we do not know his first name throughout the novel. He is simply found Meursault. He is now living in Algiers but previously he has lived in Paris. In fact he has very little furniture and very few personal belongings. We see in him an indifference to material possessions unlike others. He discontinued his education and is now working as a clerk with a shipping company. Here his indifference and alienation from the rest of the world is noticable.

In the text, his physical appearance is never described. We assume he is a quite young perhaps in his thirties. He does not like people with too white skin. Although most readers today, however, have become critical of the politics of racism in Meursant for he is white and his victim  an Arab.

“Mother died today, or may be yesterday, I can’t be sure”, Meursault reflects. Though the the telegram from the home says, “YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY, FUNERAL TOMORROW, DEEP SYMPATHY”.  Which leaves the matter doubtful. A son not knowing the time of his mother’s death is rare and he’s obviously an outsider.

“That does not mean anything” is a phrase that crop up again and again in the text. For instance, when an authority becomes disgusted with Meursault because he hasn’t shown enough sadness on the day of his mother’s death, he thinks “I probably did love Maman, but that did not mean anything”. Again while he’s making love to his girlfriend, he reflects “She asked me if I loved her, I told her that it did not mean anything.”

For Meursault, the usual hierarchy of perception has been replaced by row unorganized sensations of his own self. As for example, he tells the court that he murdered a man because the sun had confused him. Thus, his lack of conventional hypocrisy enranges everyone around him. Camus once said of The Outsider- “If a man dares to say what he truely feels, if he revolts against having to lie, then society will destroy him in the end.”

With this said so as to give a deeper perspective into Meursault as a character and Camus as a novelist, we’ll examine Meursault as a stranger. However, it is difficult to argue that he is a stranger to himself since he is so keenly aware of every sensation he has and so bitterly honest, direct about his desires and intentions and emotional feelings. When the attorney asked him a last question he reflects “Did I regret what I had done?” After thinking a bit “I said that what I felt was less regret than a kind of vexation I could not find a better word for it.”

Here, Feminism has made us notice that the root of Meursault’s crime is not sunstroke but the violence towards a woman, the Arab is seeking vengence for his sister, whom Meursault’s male neighbour has brutalized.

Yet, it may be said he is a stranger to himself, if one takes the position that morality and emotional empathy are innate qualities, something author Willam Golding contests. Thus, he is a stranger to himself because he is isolated from his social obligations and moral duties as was demonstrated at the vigil for his mother.

In the 1950s it seemed “a Universal and timeless” tale with philosophical overtness. The hero meant to be a sort of Everyman and the novel was intended as a classic statement of the absurd. Camus, an Algerign of French origin certainly sympathized with Arab population but he did not live to see the bloody Algerian war for independence as Meursault. So Meursault is a auto-biographical character.

The critic Germaine Brie had said of Meursault that he was a man with a narrow petspective; with limited spiritual capacity, while Camus says that he does not see Meursault as a social derelict as some readers do. Comus points out the philosophical significance of Meursault. As Ian said, “If you exist, the stranger dramatized the issues at the heart of existentialists. The same issues are probably at the heart of life, whether or not you believe in a God”.

           The study shows that Meursault is condemned for what he is and for what he believes. He accepts to die for the truth but without any false heroes. He had no illusions about his forth coming execution and is terrified of the dawn when they will came for him. However he is also an outsider in a sense that involves us all, as to same extend we are all outsider in an alien world.