“Alienation and Authenticity in Albert Camus’ The Stranger”
Just finished reading the short novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, and what stays with me most is not the crime alone, but the strange-familiar stillness of the man who commits it. From the very beginning, the narrative places us inside Meursault’s mind, and through his detached voice, we encounter a peculiar form of alienation. The novel opens with the death of his mother, a woman he visited only on Sundays, and sometimes not even then. Their relationship had grown so distant that they were almost strangers. He had little in common with her, little to say, and perhaps little to feel, and he knew she felt the same. When she dies, he does not cry, nor does he attempt to fake grief. He attends the funeral because it’s expected, but he does not ask to have the coffin opened. Most would have asked to have the nails removed to see their dead parent one last time; he does not. Time had already sealed that distance long before the coffin was nailed shut. This detachment is not cruelty; witho...