synopsis:

Meursault, a plain civil servant in Algeria, receives a telegram informing him of his mother's death. He keeps vigil over his mother's body and visits her funeral. The next day he runs into Marie Cardona, his former co-worker, who he vaguely knows. The two make a date and spend the night together. While walking upstairs to his apartment the next day, he runs into his neighbour, Raymond Sintes. Raymond invites Meursault over for dinner. Over the meal, Raymond recounts how he beat up his mistress after he discovered that she had been cheating on him. As a result, he got into a fight with her brother.

Later Marie asks Meursault if he wants to marry her. He replies indifferently but says that they can get married if she wants to, so they become engaged. The following Sunday, Meursault, Marie, and Raymond go to a beach house. That afternoon Raymond and Meursault run into two Arabs on the beach, one of whom is the brother of Raymond's mistress. A fight breaks out and Raymond is stabbed. After tending to his wounds, Raymond returns to the beach with Meursault. They find the Arabs at a spring. Raymond considers shooting them with his gun, but Meursault talks him out of it and takes the gun away.

Later, however, Meursault returns to the spring to cool off, and for no apparent reason but the burning heat of the sun and the reflexion of the sunlight on the Arab's knife, he shoots Raymond's mistress's brother.

Meursault is arrested and thrown into jail. His lawyer seems disgusted at Meursault's lack of remorse over his crime, and, in particular, at Meursault's lack of grief at his mother's funeral. Later, Meursault meets with the examining magistrate, who brandishes a crucifix and demands that Meursault put his faith in God. Meursault refuses, insisting that he does not believe in God. As he awaits his trial, he slowly adapts to prison life.

Meursault is taken to the courthouse early on the morning of his trial. The subject of the trial quickly shifts away from the murder to a general discussion of Meursault's character, and of his reaction to his mother's death in particular. The director and several other people who attended the vigil and the funeral are called to testify, and they all attest to Meursault's lack of grief or tears. During his summation the following day, the prosecutor calls Meursault a monster and says that his lack of moral feeling threatens all of society.

Meursault is found guilty and is sentenced to death by beheading. He returns to prison to await his execution. One day, the chaplain comes to visit against Meursault's wishes. He urges Meursault to renounce his atheism and turn to God, but Meursault refuses. Like the magistrate, the chaplain cannot believe that Meursault does not long for faith and the afterlife. Meursault suddenly becomes enraged, grabs the chaplain, and begins shouting at him. He declares that he is correct in believing in a meaningless, purely physical world. For the first time, Meursault truly embraces the idea that human existence holds no greater meaning. He abandons all hope for the future but this abandoning makes him feel strong and happy.

on this book:

This book must be understood in the developing line in Camus' oeuvre. After seeing that life is absurd, caused by the clash between man and the senseless and amoral natural world which he first admired in Between Yes and No (1937), man has nothing to cling on. See for a discussion on ‘absurdity' The myth of Sisyphus. During the main part of The stranger, Meursault does not think about this absurdity and just lives in the senseless world around him: he is amoral and nihilistic, therefore he does not understand what it means to be ‘guilty'. He does not need a God and moral values which are based on this God and lives a happy life except of his office-work. He has no intellectual reflexion on this world and his place in it, he just enjoys it.

Only in the end, when he is really confronted with the absurdity of life by being sentenced to death and is forced to an intellectual reflexion on life and death, he finds happiness in his revolt against this absurdity: he does not accept it by adopting religion and an afterlife, but wants to live in a senseless world and to struggle against absurdity. Human existence holds no greater meaning, we only live ‘real' and ‘pure' by struggling against death and senselessness. According to Camus ‘Meursault is the only Christ we really need' because he is not hostile to life by accepting religion.