I'm copy-pasting my review of this book from goodreads because I feel strongly about it.
It's difficult to pin down my exact feelings towards this book. I love it and I hate it. In the beginning it reminded me of Nausea by Sartre, a sort of rambling on and on, but that is, I later on realized, important to Meursault's character.
He is a dull, boring character, used to mundane, everyday things, but it is this bare bones, stripped to the basics sort of quality that also embodies how he is essentially a rejection of everything society attempts to heave onto him -- social conformities, proprieties, etc. He struck me in a way as being stupid, but I realized he was more naive than anything. Thus the constant feeling of being 'annoyed'. He states it out plainly every time he is annoyed. I feel like 'normal' people would be able to sieve out intentions behind people's actions, intentions that correspond with social expectations (e.g. asking 'how are you' after a relative's death) and respond appropriately, but Mersault is brutally honest without really trying to be malicious when he simply comments that he gets annoyed and wants to leave/stop talking.
Things annoy him because he doesn't understand why they exist/seem unnecessary. Sometimes I feel this feeling bubbling but it never reaches the surface because it seems unnecessary to let it to.
As such the conversation with the priest is significant, and the core of the story I suppose. On one hand, Mersault simply does not understand why the Priest, the embodiment of social conformity, does not understand Mersault. Two corners in the ring each unable to see from the other's point of view.
Mersault does not have the sort of nobility that comes with a man who may have been 'enlightened'. To me, he is the way he is, born like this. His quest for the 'truth' -- the ill necessity of redemption from God, the non-importance of how he responded to his mother's funeral -- comes from a deep, uncompromising place. You see this when often he has to 'make an attempt' to understand things.
My book came with an afterword by Camus (which was crucial for me in understanding Meursault better, from knowing where Camus was coming from), in which he says:
"you must ask yourself why Meursault doesn't play the game. The answer is simple: he refuses to lie. Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of hte human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler."and
"Meursault is not a reject, but a poor and naked man, in love with a sun which leaves no shadows."I thought about this, I realized I identified with it. I'm studying for a degree that day in and day out, I try hard to convince myself I'm interested in, but I definitely SAY that I am interested in it because it sounds good to other people.
But one point I wonder about. If Camus's ideal perhaps is people who are brutal with the truth of what they feel and the degree to which they feel it, what are his thoughts towards the purposes of societal frameworks and structures without the unintended consequences -- the place of the law or social proprieties in protecting the collective? I'm not well read with his philosophy so I will look into that soon because that interests me.
I did like this book though. I don't think I will forget about it soon.
