The Stranger

Marcel? More like incel

...and?

If you are reading something that isn't in translation the only things you should worry about are cost: look of the cover, quality and kind of cover, paper quality, introductions etc, and font/size/printing. The compromise is entirely up to the reader. I have nice copies of the books I reread a lot, the books I'm probably only going to read once I don't mind a cheap copy.

>an incel
>has sex

Pretentious horse shit is a trademark of the French
That and surrendering

>only ever getting 2nd hand pity pussy years apart at a time
dude incels lmao

>pity pussy
>a gay guy
Yea no fucking wonder he never got much pussy but he fucked guys enough, and they weren't all pity fucks.

is there by any chance a picture of dorian grey thread too atm?

It's an old picture I made from a couple of years back. They were three books with easy prose, simple themes and are short that somehow most people completely misunderstand.

Okay thanks that's good to know.

Why?

Only one person has bothered to discuss the theme in this thread. Is it really just the absurdist no point point?

The point is that, until the narrator came face-to-face with death, he wasn't living. Didn't love or care about anyone, didn't have any intellectual or spiritual projects. His life had no point, because he didn't construct a point for it. His inability to defend himself in the trial is a reflection of this. Once he went to prison, he found beauty and meaning in life (that meaning being, contemplating beauty). This is why he fears execution, but only after he is already condemned —his condemnation led him to seek meaning, and find it.

>Marceau literally explains his views on life to the priest at the end in case you didn't understand
hurr hurr this book maeks no sense

>reading a pointless plot that exists solely to prop up an out of character exposition dump on the last page makes sense

>What is the point of this?

EXACTLY

just give up reading my man you are retarded

For me it meant like the title of the book says he was a stranger to himself and he was seeking for value in the world and couldn't find any, that why he didn't show any emotions when his mother died, or why he didn't care that he was sentenced to death until the end, and I woudn't agree with the user above that the book is absurdist and without the point, only the characters in the book are, the book on the other hand has a message (or more if you analyze it deeply)

>Is it really just the absurdist no point point
No. The novel isn't one of those has no points and that is the point sort of novel. The novel is about how the main character comes to grips with the Absurd and how he learns to live with it. Most people act as if the first half of the novel was the whole thing. This is the half of the novel where he get to see the faults of the main character. He is not a Camus insert nor is he in the first half a spokesman of the Absurd. It is in the second half that he learns and questions which culminates in his exchange with the priest which shows his embracing of the Absurd.

>out of character exposition dump on the last page makes sense
If by last page you mean the last half of the book.

kek

It seems to be really hard for normal people to understand characters that are nothing like them in a book. What do you wanted, OP? Didn't you read a summary before? What were you expecting?

>Why was this even written?
Kek

> Tfw didn't find anything unusual about The Stranger's actions until he got agitated and shot the Arab
> tfw you realize you're an autist

You could easily confuse Meursault with a psychophat.
Haha my mum is dead and I feel nothing, what? No, I don't want to see her dead pale face, it's not necesarry. What did you say? Her age? Sixty something, I don't know, who the fuck cares, it's not important. I'm gonna smoke and eat in front of her corpse, IDGAF. Hey, do you love me? I don't know, it doesn't matter. Marriage is serious! I don't think so, haha, bitch! I hit my woman, what do you think? Nothing. OHHHHHHHH!!!!! What the fuck?, I shoot this arab and I don't know why, no, wait, it was by chance.

Small brain: hates French writing
universe brain: only reads the French

Yeah, I didn't find any of that super abnormal as I was reading through it until it became clear by the prosecutions case during the trial....

I thought he was just having a delayed response and hadn't fully processed his mother's death yet. I could understand most of mersault's actions apart from shooting the Arab and his retarded attitude at the trial. He just seemed like a regular depressed dude. The judge even mentioning his lack of grief shown about his mother came across as bizzare to me .

This is what happens when you don't start with the greeks.

>What is the point of this?
He literally beats you on the head with the "point" during his time in prison. Sartre defended the book against claims that The Stranger is gratuitously didactic. At least pick something by Beckett if you just want to whine about absurdism.

>You could easily confuse Meursault with a psychophat.
Maybe if somehow you were never acquainted with the idea of depression.

Meursault is an prick with it's head up it's own arse, and that is the point of the book.

The jury was right.

My theory is that he wrote this book in response to French apathy during the occupation, have absolutely no substantiation for it, but all the book does is show you a guy who doesn't give a shit about anything and is so easily coerced into criminal action. Camus' point is that society executes such people, pointing out the hypocrisy of who do nothing when there country is held captive and their neighbours are being abducted or sent to death camps.

also
>The Stranger
>not The Outsider
Fucking Americans I swear to god.

The Outsider had its merits but was the less accurate (and in my opinion overall worse) translation.

The book was about absurdism, and reading the outmoded translation is probably part of the reason you couldn't grasp that.

It was supposed to be shit. You fell for it. He tries to act out how life is meaningless and nothing you do matters, but the main thing everyone takes from it is that that's a terrible and unenjoyable way to live.

uhh dude the point is to brain fuckin arabs wherever and whenever you see them

BLAM BLAM BLAM that's the fuckin point bullet in an arab fuckin brain fuck the concequences another A-RAB motherfucker BRAINED!

haHAA im 12 btw

literally every classic is "you getting memed by a dead guy" dipshit

I've actually read both translations you posturing fuck

Sean Goonan's Treatise: The Flundation for Exploration actually shes literally tons of light on this book.

I went in blind. I had no expectations. I don't even remember why I have the book. I just do.

I started getting angry at the main character when the judge was talking to him. It really seemed he was trying to antagonize the judge.

Andre Gide and Louis-Ferdinand Celine, from the top of my head. Don't talk about what you don't know.

You were giving an out and you should have taken it. Now you have only shown that you have read the book twice in at least two translations and have fundamentally misunderstood the easy and short novel.

How did you not understand The Stranger?

My dude, that book is given to high school seniors as kind of a "coming of age" thing.

Don't tell me you're too stupid for high school lit?

He literally just wanted to fuck his mother. The book is all about his Oedipus complex. Meursault is an allegory for a little boy way out of his depth.

Meursault is a little boy fantasizing about Marie like she's his mother; just pay attention to his descriptions of her.

He's a little boy playing with a gun like it's a toy.

He's a little boy who can't talk properly in a courtroom.

He's basically a weak incompetent fuck. He's the Veeky Forums user of his day.

His fuckbuddy doesn't fulfill him the same way his mother does, so he blams some Arab on the beach because really the idea of killing himself is running though his autistic, boyish mind. His rage at the end of the novel is only because he finally realizes his foolishness all along.

But the kicker is none of it matters. Nothing fucking matters.

>He doesn't seem to care about anything throughout the book

What about his final days? He obviously starts caring there.

>But the kicker is none of it matters. Nothing fucking matters.
Wow, fucking deep, man. Far out!

I meant that's what the book is about. I didn't mean to say it in some edgy way.

I mean we should us absurdism to inform ourselves about the book, but thinking of the entire plot as basically being 'hurr durr absurdism go shoot arabs lol' is missing the point.

Meursault embraces the existential freedom over his life and death (kills the arab), promptly has that freedom taken away from him (imprisonment), and finally has his anagnorisis on absurdism and his oedipus complex.

With his sentencing, his long, drawn out process of suicide is finally coming to a close.

The events of the book don't matter, and moreover nothing matters, according to Camus. The whole plot is just about some autistic manchild who sorta wants to die.

>For Camus, suicide is a "confession" that life is not worth living; it is a choice that implicitly declares that life is "too much." Suicide offers the most basic "way out" of absurdity: the immediate termination of the self and its place in the universe.

>coerced into criminal action
What you on about m8? Who coerced him? The sun?

why is it that he cant even say a lie to save his life? all he had to do was say he accepts god and they would have let him live, which he obviously wanted.

>why is it that he cant even say a lie to save his life?
It's almost like the answer to that question is the point of the whole book.

I would add the steppenwolf and the book of disquiet to that list