The stranger

Just finished this book how about a discussion on it what do you guys think about.

He was saving the last bullet in the revolver for himself.

There's nothing to discuss

Why do you think that? And if so why didn't he use it

Two, if you count god.

Meursault's fate is a result of his failure to choose or make anything of his situation.
>idle hands are the devil's plaything

Why did he shoot four extra bullets?

*shoots arab*
Heh...nothing personnel, kid...

Easily one of my favorite books still. I've read most of Camus' work now, and The Stranger still tops the list.

Super lame and boring. No clue why it's so highly lauded.

It references Chinese folklore where 4 is bad luck since it sounds close to death in Chinese.

Is his other stuff as easy as The Stranger? I'm going to start The Plague today.

why would you shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane?

if you count the sun*

I enjoyed it a little.

Felt a bit clumsy and like Camus didn't bring his point across too well.

this gave me an authentic nerd moment

MAMAN I JUST KILLED A MAN

maman est mort aujordhui

You've been meme'd

>no clue

Let me stop you there

>it's another "tell me what to think" thread

kek

well don't read the fall

cant praise exile and the kingdom highly enough, read almost all of Camus and certainly the one that had the longest lasting impression on me

I think it's a good work by itself. It's very subtly written and emotionally complex/ambiguous. I think it works better as a work of fiction than as of philosophy and regret that Camus tended more towards philosophy, because he could've written some really great fiction if he devoted his energy to it, but then again he wouldn't be Camus if he did that

Absurdism itself I find trite as a philosophy, and trying to find an exact moral and purpose in The Stranger I find even triter. I just think it's an interesting book and enjoy the ambiguity, trying to resolve it may be philosophically satisfying but ruins its literary value. It's like Crime & Punishment (guy kills a person, subsequent moral/psychological impact of it on him, ideas of morality and punishment) as written by Kafka.

Makes me sad he didn't live longer to be honest.

I think the beauty and interestingness in Meursault's character is that he's the ultimate nihilist. He just doesn't care, doesn't play by any of society's rules, not even in a self-conscious way like a rebel does. He's not even a rebel, he's not a conformist, he just doesn't care. He's a stranger or outsider to everything. The book is half-Nietzschean because it suggests that Meursault is like the Last Man or a variation of it, a significantly more individualistic Last Man but like it nevertheless. He's a temptation for intellectuals and artists --- to be a person who just doesn't care about anything because they're too smart and jaded to not see through a lot of societal mores, if not all of them.

In the end of the book, Camus suggests with the line about benevolently indifferent stars above him that just because the universe is indifferent doesn't mean we have to be indifferent, because (somewhat paradoxically) this exact indifference or freedom or lack of meaning doesn't conflict against us still assigning meaning to things and valuing them; in fact, it entirely encompasses it.

Camus should've believed in God though, his whole philosophy that seems to value humans having intrinsic life and life being worthy even without higher ideals seems gay and like a dishonest regression from the Big Neech, to be honest.