>You must detach yourself from worldly desires>Achieve that detachment>People think you are a soulless golem
>>25218986>I am become Stranger, destroyer of Arabs
>the sea is in my mouth>but i hear no sound
Meursault being one of the most misunderstood characters of all time really does make him absurd Jesus doesn't it
>>25219266>misunderstoodPeople do "understand" him (as a threat to their way of life) and they despise him for it.
>>25219266This statement implies you have a perfect understanding of Mersault. Enlighten us. Get some actual discussion going on /lit/. What in the OP is incorrect AND WHY?You won't reply btw, you'll just cope and sneed, and say something about spoonfeeding.
>>25219266>>25220032I’m curious too, I haven’t read Camus’ book (not that I have much desire to either) and I would like some of your exegesis to give me a good idea of it.
The MC is detached, but definitely not from worldly desires. We can see him enjoying ciggies, lattes, fucking his girlfriend, even getting into a squabble or two, not to mention emptying his mag into that Arab... he's just a run-of-the-mill sociopath that doesn't even bother to calculate the risk vs reward.
Alone loves talking about wanting and being unable to act, it's great
>>25218986>People think you are a soulless golemif you were truly detached you wouldn't care
>>25220554that "As long as it appears you are performing, you can do whatever you want" which sounds obvious until you realize it's a conditional
>>25220554>>25220563Not sure what movie he is referring to, but his analysis sounds like something out of The Fall. Especially when the Judge talks about his realization that everything he did was performative.
>>25220581Sounds like a genderswapped Revenge of the Nerds reboot, or Neighbors 2.
>>25220611It definitely sounds like a weird modern retelling of college teen comedies from the 80s.
>>25220032>This statement implies you have a perfect understanding of MersaultNot really, but a pretty common takeaway people have after reading the book is that Meursault was just an unfeeling sociopath like>>25220203Everything he did was in some way justifiable. It's perfectly normal to not cry at your mom's funeral if you weren't close. It's normal to grow apart from your family and not have much in common, or send her to live in a home if you can't afford to have her stay with you. Lots of people do this, the only difference is he doesn't pretend to be devastated because that's what societal shame dictates. Writing the letter and testifying are morally dubious but lots of people have done questionable things to help friends who were in trouble. Killing the Arab was an accident. You can't say Meursault has no values because he does talk Raymond out of ambushing and shooting them while they're unarmed. It just happens that he's in the wrong place while the sun is in the wrong position etc. There's no real logical reason to feel remorse. You might have rather not done it, but it won't change anything. Feeling bad about killing a man won't unkill him. His rationale is also just that since everyone will eventually die anyway, it doesn't particularly matter when or how it happens. He also didn't know the guy, and he was threatening to kill his friend so I'm sure those things didn't help with remorseAnyway this is just a moral defense of Meursault, separate from the philosophical aspects. He's punished for his honesty in not performing false emotions, and people who read the book and are repulsed with his mindset are imo proving that point.
>>25220715Yeah. His trial spent more time talking about how he didn't cry at his mothers funeral/wake than the actual murder.
>>25218986that's how it goes
>>25220715What you posted is the standard take away...I thought you were arguing against this viewpoint. What's the common misconception then?
>>25220769No, I was agreeing with OP the whole time lol.>What's the common misconception then?there are just a lot of people who finish the book confusing Meursault's honesty with him being some kind of sociopath/autist/bad person. It's not THE most common take, but it's definitely common enough that I usually see it at least once per discussion of the book
>>25220779Modern audiences get thrown off by the french man just killing an arab and it being treated as nothing. He doesn't even have a name in the book just The Arab. The sort of anti-colonial lens we look at things in the west is so ubiquitous that it hijacks most discussions of the book.
>>25220795that's to be expected. each new crop tries to jam some newly cooked ideology unto a work that has nothing to do with it.
I love this novel and I'm not ashamed to admit itI've read it once in English and three times in French and it never gets oldHow are Camus' other novels? What about Sartre?
>>25220795>>25220827I find it hard to believe those discussion are a recent phenomenon seeing how Camus' stance on Algeria was a major part of the rift between him en Satre (and the more general communist left)
>>25220832I recently finished the Plague and loved it. Aside from being a pretty accurate rundown of how a society handles an epidemic I found it to have a lot of heart, surprisingly emotional. Unlike Meursault, the characters in the Plague do believe in things like love which I think showed a much more beautiful humanist side to absurdism that's absent in the Stranger
>>25220795Francois Ozon's new French adaptation (which seems to be a shot for shot remake of the Italian film with Mastroanni) gets hung up on this. It inserts post-colonialist scenes that weren't in the novel to make you feel pity for The Arab and his prostitute sister. It was really distracting considering the movie was extremely good and extremely faithful otherwise...but I guess you can't make a movie in France without paying homage to wokeness.
>>25220715yeah bro, he just ACCIDENTALLY emptied the magazine on some random guy >He's punished for his honesty in not performing false emotions, and people who read the book and are repulsed with his mindset are imo proving that point.no, he's punished for murdering a guy and people who read the book are repulsed with his mindset, because he's an apathetic faggot with cringe philosophy
>>25220875I don't think even he would disagree that it was a senseless act of violence; not even he knows why he did it other than the bad circumstances. The problem is how the court, society, and you personally as a reader feel the need to make a monster out of someone for thinking differently and not sharing the same values.
>>25220879Because he is a monster and my values are right. He can fuck off with his relativist bullshit. And if you think I'm wrong in this assertion then you are commiting the same sin as the court and the society.
>>25220900Back in my day trolling was an art form
>>25219278>>25220032>>25220039The entire novel is to contrast the ending, where he finally lives authentically. After you read The Stranger, read The Myth of Sisyphus. It lays out all the key ideas, and helps frame The Stranger properly.Meurault becomes the Absurd Hero, who doesn't reject the truth of reality, for comfort. The entire novel is supposed to show inauthentic existence, and the ending is supposed to show authentic existince.It's really not that difficult, but you faggots get caught up on the wrong parts, because you read The Stranger in a vacuum, when it was written as the first part of his three part series on the idea.>The Stranger>The Myth of Sisyphus>CaligulaNow, a lot of people skip Caligula, and that's fine. As you can get the gist of the Absurd Hero, with just The Stranger, and The Myth of Sisyphus, but Caligula is the third part of that writing project.Camus talks about it being a three part project in his published notebooks.Caligula shows that there are wrong ways to be an Absurd Hero, even if you are actually living authentically.
