Summary of "The Stranger"

Plot Summary

The novel follows Meursault, a French Algerian clerk who lives with emotional detachment. It opens with one of the most famous lines in modern literature:

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.”

This stark indifference sets the tone. Meursault attends his mother’s funeral but does not cry, express grief, or even remember her exact age. Instead, he focuses on physical discomfort: heat, light, fatigue. The reader quickly sees that Meursault lives almost entirely in the sensory present, without concern for appearances or moral judgments.

Soon after the funeral, Meursault returns to his life in Algiers—swimming, eating at Céleste’s restaurant, starting a relationship with Marie, and helping his neighbor Raymond, a shady man involved in an abusive relationship with an Arab woman. Meursault helps Raymond write a manipulative letter and later gets involved in a confrontation with the woman’s brother and his friends.

On a blisteringly hot day at the beach, Meursault, dazed by the sun and heat, shoots one of the Arab men. He fires five times. He offers no real motive—just that the sunlight was blinding and oppressive. This moment—an act without narrative, without meaning—is the center of the novel.

In Part Two, Meursault is arrested, put on trial, and sentenced to death. But the trial is surreal: more energy is spent examining his lack of emotion at his mother’s funeral than the killing itself. The court condemns him not just for the crime, but for being the kind of person who could commit it. In prison, awaiting execution, Meursault reflects on life and death. He rejects religion, refuses to fake remorse, and comes to embrace the idea that life has no deeper meaning. In doing so, he achieves a kind of peace—feeling joy in the face of death, content with the "gentle indifference of the world."

What the Novel Is Really About

1. The Absurd

At its core, The Stranger is about the absurdity of life: the clash between our search for meaning and the universe’s indifference. Meursault refuses to invent meaning or lie to himself. When he doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral or show remorse at his trial, it’s not because he’s cruel—it’s because he won’t pretend emotions that he doesn’t feel.

The murder itself is absurd. There is no clear motive—just blinding sun, oppressive heat, and a meaningless trigger. This senselessness is the whole point. Meursault doesn’t try to rationalize it. He accepts it.

2. Authenticity and Rejection of Illusion

Meursault’s defining trait is his refusal to lie—to others, or to himself. He won’t say he believes in God to gain sympathy. He won’t express grief he doesn’t feel. This radical honesty alienates him from society but allows him to face death without fear. In Camus’s world, authenticity is more valuable than comfort.

3. Society’s Need for Meaning

The court condemns Meursault not because of what he did, but because of what he is: someone who doesn’t perform the expected rituals of grief, guilt, and faith. Society needs a narrative—it needs people to act like they care, even if it's false. Meursault is punished for refusing to conform to this collective fiction.

4. Death and Acceptance

In the end, Meursault accepts the inevitability of death. But this isn’t tragic. Camus presents it as a kind of liberation. When you stop searching for false meaning, and stop fearing death, you can finally live freely. Meursault’s final moments—at peace, ready for the guillotine—are the closest the novel comes to transcendence.

So What’s the Point?

Camus is not saying life is pointless. He’s saying:

• Life has no inherent meaning—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth living.
• By rejecting illusions and embracing the absurd, we can live with clarity, honesty, and freedom.
• Meursault is not a nihilist—he’s an absurdist: he sees life has no higher purpose, but he lives it anyway, fully present and without lies.

This is the core of Camus’s philosophy of absurdism. Unlike existentialists like Sartre, who believed people could create their own meaning, Camus believed meaning itself is an illusion—but that embracing this fact gives us a unique form of dignity.