The Stranger (Matthew Ward translation, 1988)

Standing on a beach
With a gun in my hand
Staring at the sea
Staring at the sand
Staring down the barrel
At the Arab on the ground
See his open mouth
But hear no sound

I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an Arab

~ The Cure, "Killing an Arab"

I remember listening to this song for the first time back in 1986. I was a sophomore in college, and I had just picked up The Cure's first compilation album, Standing on a Beach, and was spinning the record for the first time. The album was essentially a greatest hits compilation, and it was my first Cure record.

Up until that point, I had never heard the album's opening track, "Killing an Arab," which was originally released in the U.S. on the band's 1980 album, Boys Don't Cry. As I sat on my bunk and listened to the song, I wondered why the song's protagonist was motivated to murder his victim. Was the motive a typical one, such as racism, jealously, greed, or psychosis?

Actually, it was none of these. If I had been aware of the song's inspiration--the pivotal moment in Albert Camus' classic novel, The Stranger--then I would have known that the killer wasn't motivated by what one would think was a "normal" motive to kill. Rather, the killer pulled the trigger simply because of the glare of the sun.

As I mentioned in my first entry in this blog, I missed a lot of classic literature in my high school and college years, so my ignorance of the connection between the Cure song and The Stranger was not surprising. I chose to read The Stranger after learning that President Bush read the novel last summer. I figured that if he--a guy who has admitted that he doesn't read newspapers--has time to sit down and read what is regarded as an important 20th Century novel, then I certainly could make time to do it. I read the book with no knowledge of absurdism or existentialism, which are the two movements of philosophy with which The Stranger is typically connected. So I suppose that I bring somewhat of an outsider's perspective to the book.

The plot of the book is actually not all that complex. Meursault, a Frenchman living in Algeria, learns that his mother, who was living in a home for the elderly, has passed away. He attends her funeral, displaying no emotion and a bit of ennui about her death. This, not surprisingly, is unsettling to those around him.

After Meursault returns home, he begins hanging around with an unsavory neighbor named Raymond, who seems to enjoy beating up women. One of these women is an Arab woman with whom Raymond apparently had an affair. Raymond enlists Meursault's help in luring the woman to Raymond's apartment--Meursault writes her a letter to get her to come--where Raymond smacks her around until the police intervene.

After Raymond is released by the police, Meursault and his girlfriend, Marie, take an excursion to a beach house with Raymond. As Meursault, Raymond, and their host, Masson, are walking down the beach, they encounter the Arab woman's brother. Raymond and the brother have tangled with each other in the past, and they get into another fight. The Arab knifes Raymond, so Meursault and Masson take him back to Masson's beach house. Meursault takes the pistol that Raymond was carrying and returns to shoot the Arab with Raymond's gun. The first bullet kills the man, but Meursault fires four more times. As mentioned, Meursault's only explanation for the shooting is the glare of the sun. The rest of novel describes Meursault's trial, conviction, and wait to be executed at the guillotine.

Meursault is a rather unsympathetic protagonist because he cares little for the feelings of others. For example, he won't tell Marie that he loves her, yet half-heartedly agrees that they should marry. And he doesn't blanch when Raymond asks him to write the letter that lures the Arab woman to Raymond's apartment. In addition, Meursault is unlikeable because his attitude toward life is listless. When his boss offers him the chance to transfer from Algiers to Paris, Meursault refuses. When Meursault's boss says that he should embrace a change in life, Meursault replies that "people never change their lives."

Despite these character flaws, Meursault is an intriguing character because he seems to unquestioningly accept his fate after the murder. He immediately admits to the killing. Despite the attempts of his lawyer to explain away his actions at trial, Meursault tells the judges and the jury the truth about his motive for the killing, no matter how strange or ridiculous it might sound. And even as he sits in prison awaiting his execution, he refuses a priest's attempt to get him to accept Jesus Christ as his savior, clinging to the notion that there is no god.

Undoubtedly, others have gleaned different meanings from this story. For me, The Stranger was a lesson in how not to live life. Perhaps that interpretation is facile. But I know that I could never live life in such a callous manner with such a bleak outlook. To care for others, to want to act to benefit humanity, is part of human nature. To disregard that benevolent capacity is terribly wasteful and truly leaves one open to a life of emptiness. I realize that this notion is in direct conflict with the concept of absurdism, but perhaps absurdism is itself absurd because of the human instinct to seek out meaning in life. That instinct is inevitable, and, I would argue, healthy.