I found _The Stranger_ by Albert Camus stunning, here is my personal analysis of the book

By reads_apron8286

This was my first time writing something like this, but I’ve been really wanting to share my thoughts since I finished reading **“The Stranger”**. I’m not a native English speaker, so sorry if there are mistakes, but I’m honestly open to any critique. I started the book about **two weeks ago**, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. It made me write my own analysis of the way the story is told and of the characters. What stuck with me most is how **Part 1** feels mostly focused on Mersault himself—his actions, his inner way of thinking, and what’s going on in his head. Then **Part 2** shifts and suddenly it’s more about how other people judge him, like society is looking from the outside and deciding what he “is.” The book begins with his mom dying, and even the way it’s presented is kind of shocking. The funeral details feel almost boring on purpose, because you can feel how annoyed he is with the whole ritual. I kept thinking at first that maybe he was “protecting himself” emotionally, but it doesn’t feel like that. It’s more like he just doesn’t care about social rules, even when it’s his mom. Then there’s **Salamano**, his neighbor, who’s with his old dog and ends up fighting with it all the time. It’s weird, like he “hates” the dog but also clearly can’t live normally without it. When the dog disappears, he’s desperate, and he even comes back to Mersault for help. After that, he treats Mersault like a friend, mostly because Mersault helped him find the dog. And then **Raymond** is where you really see how people react badly to Mersault. Helping Salamano is seen as good, but what happens with Raymond is seen as immoral, and I get why. Mersault basically agrees with Raymond without really questioning if it’s right. It feels more like he just goes along with whatever the other person wants, because the person seems to like it. To me, his reasoning is very “grounded,” very passive, like he doesn’t build morality from his own emotions—he just follows the situation. (Not sure if that’s the right way to describe it, but that’s what it felt like.) He also starts something with **Marie** right after, at the mother’s funeral, which is already crazy to me. Marie feels like the strongest attachment to life he has. He likes being with her and having sex, but when it comes to social expectations, he shuts down again. When she asks about marriage, he says “I don’t know,” and later it’s clear he says yes more to please her than because he actually wants it. Again, it’s like his feelings and his “social behavior” don’t match the way other people expect. In the story, everything leads to his arrest and the trial. What really bothers me is the gap between what Mersault feels inside and what the jury decides outside. People judge by actions only, but is that enough to understand someone? I don’t think so. Still, it’s not like Mersault gives them anything else to work with, so it becomes one-sided. It makes me feel like the trial is looking for something that “makes sense” to everyone, not necessarily the truth. And in the end, I still feel like if I were on that jury, I’d probably judge him as a criminal too. That part is depressing, because I see both sides but I’m not sure anyone can really communicate. The incommunicability part reminded me of **Neon Genesis Evangelion** (the whole idea that people can’t really reach each other’s inner thoughts). I know that’s a comparison, but the feeling is the same: even if you watch someone, you still can’t truly know what they meant or felt. Then there’s the part with the judge and God. The judge likes Mersault at first, and Mersault stays calm and kind of lets things happen. But when the judge pushes him to actually believe, Mersault says no, and suddenly the relationship changes. If he wanted, he could probably escape by lying—but he doesn’t do that. He stays “realistic,” even if it costs him. During the process, everything he did is judged negatively, like the jury focuses on the “wrong” parts (how he acted at the funeral, the fact that he dated Marie the next day) more than the crime itself. It really feels like he’s treated like a dangerous kind of person because he doesn’t follow society’s rules and doesn’t show empathy the way they expect. And because of that, they sentence him to death. Before dying, the priest tries to talk to him and convert him, but Mersault refuses again and again. I thought it was intense how he gets angry at one point because the priest’s words don’t mean anything to him. Then eventually he reaches this kind of peace—not because he has hope, but because he stops expecting to be saved. That scene really got to me. It describes an acceptance that feels impossible until you’re right there at the edge. On the last night, he thinks about his mom again. I liked that the story makes it feel like his mom’s final state was also about accepting something she couldn’t change—like she was freed to live in her own way. And toward the end, the book connects his mom’s final state to Nietzsche’s ideas, like the “three metamorphoses” (camel → lion → child). I get what it’s trying to say: dropping burdens, destroying old rules, and then starting again—kind of like innocence. Overall, I don’t know how to feel about it, but it left me with a strong mix of confusion and recognition. Like, the story makes you question if justice can ever really understand someone who doesn’t think or act the way society wants.