The Stranger

The Stranger is the enigmatic first novel by Albert Camus, published in French as L’Étranger in 1942. It was published as The Outsider in England and as The Stranger in the United States. Camus utilized The Stranger as a platform to explore absurdity, a concept central to his writings and at the core of his treatment of questions about the meaning of life. Camus’s concept of the absurd instead implored people to accept life’s lack of meaning and rebel by rejoicing in what life does offer. Elements of this philosophy can be seen in the protagonist, Meursault, as he refuses to behave as if there is meaning where there is none—or, as Camus himself put it in a preface to The Stranger, Meursault “does not play the game.” Society thus feels threatened and cuts off Meursault’s head. Similar themes can be seen in Camus’s essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), also published in 1942.