It was 8 am the morning after homecoming. I was at my friend's house and we turned on the TV to watch the new netflix episodes of Degrassi: Next Class. I honestly wasn’t paying that much attention, but then I noticed that one of the girls on the show was holding a rather familiar looking book. After closer evaluation, I noticed that it was in fact Camus’ The Stranger. Now this caused me to wonder- What is it about “The Stranger” that makes it such a popular book in high school curriculum? I know that it’s not only English classes that teach it because the French teachers at OPRF had it incorporated into their curriculum last year as well. This caused me to go on a bit of a reconnaissance mission in attempts to understand why exactly The Stranger is such a quintessential high school novel. To be honest, the answer seemed quite obvious after just one google search- existentialism. The philosophical ideology that emphasizes the importance of free will and choice against society’s constructs. Now, to be quite frank, I do not believe that by reading The Stranger in class anyone was acutely driven to become an existentialist (speaking for myself this was very much the case). So why is it important that we read it?
Question: Why do we read The Stranger? What do you think you benefited from by reading it?
I think that we read the Stranger to expose us to a different way of thought. Just like religion, law, and love I think that existentialism is just another construct we can choose to believe in. Also, I think we learn new things not to be convinced of their truth (of Truth) but to be knowledgable about things that we may not agree with.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up an interesting point. I was wondering this myself too. I believe it is because we're seniors and in an AP English class and this book, if analyzed in depth, has themes that can be controversial and mature that might be difficult to handle at a younger age. The whole idea of existentialism is very comforting and could be overwhelming for middle schoolers.
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