Why did Camus choose to name his book The Stranger?
The obvious answer might be that well, all of the characters are very strange. However, it seems to have a double meaning because it was translated from French. The book in French was originally titled "LEtranger", which can also mean "The Foreigner". Meursault resides in the French Algiers where his family has lived for many years, so Camus was not talking about a foreigner in the physical sense. From the first few lines of the book, we can see that Meursault is a bit detached from the rest of his world. He seems to be mentally and emotionally detached from the world around him. When Marie asks Meursault if he loves her, he replies that it doesn't really matter. But for Marie, being in love is a big deal to her. Meursault kills the Arab with seemingly no reason or remorse. When the reader indulges in Meursault's world, he or she feels a bit uncomfortable with the lack of emotion that Meursault exhibits, or at least I felt very uneasy.
I like the question you posed here, and the research you did concerning alternate meaning of the title.
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ReplyDeleteI didn't know this and it makes so much sense! I didn't really understand why it was called "The Stranger" but now that I think of it in the context of being foreign to the world, it applies much more. It just makes me wonder even more why Mersault is the way that he is. Is Camus purposefully trying to make him some emblem of humanity? Maybe he's trying to say that we're all foreigners in a sense.
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