The Stranger
Unfamiliar face approaching
A novel by Albert Camus (1942) about a man who kills an Arab on an Algerian beach and faces execution less for the crime than for his emotional detachment—he didn't cry at his mother's funeral.
The title captures the protagonist's alienation from social conventions and emotional expectations.
The work is foundational to absurdist philosophy.
We read The Stranger in my existentialism class.
- coffinBurial container for remains
- death sentenceJudicial order of execution
- lightVisible electromagnetic radiation
- absurdityWildly illogical quality
- heatTransferred thermal energy
fatal shot · sun · beach · sea · Arab · blazing sun · guillotine · authenticity · trial · bad faith · mother · existentialism · Camus · French novel · vigil · alienation · emotional detachment · chaplain
- Camus WorksCaligula, Summer
- Existentialist WorksThe Wall, Caligula, Waiting for Godot
- French ModernismMarcel Proust, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Colette
- French NovellasCandide, The Little Prince, Rene, Thais
- Kotzebue PlaysPizarro
- 20th Century Books1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Catch-22, Grapes of Wrath
The StrangerThe Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment · Les Misérables · Siddhartha · Pilgrim's Progress · Gilead
The StrangerJean Valjean
Atticus Finch · Frodo Baggins · Samwise Gamgee · Elizabeth Bennet · Anne Shirley