The Stranger, By Albert Camus

“All happy families are happy in the same way, but all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way” (Tolstoy). Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer tells a story about a young man called Christopher McCandless who comes from a well-off family who then out of the blue deserts everything to journey on an “Alaskan Odyssey”. There isn’t a sane man who donates all his money, leaves everything and everyone he loves, and changes his identity to “Alexander Supertramp” to venture on a journey that makes him face starvation, poverty, and death. Krakauer describes Chris’s family as the dysfunctional family in which spares Chris’s parents and focuses more on what he did rather than why he did what he sought out to do by leaving. However, the answer lies in his relationship with his family. His negative relationship with his family members, mostly his parents, is what drove him to produce unexplainable behaviors that lead him to run away from society and in the end cost him his life.

In the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, a man named Chris McCandless, who left is family to travel the world. He went through the hottest and the coldest places. He even climbed mountains. He met some new people who became his new family and friends. (When he died in Alaska) a lot of people started to act like Chris by leaving home and living off the wild. But before Chris was even born a man named Everett Ruess did the same thing but whose body was never found. “Everett, who was born in Oakland, moved from state to state as a child. Eventually they finally settled in California where Everett had his first alone adventure. “As he grew up and started to take more deadly adventures, one finally leads to his disappearance in Davis Gulch” (krakauer 89). Even though Chris and Everett were born in different times they had similarities. They both went through hardships with their body and they both wanted to be alone. Along with

I don’t think that Krakauer should have been the person to write the book, since he was so opinionated on the subject. I think the book would have been better if it was less about how great he was and more about what actually happened in his life. To be fair, it did have a few facts about his life before he died, although maybe more would have been better. Krakauer’s opinion on McCandless is definitely different than my own, but that’s normal. Opinions aren’t all the same.

Scientist are researching genetic modification for many reasons. Some people think we are not good enough the way we are, and want to create a ‘perfect’ person. We have been given the ability to learn how to heal sickness and fix wounds with science. However, we have a responsibility to use this information wisely. We have been created with unique gifts and those gifts are important to the enhancement of life. Likewise, while researching about the Author of “The Perfect Stranger”, Amy Sterling Casil, I have discovered that she also has similar feelings about the gifts that we have all been given. We need to consider a few things as we review Casil’s story “The Perfect Stranger”. First, medical advancement is a great thing. Next, we need to make sure we are taking responsible steps while advancing and not creating even more division in our society. And lastly, we need to make sure we don’t lose our diversity and unique qualities. Although, some people believe genetic modification is what we need to better the human race, in actuality genetic modification can be dangerous, because overstepping our boundaries will produce something that is no longer authentic or that is unable to relate on a genuine level.

The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a story told from the first person point of view. The protagonist – who remains nameless – is speaking from the present but looking back on his past. In the first chapter, he talks about his grandfather, a freed slave, and his death. He talks about how his grandfather, someone who lived a quiet life, spoke in such a hateful way. The narrator, who now lives a quiet life just like his grandfather, remembers the words he said as he was dying, “agree ’em to death and destruction,” speaking of how the black community would “destroy” the white community. The words his grandfather said still haunt him, however, he insists on living a humble and quiet life. In fact, in his high school graduation speech he

In Part 1 of the novel, Meursault does not fully grasp the significance of life because of his absurdist way of life. Camus presents Meursault as a person who does not live life, but reacts to what life presents him. Meursault is incapable of understanding the metaphysics of the world due to his lack of emotions. The greatest understanding of Meursault is through his own mind; instead of being subjective, he is objective. “Behind them, an enormous mother, in a brown silk dress, and the father, a rather frail little man I know by sight” (22). His thoughts include “note-taking” details about his environment with an

The Civil Rights Movement that began in the late 1950's was a struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to primarily African American citizens of the United States. In the end, African-Americans won basic rights long denied to them, as well as inspired other discriminated groups to fight for their own rights, which had a deep effect on American society. Many blacks took part in this movement, whether it was through protesting or holding demonstrations. However, some blacks used writing as a means of contributing. James Baldwin published Stranger in the Village as a means of expressing his views of African-American racism. As a result, their efforts helped set the foundation for equal rights among blacks for generations

Truth and honesty is the aspired driving force within one’s life but it can be as destructive as deceit and dishonesty. People always yell, “Tell the truth, be honest with me!” but when all things are said, their first reaction is to call out the lack of sympathy of the person. In the novel, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Meursault lives his life through truth and honesty but societal morals and values often bring him down in more ways than one.

The French philosopher Roland Barthes once said, “Literature is the question minus the answer” (Barthes 2). This statement hold true for most works of literature that explore a central question. According to Barthes, literature often raises a question, but leaves it up to the reader to determine the answer. The Stranger by Albert Camus is an excellent example of how a central question, “Is there value and meaning to human life?” is raised and left unanswered, resulting in different interpretations of the answer, depending on the viewpoint of the reader. Although the question is never explicitly answered, Camus offers perspectives on what French society regarded the answers to be, such as connections with others, elusion to freedom, and faith in religion and God.

The Fall, written by Albert Camus, is a book full of many philosophical conversations and topics to ponder. One thing that makes it so interesting is that it is written in second person, so Clamence is addressing the reader as a character. The basic plot of The Fall is that the reader follows Clamence around Amsterdam as they converse about life (more specifically, his life), and in doing so the reader learns that he has been trying to find a way to live without judgement. In the end, he decides slavery is the best answer, because if one simply skips the court and goes straight to jail, he does not face judgement at all. This view can already tell you that although he is an intelligent man, he has many strange and not-so-useful philosophies

At one point, he declines a job offer to go to Paris. Despite the fact that he'd be able to leave colonial Algeria for Paris, which would seem like a good life choice for many, he doesn't care for the offer. Meursault said that “people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that [he] wasn't dissatisfied with [his] here at all” (41). Meursault shows himself not only be indifferent to things or people around him, but that he's also indifferent to his future as everything is the same to him. In his relationship with Marie, Meursault was indifferent to the idea of getting married to her. When asked about marriage and if he really loved Marie, he responded that “it didn't mean anything but that [he] probably didn't love her . . . that it didn't really matter and that if she wanted to, [they] could get married” (ibid). Here he was, saying that he didn't care if he got married. By doing this, he discarded his own ability to decide his future, and instead put it in the hands of someone else. In this respect, Meursault is also like the world, in that his future is decided by others, but unlike the world, Meursault has the ability to decide his future, but never takes the chance, because, like the world, he doesn't care.

There is no end to the amount of philosophies that exist in society. From humanism to darwinism, every person that ever lives has his or her own philosophy on life and its meaning. For example, Albert Camus, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, shares his philosophy of absurdism and existentialism throughout his novel, The Stranger. Using his main character, Meursault, Camus expresses absurdism within every line in the novel. In the beginning of the story, Meursault is an average man who just cannot seem to grasp the need for rationale behind his every action like society has pressured him to believe.

Many people often base their opinions on a person by judging his whole life in general and his attitude towards life without caring about who the person really is deep down inside. This unfair reasoning can occur in the courtroom when people are put on trial and the judge and the jury must delve into the life of the accused and determine if he is a hazard to society. Occasionally, the judge and jury are too concerned with the accused’s past that they become too biased and give an unfair conviction and sentencing. In his novel, The Stranger, Albert Camus uses the courtroom as a symbol to represent society that judges the main character, Meursalt, unfairly to illustrate how society forms opinions based on one’s past.

The essay “The Naked Face” written by Malcom Gladwell is about the ability of recognizing the meaning behind someone’s facial expressions. He starts the essay with a life or death situation between an inner city police officer and a suspect that both are pointing guns at each other. The officer clearly has the right to shoot the suspect, but decided not to base on a hunch that the armed suspect was not a threat (Gladwell 24). Gladwell then demonstrates that the police officer is one out of a thousand people that scored really well on a psychology test to determine if someone is lying or telling the truth based on facial expressions (Gladwell 59). Gladwell’s essay then continues with

Albert Camus, born in colonized Algeria, a father to absurdism, and author of The Stranger confronts the philosophical themes of purpose, integrity, and passivity. The Stranger’s main character, Meursault, is a laconic man whose passive actions and brutal honesty lend to connections in his court trial. Those of which condemn him to execution. Meursault falls victim to his complete honesty, complete passivity, and disregard for the purpose of action. He is straightforward, and his actions usually follow his thoughts. Actions and decisions that most average people regard as serious, Meursault regards as arbitrary. Meursault’s exemplification of absurdism proves to not only lend to his characterization, but as a comfort in his death as well.