The Stranger, Albert Camus

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Recommended: Analysis Camus's The Stranger

“Between my straw mattress and the bed planks, I had actually found an old scrap of newspaper, yellow and transparent, half-stuck to the canvas. On it was a news story, the first part of which was missing, but which must have taken place in Czechoslovakia. A man had left a Czech village to seek his fortune. Twenty-five years later, and now rich, he had returned with a wife and a child. His mother was running a hotel with his sister in the village where he’d been born. In order to surprise them, he had left his wife and child at another hotel and gone to see his mother, who didn’t recognize him when he walked in. As a joke he’d had the idea of taking a room. He had shown off his money. During the night his mother and his sister had beaten him to death with a hammer in order to rob him and had thrown his body in the river. The next morning the wife had come to the hotel and, without knowing it, gave away the traveler’s identity. The mother hanged herself. The sister threw herself down the well. I must have read that story a thousand times. On the one hand it wasn’t very likely. On the other, it was perfectly natural. Anyway, I thought the traveler pretty much deserved what he got and that you should never play games.” (Camus 79-80.)

Within The Stranger, Albert Camus implements a passage concerning the story of the Czechoslovakian man. Camus employs this passage not only to foreshadow Meursault’s final fate, but also to emphasize Meursault’s antihero status by creating foils between Meursault and the Czechoslovakian man. The Czechoslovakian man’s appearance in the overall story is brief, but his story plays a large part in Meursault’s emergence as a dynamic character. Meursault’s emotionless demeanor ...

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...he climax of his own story. Both men underwent changes, even though Meursault’s changes were far less noticeable. Both men failed to understand the possible ways their actions could be construed until it was too late, resulting in the Czechoslovakian man dead and Meursault in prison, and later, executed. Meursault’s story is that of The Stranger, and the Czechoslovakian man’s story ends with the same fate, as once he returns to his small village, he is a stranger to all, even to his mother and sister. These two men were foils, yet similar in striking ways. The Czechoslovakian man lived out his dream, and his life ended due to the misdemeanor of trickery, while Meursault lived a dull, emotionless life, and his life ended due to the felony of murder.

Works Cited

Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Trans. Matthew Ward. New York: Vintage International, 1988.

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