Are Catcher in the Rye and the Stranger still Relevant?

Albert Camus’ ‘The Outsider’ and J.D Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ both have central characters who find themselves on the boundaries of the society they live in. Holden Caulfield finds himself ‘lonesome’ in 1950’s New York, in the lead up to Christmas, while Meursault, the protagonist of Camus’ novel faces trial before a jury after committing the murder of an unnamed Arab man, in 1930’s Algeria. The question we must ask ourselves as readers is: are the stories of these two men still relevant to life in the twenty-first century, and if so, why? Meursault, the readers’ eyes and ears in ‘The Outsider’ appears unbelievably detached from anything or anyone around him. The opening line of ‘Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know,’ shows how little empathy this character has. There is no sorrow or regret, it is only a statement. The reader will soon realise that Meursault will only deal in the factual and the concrete. Emotions to this character are meaningless. On the day of his mother’s funeral he notices a man with ‘trembling (lips) beneath a nose pitted with blackheads.’ Meursault’s description of this man is cold and quite unforgiving. He goes into great detail when describing the suit the man is wearing, ‘the black tie with a knot that was too small for the large white collar... the pants with a thin white pinstripe...’ Meursault recognises the physical appearance of this man, but he doesn’t register the emotional reason for this reaction. The reader can appreciate that Meursault is only affected by the environment, he is mentally absent from the funeral. It is not the fact his mother is being buried today that Meursault finds depressing, but it’s the ‘whole landscape’ which ‘is flooded in sunshine.’ Meursault offers a unique view on the world because he is so detached from society. This unique protagonist means his thought pattern will lead us down a different path of thought as we follow his internal monologue. This is a key reason why I