The Stranger By Albert Camus Comparison

When I picked up The Stranger by Albert Camus, I first flipped through the pages to familiarize myself with the format of the book. One of the major things I noticed was that the novel was divided up into two sections: Part One and Part Two. After reading the novel, I conducted a mental comparison of the two parts. I easily concluded that the two parts made a division between before and after Meursault murdered the Arabs. That being said, I decided to focus on a deeper question. How does the novel being divided into two parts have an effect on the characters? What about the readers’ interpretation of the characters? In the first paragraph of Part Two, I noticed a change in Meursault’s attitude. While Meursault had always been a careless character
The most obvious shift in the novel is the murders. This event instantly shifts the entire story by putting the main character, Meursault, in jail. At this point in the story, almost all of the other characters fade out of the novel, with the exception of Meursault occasionally thinking about his old life outside of prison. This dramatic shift completely changed the way I, as the reader, bonded with Meursault. This one-on-one time between the reader and Meursault’s thoughts allowed me to gain a deeper connection with Meursault before the next big plot shift happens. The next big plot shift is the confirmation of Meursault’s execution. While the confirmation of his execution was a surprise to me as the reader, his willingness to die came as a bigger surprise to me. “Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter” (114). What message is Camus trying to portray when Meursault confronts his death
Camus was unconventional in his writing by never clearly defining anyone- not even Meursault- as a protagonist or antagonist. As a reader, I enjoyed how Camus used the concept of no specific protagonist or antagonist throughout the novel because it make the text “more real”. In life, no one person is simply always the protagonist or always the antagonist. The truth of it is, everybody will do good things in life, and everybody will make the wrong choices and get into bad situations that cause regret. Camus developed an excellent character to portray insensibility, sensibility, love, hate, attachment, and detachment all in one character. Backing this up is a quote from the translator’s