The Stranger Essays

12th Grade

The Stranger

The Sun reveals itself as a symbol and a motif in the book as early as Maman’s funeral, it continues to be a sort of mood setter for Meursault, it sometimes makes him feel calm and peaceful, while sometimes it annoys and torments him, it presents...

12th Grade

The Stranger

The intrinsic human ability to recognize order has often been a foundation of proof that a higher purpose exists. Many people believe that sequences and patterns in the universe are evidence that human life was intended to have meaning. However,...

12th Grade

The Stranger

A key tenet of existentialism is that as humans, we are all surrounded by absurdity. The very world we live in is absurd, and our actions are the only thing that we have complete control over. In Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov...

The Stranger

"Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it in hiding." ---Ralph Waldo Emerson

A society constrained to specific social standards reprimands those who do not conform to such principles. In the process, a...

The Stranger

"Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it in hiding."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

A society constrained to specific social standards reprimands those who do not conform to such principles. In the process, a supreme...

The Stranger

The death of a loved one is typically one of the most emotionally distressing events people face, particularly when that person is a parent. In most societies, it would be considered taboo for a son to respond to his parent's demise with...

The Stranger

Albert Camus's novel The Stranger is an extremely explicit work describing violent acts witnessed by a narrator who seems to be wholly unaffected by their brutality. The novel begins with death - "Mamman died today" (3) - and ends with the...

The Stranger

The main female characters of Sonia and Marie in Crime and Punishment and The Stranger, respectively, do more than faithfully support Raskolnikov and Meursault in their times of need. Their roles structure the men’s characters and ultimately help...

The Stranger

In Albert Camus’ The Stranger, the main character, Mersault, is confronted with life’s absurdity after killing a man at a beach in Algiers. Mersault spends his days absorbed in living for the moment, granting little import to the past or future,...

11th Grade

The Stranger

When Albert Camus’ novel, The Stranger, was first published in 1942, many readers did not know what to think of Meursault, the emotionally disconnected protagonist of Camus’ story. His absurdist views confused the masses that yearned for meanings...

12th Grade

The Stranger

In some novels, even the most minuscule ordinary objects are subjects of great importance and symbolism; after all, symbolism which adds meaning to the text that cannot be overlooked. In the work The Stranger by Albert Camus, outerwear holds a...

12th Grade

The Stranger

When one questions the existence of God, one often reverts to a specific, troubling question: “if God exists, why are there moral tragedies that cause such great suffering?” In other words, humans find it very difficult when there is an event or...

11th Grade

The Stranger

There is a Latin phrase “Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur,” which translates to “The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived” (Sebastian). These words resonate particularly well when applied to Albert Camus’ The Stranger. To conform...

10th Grade

The Stranger

Meursault, the main character in Albert Camus’s The Stranger, is an intriguing individual with a complicated relationship to the world around him. He is curious by nature, and often wonders about the reality and purpose of the situations he finds...

12th Grade

The Stranger

During the twentieth century, life in Europe changed drastically, due to the multitude of events and changes that crowded this century. From the wars to the effects of the Industrial revolution, the lives of Europeans were constantly changing,...