The Stranger

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. How did your reactions to the death of Meursault’s mother and Meursault’s killing of the man on the beach compare to or contrast with Meursault’s own reactions? Did you learn anything about your own emotional makeup in reading this novel?

2. Did you have any sympathy for Meursault? Do you think you are meant to? How do your own experiences influence your answer?

3. What do you think of the people Meursault chooses to be friends with? Do you think that people are morally accountable for the actions of the people they choose to associate with?

4. Were you sad for Marie when Meursault was arrested, tried, and sentenced? Why or why not?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. What do you know about absurdism and existentialism? How does Camus figure into the history of these philosophies? How have these philosophies influenced culture?

2. How does Algeria’s history as a colony of France impact your understanding of Camus’s choice of setting for this novella? How does it help explain some of the novella’s plot events and characterizations?

3. How would you describe the gender politics of this book? Are these attitudes more attributable to the novella’s moment in history or to its philosophical worldview? If you’re familiar with the work of feminist existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir—e.g., The Second Sex—does that influence your answer?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism. 

1. The narrative voice of The Stranger is distinct. How would you describe this voice? How does Camus create it? How would a shift to a third-person narrator impact the book’s characterizations and themes?

2. How do Meursault’s reactions to physical sensations help to characterize him? How does the novella’s emphasis on sensory detail help to develop its themes?

3. What is the meaning of the book’s title? How does it connect to Meursault’s nature, French colonialism in Algeria, and the book’s larger thematic concerns?

4. Scholars have debated for decades whether The Stranger is endorsing existentialism, absurdism, or nihilism. What evidence do you see in its plot, characterizations, and tone that argues one way or the other?

5. How do Sintes’s, Raymond’s, and Salamano’s characters create moral comparisons and contrasts with Meursault’s character? How does their presence in the novella illuminate the difference between the immoral and the amoral?