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Analysis Camus's The Stranger
Analysis of the stranger by camus
Literary analysis of the stranger albert camus
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Man's Place in Society and Nature in Albert Camus' The Stranger and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse
A general premise underlying the art of writing is that "language shapes and is shaped by the surrounding society" (McCarthy 41). Authors of an age attempt to effect a message through their writing, and inevitably this telegram to society reflects the temperament of the writer in reaction to his environment and historical context . In this light, Albert Camus' The Stranger (1942) and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927) are products of two separate cultures in an overlapping time period; Camus' sparse minimalistic prose and Woolf's lyrical, indulgent discourse represent two different stylistic approaches to a similar theme. The French existentialist and the English feminist distinctly manipulate the narrative structure and employ symbols and metaphors of nature to suggest the depersonalization and secondary importance of the individual in a society essentially incompatible with and indifferent to man.
In particular, two excerpts from Camus and Woolf offer a wealth of stylistic devices in connection with their intended themes. From The Stranger, the chosen passage tells of the main character's (Meursalt) confrontation with a threatening Arab and his resulting murder. The selection from To the Lighthouse describes the general passage of time, using a more poetic manner with its emphasis on description over plot.
Reform in the world correlates with reform in its literature's method of expression; an understanding of Camus' and Woolf's contemporary social backdrop provides insight into the origin and purpose of their works. Born in Algeria in 1913, Albert Camus grew up in a tough, working-class Algiers district and ...
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...tranger. 1942. New Jersey: Penguin, 1955. pp 57-60.
Cruickshank, John. Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt. Oxford University Press, Inc. 1960. 249.
Dyson, Ae, and Morris Beja, eds. To the Lighthouse. London: Macmillan, 1970. pp 19, 198.
Gorsky, Susan. Virginia Woolf. Boston: Twayne, 1978. pp 15, 28, 49, 105, 108.
King, Adele. Camus. Oliver and Boyd Ltd. 1964. 120.
McCarthy, Patrick. The Stranger. University of Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Seltzer J., Alvin. "The Tension of Stalemate: Art and Chaos in Virginia Woolf's ' To the Lighthouse.'" Chaos in the Novel: The Novel in Chaos. Schocken Books, 1974. pp 120-140.
Sprague, Claire. Virginia Woolf: A Collection of Critical Essays. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. pp 1-13.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. 1927. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1951. pp 131-133.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Carlsen, G. Robert. Insights Themes in Literature. New York: Webster Division, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967.
This essay has compared the differences between the societies in these two novels. There is one great similarity however that both make me thankful for having been born into a freethinking society where a person can be truly free. Our present society may not be truly perfect, but as these two novels show, it could be worse.
Meyers, J. (1992). Edgar Allan Poe: his life and legacy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons Frank, F. S. (1997). The Poe encyclopedia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press..
Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe; His Life and Legacy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992.
On September 28, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe arrived in Baltimore, Maryland to take a train to Philadelphia. What was supposed to be a brief stop over turned into an eternity. What caused the death of "the father of the detective story"? The possible scenarios surrounding the events that lead up to his death are the cause of many magazine articles, books, and even recent medical studies. Although no one really knows what happened to Edgar Alan Poe, there are over twenty different theories about what might have happened to him. I will discuss the four major theories of what Edgar Allan Poe's cause of death was.
Asselineau, Roger. "Edgar Allan Poe." American Writers Vol. III. Ed. Leonard Unger. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974: 409-432.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: The Modern Library 1992
Albert Camus was a French-Algerian novelist, essayist, dramatist, and journalist and a Nobel laureate. He was born in Algeria to a French father and Spanish mother. After his father was killed in WWI, he was raised in poverty by his grandmother and mother. He was forced to end his studies and limit his life in theatre as a playwright, director, and actor due to tuberculosis. He then turned his interest to politics and, after briefly being a member of the Communist party, he began a career in journalism in 1930. His articles reflected the suffering of the Arabs in Algeria. This led him to his dismissal of his newspaper job. Later, he worked in Paris for a newspaper and soon he became involved in Resistance movements against the Germans. He started writing an underground newspaper. Camus wrote many novels and his writings, illustrated his view of the absurdity of human existence: Humans are not absurd, and the world is not absurd, but for humans to be in the world is absurd. In his opinion, humans cannot feel at home in the world because they yearn for order, clarity, meaning, and eternal life, while the world is chaotic, obscure, and indifferent and offers only suffering and death. Thus human beings are alienated from the world. Integrity and dignity require them to face and accept the human condition as it is and to find purely human solutions to their plight. He used a simple and clear but elegant form of writing to convey his ideas about morality, justice and love. In 1957, Camus received the Nobel price for literature. He was deeply troubled by the Algerian War of Independence and he immersed himself in the theatre and working on an autobiographical novel. He died in an automobile accident just before being named director of the national theater.
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
French author and playwright Albert Camus once said, “He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.” In the The Stranger and The Guest this philosophy is expanded on by demonstrating how those who do not conform to society are isolated, and portrayed as a threat to society because of their unique beliefs.
3 Woolf, Virginia: A sketch of the past , Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol.2 , sixth edition
Comparing Little Red Riding Hood folktales is a multi tasks operation, which includes many elaborations on the many aspects of the story. Setting, plot, character origin, and motif are the few I chose to elaborate solely on. Although the versions vary, they all have the motif trickery, the characters all include some sort of villain with a heroin, the plot concludes all in the final destruction or cease of the villain to be, and, the setting and origins of the versions vary the most to where they are not comparable but only contrastable, if one can say that origins and settings are contrastable.
Abrams, MH, et al. Eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
Within the Stranger, Albert Camus brought up many questions and a few answers. He created an outsider to society and showed us how he lived, Meursault.