Albert Camus: The Stranger's Preface

I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit washighly paradoxical: "In our society any man who does not weep at hismother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death." I onlymeant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not playthe game. In this respect, he is foreign to the society in which helives; he wanders, on the fringe, in the suburbs of private, solitary,sensual life. And this is why some readers have been tempted to lookupon him as a piece of social wreckage. A much more accurate idea ofthe character, or, at least one much closer to the author's intentions,will emerge if one asks just how Meursault doesn't play the game. Thereply is a simple one; he refuses to lie. To lie is not only to saywhat isn't true. It is also and above all, to say more than is true,and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than onefeels. This is what we all do, every day, to simplify life. He sayswhat he is, he refuses to hide his feelings, and immediately societyfeels threatened. He is asked, for example, to say that he regrets hiscrime, in the approved manner. He replies that what he feels isannoyance rather than real regret. And this shade of meaning condemnshim.

For me, therefore, Meursault is not a piece of social wreckage, buta poor and naked man enamored of a sun that leaves no shadows. Far frombeing bereft of all feeling, he is animated by a passion that is deepbecause it is stubborn, a passion for the absolute and for truth. Thistruth is still a negative one, the truth of what we are and what wefeel, but without it no conquest of ourselves or of the world will everbe possible.

One would therefore not be much mistaken to read The Stranger as thestory of a man who, without any heroics, agrees to die for the truth. Ialso happen to say, again paradoxically, that I had tried to draw in mycharacter the only Christ we deserve. It will be understood, after myexplanations, that I said this with no blasphemous intent, and onlywith the slightly ironic affection an artist has the right to feel forthe characters he has created.

Albert Camus January 8, 1955