Why YOU MUST Read ‘The Stranger/Outsider’ by Albert Camus (+ Key Takeaways)
If you are anything like me, or anyone I know, then you have likely not spent much time reading — at least, not for enjoyment. You might have been bored by your history textbooks, or especially those English Literature novels that you have to study and write essays about in class. ‘Having fun reading’ is something that is only ever ironically mentioned among most teenagers, or young adults, that have ‘better’ things to do.
But I’m not here to suggest that you should read ‘The Stranger’ by Albert Camus for fun — I’m suggesting you read it so that you free yourself from the shackles of societal conformation! So you can see a reflection of what you might be experiencing in daily life: living in a society fraught with pressures and expectations that often overshadow who you truly are, what you truly think, and how you would otherwise truly act.
A quick summary of the book? Sure, the mother of a nonchalant man dies, and he attends the funeral with a seemingly begrudging attitude, finding it both a curious incident and a relief. Romance, love, he gets asked by a girl to get married only weeks after — and he agrees, because why not? Friendship, oh and violence and death follow; he kills a man with a knife out of defense; but he never lies to his lawyer or the court, always commenting on his indifference despite its cataclysmic consequences: he is sent to public execution.
You might be thinking — what a weird and random story. Yeah, that’s what I thought when I first read the blurb, and even when I finished it. It was only a few days after, when I had let the plot and ideas of the novel sink in, that I realized its genius — and its applicability to all of us.
The main takeaway? We are almost never authentic, or our true selves because society and social pressures beckon conformity. There’s always social media, your parents’ expectations, hell, even your own friend circle, that is influencing the way you think, speak, and act. Why be ourselves when we can be like everyone else, and be socially accepted? Although we might not be facing the threat of public execution for telling and embodying the truth of what we think and who we are, we face perhaps an even more frightening possibility — being ‘The Stranger’ in our current society.
This is why you must read the novel: to see how we are constantly being influenced, consciously or unconsciously, to be anything but our true selves. The protagonist of the novel, Meursault, is a foil to all of US. He thinks, acts and speaks however he damn wants, because that’s what and who he truly is in the first place. Read the novel. You’ll see what I mean by saying that he lives such an easy and stress-free life because of not worry about conforming and being himself. Our default mode of being nowadays is to:
- Detect in what ways we are being weird, abnormal, a social outcast
- by intuition that is regulated by our constant fear of being an ‘outsider’
- by others’ implicit or explicit hints
2. Adjust, recalibrate, conform
- by suppressing who we really are
- by doing what we think we should, according to what we think is the norm, what is socially accepted
Go read the novel and be inspired by Meursault. And be devastated by how society has betrayed truth and individuality in the novel. Then see how we all have a Meursault within us, a you within you — so get out there and be yourself. Here’s what American sociologist Charles Cooley once said (I had to read it out loud more than twice to get it too):
‘I am not who you think I am; I am who I think, you think, I am.’
Unleash your inner Meursault. Unleash your true self. Do not be what you think society wants you to be. Do not betray your own true self. Remember when I asked ‘Why be ourselves when we can be like everyone else, and be socially accepted?’ Well, you answer me this: is living as a shadow of others better than living as who you really are?
The true meaning behind what I have written lies in the novel — so go read it! (And don’t be afraid of being criticized for being a nerd for reading).
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