# Camus' "The Stranger": I am the Stranger



## Surfer Rosa (Nov 27, 2015)

I read "The Stranger" recently. Nothing have read before comes close to capturing my present situation quite like this. Some of the more extreme symptoms of depersonalization have been described very well online, by members of this forum and otherwise, but the overarching problem I have can best be explained by looking at Mersault in this book.

The entire book is about Mersault's slow and difficult fall from grace, after his mother dies and he can't be moved to tears. The book ends with him being sentenced to death for the third degree murder of some criminal who was threatening to attack him, only he was unfairly tried for first degree murder because, "What kind of moster doesn't cry at his mother's funeral?

Unfortunately, the book is all too relatable.

There were a few other important points in the book. He hung around with some questionable characters, and served as an accomplice to their crimes because "why not?" He agreed to marry a girl he didn't love in return because "why not?" He even called life unreal at a few points, and the descriptions of his environments are from a very detached perspective, even detached from his own senses.

The only emotions he seemed to feel were almost animalistic in how basic they were: fear, anger, sexual attraction, platonic physical attraction, tiredness, and stress. He didn't seem to feel anything more complicated than that, so he was called "odd," "callous" and eventually "a monster."

What a fate.


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