73 pages • 2 hours read
Albert CamusThe Stranger
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 1, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
A young French Algerian man named Meursault lives in the city of Algiers. One day, he unexpectedly receives a telegram telling him that his mother is dead. For some time, she was a resident in a retirement home 50 miles outside of Algiers. Meursault asks his employer for time off to attend the funeral. The employer is reluctant; he makes Meursault feel ashamed to ask. Afterward, Meursault regrets his feelings of guilt.
Before departing, Meursault eats a quick meal and borrows a black mourning tie from his friend and coworker Emmanuel. Meursault then rides a bus to the town where his mother lived and sleeps for most of the journey. He meets the warden at the retirement home, who admits that a man of Meursault’s meagre resources would have struggled to support an elderly relative. The warden agrees that the retirement home was the best place for Meursault’s mother. He then takes Meursault to see the body. A Christian funeral has been planned, but Meursault knows that his mother “had never given a thought to religion in her life” (6). The warden leaves Meursault with the body, which is placed inside a small, cheap coffin.
Meursault is joined by an elderly Arab nurse, whose face is covered by a bandage due to a tumor, and the keeper of the morgue. The keeper offers to open the coffin, but Meursault tells him not to do so, though he does not know why he says this. Much to Meursault’s annoyance, the keeper stays with him in the morgue and they have an awkward conversation. The keeper’s comments about rural funeral practices are, Meursault eventually admits, “rather interesting” (8). The keeper was once a resident who took on the morgue duties quite by chance. He now considers himself separate from the other elderly residents.
As the hours pass, Meursault and the keeper sit by the body. They drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. Later, they are joined by other residents who were friends of Meursault’s mother. Meursault studies these people in detail. One old woman sobs, much to Meursault’s annoyance, but he does not tell her to stop. The keeper explains that the crying woman was a close friend of Meursault’s mother. The hours pass in the company of the quiet elderly residents. Meursault drifts in and out of sleep, struggling to remember all the details of the vigil.
At dawn, the keeper tells the old people to leave. They shake Meursault’s hand as they depart. Meursault meets with the warden again and declines an offer to see his mother’s body one last time. The only guests at the funeral will be Meursault, the warden, and a man named Thomas Perez. The warden explains that Perez and Meursault’s mother were close friends; the other residents joked that they were engaged.
The priest and his attendants arrive. They carry the coffin to the hearse, and then the funeral party walks slowly toward the church. Meursault looks at the countryside as the warden talks about Perez. The hot sun makes Meursault sweat, and he admits that he does not know his mother’s exact age. Perez walks with a limp and struggles to keep up, though his knowledge of the area allows him to take a shortcut. Perez continually takes shortcuts to keep up with the procession but always falls behind again. They arrive in the village and bury the body, but Meursault does not remember much about the ceremony. He happily returns to Algiers.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
Meursault realizes why his employer was so reluctant to sanction his time off: When he wakes up, it is Saturday; between the days spent at the funeral and the weekend, Meursault has four days off work. Meursault sympathizes with his employer, but he will still enjoy his weekend. He decides to go swimming, so he goes to the harbor where young people are swimming in the channel at the public beach. There he meets a woman named Marie Cardona. Meursault used to work with Marie and felt attracted to her. They sit together, and he lays his head in her lap. They swim and laugh; afterward, Meursault invites her to the cinema. She notices his black tie, and Meursault explains that his mother died recently.
Later, they watch a film, and Meursault kisses Marie. She returns to his apartment but leaves early the next morning, as she must go to church. Meursault lays lazily in bed, cooks himself breakfast, and then tries to find something to do. He sits on his balcony and observes the people below. Hours pass by, and he watches the attendees and the players from a soccer game return home via the streetcar. The local team won and the crowd sings jubilant songs, so Meursault cheers from his balcony. Evening arrives and the streets become crowded. Eventually, Meursault becomes hungry, so he goes to buy food. He cooks himself dinner and eats standing up. He prepares for bed and sees himself in the mirror, realizing that he has “got through another Sunday” (21). He notes that nothing in his life has changed, even though his mother is dead and he must return to work in the morning.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
Meursault returns to work on Monday morning. His employer seems to be in “good humor” (22) so, when the man asks about his mother’s age, Meursault guesses that she was close to 60. Meursault sorts through his paperwork and then goes to lunch with his coworker Emmanuel. As they walk through the harbor, they decide to leap on the back of a passing truck. The truck takes them to Celeste’s restaurant, where Meursault is a regular. Celeste, the owner, offers his condolences to Meursault, who drinks too much wine at lunch and tries not to answer any questions about the funeral. Meursault returns to his apartment for a brief nap and then rushes back to the office to finish his work.
Meursault returns home that evening and meets his neighbor Salamano on the stairs. Salamano is famously inseparable from his spaniel, an ugly dog with a skin disease which has left it bald and covered in scabs. The man and the dog have developed a close but acrimonious relationship. Meursault greets Salamano, who is too busy cursing at his dog to reply. Another neighbor, a suspected pimp named Raymond Sintes, enters the building and invites Meursault to eat with him. Meursault goes to Sintes’s home and listens to Sintes’s story about a fight.
Sintes asks for advice from Meursault, who he believes has “knocked about the world a bit” (25). As Sintes cooks, he tells Meursault about his mistress, the brother of the man he fought earlier that day. Sintes has given this woman a lot of money, but he suspects that she is not faithful to him. He wants to punish and humiliate her, ideally by writing a letter that will make her feel so guilty that she will return to him. Once she does, he will spit in her face. Sintes asks Meursault, whom he views as a clever man, to help him write the letter. Meursault can think of no reason to upset Sintes, so he writes a long letter as the two men drink wine and smoke cigarettes. Sintes is pleased with the results. He claims that he and Meursault are now friends and even offers his condolences regarding Meursault’s mother. Meursault does not mind being friends with Sintes. As the hour is late, he returns to his apartment, where he hears Salamano’s dog whining through the walls.
Part 1, Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The opening lines of The Stranger establish the disconnect between Meursault and the rest of the world. The death of a parent is commonly considered a life-changing moment, but Meursault acts as though he is dealing with a perfunctory, irrelevant matter. He does not know exactly when his mother died and does not seem to care. Indeed, he feels more guilty about asking his employer for time off to attend the funeral than he does for not visiting his mother and not thinking about her at all. Meursault does not perceive the world as other people do, so typical parent-child relationships have a different meaning when viewed from his perspective.
Meursault’s detachment and apathy manifest in many ways. He gives bland, noncommittal answers to Marie’s important questions and barely thinks twice about Sintes’s proposal to humiliate a woman. Meursault cannot see how his actions may be meaningful, so he does not contemplate Marie’s reaction when he answers her questions, and he never considers that writing this letter for Sintes might lead to violence. Meursault is detached from the world, but this attachment does not benefit him. He hurts and disappoints other people because he cannot connect with them or empathize with their concerns.
The funeral is an example of Meursault’s apathy returning to haunt him. As his mother lays in state, he sits vigil beside the body. Meursault does not reflect on his mother’s life; he was not close to her and, as an atheist, the body has no spiritual meaning to him. He spends more time smoking, drinking coffee, and sleeping, making no effort to appear sad. Even at the funeral ceremony, Meursault occupies his thoughts by scrutinizing the other guests. He does not feel any attachment to the wider world, so he does not care how he is perceived by others. He is aware that he is expected to cry, but he does not want to display insincere emotions. Meursault’s apathy is not cynical or self-serving; it is simply who he is. At the trial, this apathetic behavior will condemn Meursault to death.
Thomas Perez is a natural foil to Meursault, as he was the person who was closest to Meursault’s mother. He is genuinely saddened by her death and feels a painful amount of grief, in stark contrast to the dead woman’s son. Perez’s symbolic importance is emphasized during the funeral procession. The old man keeps falling behind, and Meursault notices his struggle but does not help. Sincere, heartful emotions are irrelevant in an indifferent world. Perez’s sadness is a heavy emotional burden, which is reflected in his struggle to walk, but Meursault is not weighed down by grief. Apathy does not burden Meursault physically or emotionally, but it will later be his undoing.
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