আমার পড়া একটি সেরা উপন্যাস এটি। এর উপরে লেখাটা পড়লাম এইমাএ। খুব ভাল লাগল। যারা উপন্যাসটি পড়েছেন তাঁদের ভালো লাগবে লেখাটি, যারা পড়েন নি তাদের ও ভাল লাগবে মনে হয়। লেখাটি ওয়াড'প্রেসে পোষ্ট করেছেন জনৈক ম্যাথু নামের একজন। “They were announcing departures of a world that now and forever meant nothing to me…As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.” The Stranger is indeed a very strange book, to the point that it might be absurd. In fact this 1943 novel is one of the best examples of absurdist fiction. Absurdism is a philosophy rooted in Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard stating that the efforts of humanity (i.e. human being) to find meaning in the universe will ultimately fail (and, hence, are absurd) because no such meaning exists, at least in relation to humanity. Absurdism as a belief system was born of the Existentialist movement. The novel opens with the funeral of Meursault’s mother. That he has settled the old Madame in a senior home three years ago has been judged by his contemporaries as unloving and uncaring. Being completely unapologetic and unreflecting, he does not express any usual emotions that a funeral usually induces. To the caretaker’s utter aphysicallyazement, he doesn’t want to view his mother one last time before the casket is sealed. All these have laid the foundation of his demise. Then the book goes on to document the next few days of his life in a first person point-of-view. Here Camus is silently but cleverly staging his basic theory that there exists no truth to humanity. Meursault himself might not be savvy of this truth then but his actions, which are later deemed remorseless and despicable, demonstrate the gist of this school of thought: the only real things in life are what one experiences physcially, the sensory experiences. This justifies the fact that the first half of the novel is written in very simple sentences that are meant to inform, and not to analyze. As Meursault has explained himself later, his nature is such that his physical needs often get in the way of his feelings. Tiredness can drown out natural feelings for his mother. Only physical experiences–the funeral procession, swimming at the beach, watching a comedy film, sexual intercourse with Marie–move him and make him feel constituent to his being. In these days, he helps his friend Raymond dismiss an Arab girlfriend whom Raymond suspects of infidelity. Later, the woman’s brother encounters the two on a beach and Raymond gets cut in the knife fight. Meursault afterwards returns to the beach and shoots one of the two Arab men. As one might have deduced and reason has dictated, the prosecutor believes the crime is premeditated, using the insensitivity and heartlessness of Meursault as an evidence to support the argument that he is incapable of remorse. That he has fired four more shots at the corpse shows that not one of the moral principles governing men’s hearts is within his reach. But he has told no lies throughout the book. He kills the Arab because of his response to the glaring sun, which beats down upon him as he walks toward him on the beach. Not only does the testimony snap in place what he usually claims about physical needs, it also shows that the death of Arab is not particularly meaningful in itself. It’s merely something else that happens to him, except of huge consequences. It forces him to reflect upon his life and its meaning as he contemplates his impending punishment. His honestly takes a very thorough course but naive dimension during his trial. He is truthful to his atheism and refuses to pretend he has found religion, for he knows he makes his own destiny; and he, not God, is responsible for his actions and their consequences. This realization is one of happiness even though it is “in the gentle indifference of the world.”