Who is this guy?

I open up the Stranger, eyes darting through the book, going through the motion of reading, not caring about what transpires in the book. This guy, this Meursault guy, he's such a punk. He's all "blah blah blah, I'm detached, blah blah blah". What is up with that, man? Oh wait, he's giving me insight into his mind now. Oh wait again, I'm starting to understand. Uh-oh, I'm starting to get along with the guy. I'm starting to read between the lines and the motions are no longer just gone through, but rather I want to read about Meursault.

So this Meursault character. I pity him. You see, he lives a rough life. He lives life outside of this plane of existence, instead he is on his own, isolated and alone. I think that this is not exactly the best way to live life, I mean, how is anything supposed to affect you, how are you supposed to live your life if you are in the back seat just watching cars go by? I sometimes can connect to this though, observing things from a purely objective state and trying to gather information on something rather than experiencing it. This is a state I only enter when I'm doing a project or researching something, I try to keep an open mind and look at the facts in this state and be an observer, much like Mersault does in the Stranger. As a result, I found the chapter with Meursault looking out his window and watching people walking around living life to be quite engaging because it helped me observe his world in the same way he does and I could gather my own opinions on everything going on without his being thrown onto me.

I think that is why Camus wrote Meursault in that styling. He wanted us to be able to look through Meursault's eyes and see our own sights, to view the same facts as his world but truly imagine them however we wish to. I think that this is a very interesting technique for writing, seeing how most writers go into detail about how the main character views everything, which Camus does do with Meursault, but he styled the character in a way so that he has no opinion of his own in some cases which allows yours to take over and you get to live the story which I find to be very engaging and much more interesting than most books I find myself reading.

I can understand what it is like to a be a stranger as a result of all of this. I know what Meusault is experiencing because he is observing and I can place myself into the shoes of an observer easier than I can an active participant. And that may very well be the saving point of the story, because being able to live a story, even if it is simple and uneventful (As the Stranger has been thus far) is always better than just reading another.