The Stranger Theme Card

QUOTES:
-"After that, everything seemed to happen so fast, so deliberately, so naturally that I don't remember any of it anymore."
-"I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy."
-"Yes, it was the hour when, a long time ago, I was perfectly content. What awaited me back then was always a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, since it was back to my cell that I went to wait for the next day...as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent."
-"For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."

CONFLICTS:
-individuality vs. conformity
-emotion vs. action
-society vs. individual people

VEHICLES:
-diction
-tone
-irony
-symbolism

SUBJECTS:
-the absurd
-alienation
-consciousness

PLOT SUMMARY:
Meursault is a man who lives to fulfill his immediate desires, masking his emotions with this need. He gets involved with a man named Raymond and, as a result, shoots and kills one of his enemies. Meursault's actions and emotional state are put on trial with his odd way of hiding feeling in order to satiate his needs heavily criticized, and he is eventually sentenced to a death which he comes to accept.

THEMES:
-People have their own way of doing things which may be unacceptable to society as large; however, this does not mean that they are wrong.
-Society has a hard time accepting those who deviate from its norms, and as a result, these individuals suffer simply for being true to themselves.

TITLE SIGNIFICANCE:
Meursault is a stranger to society as he behaves in ways that most people do not and that are difficult for most to understand; however, he is also a stranger to himself as he never gives himself time to feel or truly attach to anything, just moving through life doing the things that strike him at the moment. In this way he only gets to know himself through superficial means, not on the deeper level which defines human feeling and existence.

CHARACTERS:
Meursault
Maman
Marie
Raymond
Salamano
the Arab
couple on the beach
Prosecutor
Magistrate