The Stranger

This book has raised many, many questions for me. It has raised only questions though about how other people think. Mersualt as a character has opened my eyes to other peoples thoughts, I have always considered others feelings and opinions, but never their actual thoughts. Mersualt has a very lazy thought process, drifting calmly from thought to thought in his own personal random patterns. He is always calm in his emotions through situations that may be stressful or an "incredible annoyance" until in the final chapter he snaps and floods all of his most personal thoughts to the priest. It is hard from this stand point to figure out if he is truly an upset or disturbed person or if he is as content and happy as he seemed. I think probably that in section one he was happy, and he was content, but in section two he becomes depressed and sad.

The Stranger post 1

First of all I'd like to say the stranger so far is quite dry, he goes through the motions of his day with a few new, exciting, or interesting things happening. I think those new experiences are there to illustrate his detachment from things that actually really matter, or are pretty serious. We all feel detached from certain events, but regardless, this is an extreme. Some times, I don't care about my Moms job even though it's pretty important that her and her boss got into a big fight or something.

I don't yet know what Camus wants this character to be. Or what reaction we are supposed to get from him, or how he actually feels about these events and people he meets. Camus seems to illustrate what he's thinking and what he's saying in a very straight forward manner, but it confuses me still because I am having trouble putting my fingers on the characters. Mersualt in himself is an extreme, nothing matters why even care kind of thing. But he does still miss his mother, and seems disappointed Marie vanishes in the morning after they sleep together. He is quite confusing. The only other characters we really get to know slightly are the Director and Raymond. The Director is peaceful, and doesn't stand out (which is how Camus wanted) but Raymond stands out, violently. Raymond talks about beating his mistress and all this hate and anger and it's kind of like pop rocks on my brain when he speaks, because I didn't know Albert Camus was going to put such a strange guy ON TOP OF this already strange character.

Do we live in a word that is meaningful and makes sense?

Sometimes, I’d like to believe so and sometimes I would like to believe it is not. I personally think that we make things happen for a reason, but when we throw faith and caution to the wind and let life take the reigns that’s what happens.
I believe things are connected but not in the “Everything is the same, even if it’s different.” Way. That’s just a little silly to me, considering it defies everything I’ve been told since a young age. People tell you, no that’s not a table, that’s a basketball. Not, oh yeah, that tables a ball. Cool right? No no no no no. Wrong wrong wrong. A ball is not a table, but a cup is a bowl. Do not let any one tell you otherwise. It’s just a little wide. Some people get a little frustrating when it comes to beliefs like this, because sometimes I do indeed feel extreme about my views on things like this. I think we all do. But in certain connections, those little ones, you can’t say that there is no connection at all. What do you call a coincident then? Or true love?
Certain thing I guess can’t be connected though. Like things that never witness each other, like a chimpanzee and a pine tree. But they are both living, so there is a connection there. You can always connect things, but things can’t connect themselves with out knowing about them, like we can’t connect our selves with Martians because WE DON’T KNOW IF THEY ARE REAL! Fun right? I think that’s why existentialism is confusing, because in my mind I keep running myself in circles about my thoughts and feelings. In any sense though it’s how we look at it though. Believe what makes you happy.

To Shirly,
I think you're on an interesting track with illusions, because really it sounds cheesy but what if this all is an illusion? The Matrix man. Or something like that. Crazy crazy. This exixtentialism stuff seems very much about your mind and less about your life, which is what I though it was all gonna be about with all this what does it mean stuff.

To Brianna,
I really liked how you broke everything down, it made your unique ideas very clear cut and precise. You also showed a very powerful understanding of the text, and I liked that. It was nice, and very easy to understand. It made all these ideas that are normally very confusing much easier to understand.

What is human freedom?

I think you can go about this two ways. One is freedom from your own mind, as David Banach says, "Each of us is trapped within our own mind". We can achieve this some how, but I don't know how. Jeez I'm only 15. Maybe human freedom is being free of other peoples decisions, and being able to control yourself. Existentialism is a little confusing for me, all this "What's it all mean?" stuff, because I believe it varies so every one asking the same question and getting different answers feels odd. Although I would love for all of us to be able to relate and come to the same conclusions, I just feel like that won't work. We are trapped within our own minds after all. Victems to our ever linger questions, Where am I going? What should I do? What if? Where did those keys GO??

So difficult, I know. But it sucks. A lot of stuff sucks. I just wanna know how to make all that suck less.