Annotation Questions for Camus’s The Stranger (Rising 12th Grade)
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Annotation Instructions:
As you read Camus’s The Stranger, choose three of the five questions below to guide
your annotations of the novel. That is, record comments in the margins of your text that
help you address or consider your chosen questions. Below are some handy hints for
creating meaningful annotations.
Why should I annotate? How do I annotate?
(1) On the whole, QUALITY is more important than QUANTITY; thorough
annotations every five pages will help you engage with and process the novel more
meaningfully than scribbling single words on every page. As a reader, you’re in
conversation with the text. Books speak to us; speak back to them. Writing too many
comments is the equivalent of annoying small talk.
(3) Make connections or comment on patterns that exist across the text. When asked
his advice about what novelists need to do to be great, the superb British novelist E.M.
Forester wrote: “Connect, connect, connect.” His answer is a bit of a pun: he means that
an author must connect with his audience. But he also means to connect every aspect of
the novel together: in great art, meaning exists everywhere. Novels are spider webs of
ideas and feelings. Draw the web. When you note something (a symbol, an image, a
character trait) early in the novel, see if you can reconsider that notion if and when it
reappears. The questions below will help you do just that.
(4) Avoid writing down single literary terms like “symbol,” “theme,” or “imagery.”
Talk about the book—not around it. Those terms don’t really help you make any sense of
anything unless you comment more deeply about them. First, notice things—but then try
to explain or describe them.
(5) Personal comments (“Cool!” “Weird!” “I don’t get this!”) won’t really help you
make sense of the book. Avoid them. Personal reactions are lovely—that’s why we
read!—but they’re not the stuff annotations are made of. If you’re compelled to write
such comments, follow them up with legitimate questions or comments that address the
questions you’ve chosen.
Questions:
1. The English word “strange” comes to us via the Old French estrange from the original
Latin extraneus, i.e., “eternal, “strange.” In fact, the Old French word in modern English
is a verb that means to “alienate,” “to “turn off,” “to antagonize,” or “to drive away.”
When we see the English word “strange,” we think “atypical” or “odd.” It’s a word with
pejorative connotations. As children we’re taught to be wary of strangers. Most of us
don’t want people to think of us as strange.
As you read Camus’s novel, in your annotations focus on how the protagonist
Meursault’s behavior is out of the ordinary. How is he a “stranger,” how is he
“estranged,” and how does he estrange others?
2. Albert Camus, an atheist, argued in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” that life is
absurd in that even though human beings yearn for some ultimate meaning of existence,
the universe itself is absolutely indifferent, devoid of meaning; therefore, life is absurd.
Camus believed in the face of this absurdity humans must find for themselves what
makes them happy. As you read and annotate The Stranger, pay close attention to
and comment on what brings the protagonist Meursault happiness and how his
pursuit of happiness is similar to and/or different from the other characters in the
novel.
3. Meursault, the protagonist of The Stranger, is a very passive character. As you read
and annotate the novel, pay attention to and comment on instances of Meursault’s
passivity.
4. Though he wasn’t a philosopher in the scholarly sense, Camus subscribed to the
philosophical school called existentialism. Existentialism is a complex set of ideas that
means different things to different people, but most existentialists embrace these
principles: (1) Who you are is primarily defined by how you act (your existence) rather
than by who you supposedly are “on the inside” (your essence). “Existence,” according to
this view, “precedes essence.” (2) There are no absolute, instrinsic ideas or values that
make life meaningful. (3) A person who recognizes that life isn’t instrinsically
meaningful must accept the terrifying possibility that nothing matters in life, that all is
“nothingness.” (4) However, once one refuses to accept any established beliefs at face
value, one is free to find personal meaning in life, to write new scripts for one’s life after
throwing away the pre-written ones.
Unlike his author, Meursault seems unaware on an intellectual level of the ideas
associated with existentialism. However, as you track his thoughts and actions, does
he come across as a kind of instinctive, unconscious existentialist? Where and how do
you see him not accepting, or even recognizing, the basic standards and values that the
people around him take for granted? On the other hand, do you see any evidence in his
thoughts and actions of personal values or beliefs that make life meaningful for him?
5. Throughout The Stranger, Meursault is judged, very often disapprovingly, by others.
How, why, and by whom (especially in the first half of the book) do you see him
being judged for his social attitudes and actions by people who know or encounter
him? Once he’s arrested on a charge of murder, by whom do you see him being judged
for his criminal actions and motives? What connections do you see between those social
and those criminal judgments ? Once the murder trial begins, how and why do those two
types of judgment become bound up together?