tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6314153999433039559.post1485356196300061545..comments2024-02-25T07:50:10.558+05:30Comments on KRG – The Kochi Reading Group: The Stranger by Albert Camus ― Apr 13, 2012KRG Convenorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06767522484671572164noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6314153999433039559.post-69524989653378305102012-12-07T11:18:33.490+05:302012-12-07T11:18:33.490+05:30Dear teacher from NYC,
I am glad you came to the b...Dear teacher from NYC,<br />I am glad you came to the blog I maintain for the Kochi Reading Group (KRG). May I encourage your students to also comment, if they wish.<br /><br />Please do come again to Kochi and get in touch with me, kjcleetus“at”gmail.com<br /><br />Perhaps you can attend one of our monthly sessions as a guest, if our session date, posted at top right, happens to coincide with the visit. We welcome visitors and they can participate too - Tom Duddy from Brooklyn did at one of our poetry sessions:<br />http://kochiread.blogspot.in/2012/03/poetry-session-on-mar-16-2012.html<br /><br />My wife and I celebrated her birthday in August this year by spending a great weekend in NYC with our children.<br /><br />- joe<br />KRG Convenorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06767522484671572164noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6314153999433039559.post-66052994537992715522012-12-07T09:59:13.163+05:302012-12-07T09:59:13.163+05:30Oh my goodness. I love what I am reading here. I a...Oh my goodness. I love what I am reading here. I am a high school teacher in New York City. My class is reading "The Stranger" now. I look forward to sharing with them your meditations on this novel. Two years ago I visited your beautiful city. I was there for almost two weeks. I hope to visit again someday. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on-line. How generous!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6314153999433039559.post-61023606052162047252012-04-20T00:21:18.803+05:302012-04-20T00:21:18.803+05:30Meursaultian man appears sub-human. Since he is se...Meursaultian man appears sub-human. Since he is seems incapable of entering into the joys and sorrows of others and is hardly aware of his own, one wonders why he cannot be classed as autistic. <br /><br />However, there are stray glimpses of some latent humanity - his perception of the strange link between his neighbour and his pathetic dog; his realisation that by his almost robotic shooting of the Arab, he had opened the door of his own misery; his musings during the courtscene and after his outburst against the chaplain, that the scents, sounds and simple joys of the world had in some way meant something to him. That if anything could have made him happy, he had been happy.<br /><br />I see two religious motifs in the book, I am sure unintended by Camus. One is the description of the shooting. The motiveless act, scarcely volitional, seems to mirror the Fall of man, which was as shorn of positive motive. The eating of the apple was such an insignificant act of disobedience, and yet it opened the door to man's undoing, condemnation and death, as his act does for Meursault.<br /><br />The other is the experience of the universe "speaking" to Meursault, whom the world of men condemned for his callousness and amorality, through the "signs and stars" that he saw from his prison cell. It was a mystical experience that Meursault had, and offsets in a perverse way the madness that the sun had earlier infused in him.<br /><br />Despite these flashes of human feeling, the only sign that he is reacting to the world of men is his macabre desire that cries of execration should accompany his last moments on earth. <br /><br />Though he was a poor lover, loving his mother, his neighbour and Marie with so faint and feeble a love, he proves quite animated in his hate, if only in his last hours on earth.TMnoreply@blogger.com