What stayed with me most after reading The Stranger was how deeply annoyed I was by Meursault. Every time he said that something did not matter, it became harder to sit with him. The book feels strange from the first page. When it opens with "Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know," you immediately feel that something is wrong. Not in a dramatic way, but in a colder one. Meursault is not simply detached. He seems to live at a distance from everything, even from his own life.
That is what makes scenes with Marie so frustrating. When she asks if he wants to marry her, he says they can if she wants. When she asks if he loves her, he says he does not think so, but that it does not matter. Moments like that are hard to read because they go against everything people are taught to expect from love, grief, and human connection. His indifference feels almost offensive.
I think that is why the novel unsettles so many readers. It does not just present an unusual character. It challenges the emotional structure most people live by. We want feelings to have meaning. We want love, death, and morality to carry clear weight. Meursault refuses that logic, and the refusal feels disturbing.
After becoming more familiar with Camus's philosophy, that attitude started to make more sense to me. In Camus's view, life does not come with a built-in meaning or a fixed set of rules. A lot of what people chase, including social expectations, may not matter as much as they think. That does not make Meursault easy to like, but it makes him easier to understand.
The Stranger is frustrating, cold, and at times almost irritating on purpose. But that is also what gives it force. It pushes you to ask why indifference feels so unbearable, and what that says about the way we try to give life meaning.