After reading The Stranger for the first time last summer, I did not enjoy it at all. I felt that there was only one simple message of indifference. But after re-reading the book and taking the time to analyze it, I actually really like some of the messages in it and I like Albert Camus' writing style.
This is one of the qualities in a novel like this that I think is important. The necessity to look deeper and take time to analyze a book before the messages become clear. This only makes the themes even more powerful for the reader because it feels as though he or she has thought of it themselves. The struggle to understand a book makes it worth reading. With that said, understanding a book should not be a painful struggle, but enough of one to stretch one's mind and force it to think in a new way; this is how authors change their readers. Not by telling them what life is or isn't, but making them figure it out on their own.
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