Can we talk about how much drinking and smoking is happening during all of this? Just inebriated the whole way through. Drank too much at lunch then split two bottles for dinner anyway. And countless cigarettes the whole while. Curious how much of this is just appropriate to the cultural context the book was first written in, and how much of it is intentionally added for the character?

"And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness."

Did not expect the novel's events, but it is promising and the writing style adds to the themes in a unique way.

Okay MC is kind of annoying but if I had someone waving a crucifix and yelling in my face about God forgiving me when I’ve already said I don’t believe in God, I too would act like that.

There’s something really interesting about how the novel explores the gap between how people feel and how they’re expected to look like they feel. Meursault moves through life in a way that resists emotional performance, which makes even ordinary moments feel slightly off-kilter. Like we’re all socially expected to act or react certain ways and Meursault basically says, “mmm, how about no.”

I also found it intriguing that everything seems grounded in physical experience, heat, fatigue, comfort, discomfort, while emotional or moral expectations feel secondary. Almost as if they belong to a different system he isn’t fully plugged into.

I’m left with a lot of questions. Is it better to feel the “right” things, or to refuse to pretend? At what point does emotional detachment stop being honesty and become something more troubling? And should we all participate in the emotional language everyone else understands?