Albert Camus’ The Outsider (or The Stranger ) features on most high school reading lists. Teachers of English literature are attracted to it because of its slimness; it is compact and written in startlingly uncomplicated language; its protagonist – a man alienated from society - is someone teenagers have no trouble relating to. But is it really that straightforward? Those of us who teach it year after year – have we really felt the gravity of Camus’ landscape-changing message? The students who skim through it year after year – have they really understood Meursault’s stance as they claim? After all, one of the 20 th -century’s greatest philosophers, Jean-Paul Sartre, was completely floored by the novel when he first encountered it during World War II. (His biographer Annie Cohen-Solal says “his intellectual machinery jammed” [5].) In 1943, Sartre, having mulled over the ambiguity of the novel, published “A Commentary on The Stranger ” in the literary magazine Le Cahie...