“Killing an Arab” by The Cure
The Cure’s first single was “Killing An Arab.” The band’s lead singer, Robert Smith, has said in interviews that the song is, in fact, influenced by The Stranger.The title of the Cure’s first compilation album, Standing on the Beach, is taken from a line in “Killing an Arab.” References are clear in the lyrics; the song details the murder of an Arab on the beach. The lyrics make reference to the sun, a fascinating factor in Meursault’s decision to pull the trigger. The chorus is perhaps the most obvious reference to Camus’ work:
I’m alive
I’m dead
I’m the stranger
Killing an arab
The person who has fired the gun is presumably Meursault. The lines “I’m alive/ I’m dead” capture Meursault’s state of mind and his attitude towards life. He seems to be a stranger to life. Interestingly enough, Smith has decided to keep the translation, “the stranger” though the title has been translated to “the outsider,” and could also be interpreted as “the foreigner.” The Cure is an English band, but the title The Stranger is so iconic, it’s easy to imagine it has spread to the British Isles, where readers are offered translations entitled The Outsider.
Meursault, contre enquête
The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud
The novel, as we know, reaches a turning point at the end of Part One, when Meursault shoots the Arab on the beach. Camus, like his protagonist, is a French expatriate. In specifying the ethnicity of Meursault’s victim, perhaps Camus wishes to draw attention to social issues in Algeria at the time, specifically French-Algerian tensions. Twelve years after the novel’s publication, the Algerian War for Independence began and would last until 1962.
The Meursault Investigation (2013) is Algerian author and journalist Kamel Daoud’s response to The Stranger. Daoud tells the story of how the Arab victim’s family copes after his death. The Arab does not speak in L’Étranger. He does nothing to incite violence, except give what Meursault perceives to be an unsavory glance. Daoud’s narrator speaks for the voiceless victim.
The sheer number of years between the publication of L’Étranger and Meursault, contre-enquête is testament to the novel’s durability and its status as classic.
