Being a French, Albert Camus preferred to write The Outsider in French.

The problem of
translating Camus first and most famous novel begins with the title L Estranger which could be
variously rendered as The Foreigner or The Stranger or The Outsider. These translations do have
opposing nuances of meaning. The Foreigner suggests cultural difference, The Stranger suggests
social isolation and The Outsider suggests the personal behavior of an idiosyncratic person who
acts in such a way as to be set apart from others.

The title refers to the central character, Meursault, who is a "stranger" in the sense that he is
psychologically alienated from other people and from the world at large. The fact is we do not
know much more about Meursault. Even, we do not know his first name throughout
the novel. He is simply found Meursault. He is now living in Algiers but previously he has lived
in Paris. In fact he has very little furniture and very few personal belongings. We see in him an
indifference to material possessions unlike others. He discontinued his education and is now
working as a clerk with a shipping company. Here his indifference and alienation from the rest of
the world is noticable.

Meursault does not react to events and to his environment in a "normal" way, for he feels
disconnected from life. His mother's death, for instance, does not cause the ordinary grief one
would expect. On the first page, he even seems uncertain of the day of his mother's death. Later,
he shoots the Arab man for no apparent reason and does so indifferently, as if the act of killing
someone is of no more importance than, say, lighting a cigarette or any other neutral or
insignificant action. He's a stranger in his milieu almost as an alien from another planet
transported to earth might be.

It is difficult to argue that he is a stranger to himself since he is so keenly aware of every

sensation he has and so bitingly honest and direct about his desires and intentions and emotional
feelings:

he asked me a last question: Did I regret what I had done?

After thinking a bit, I said that what I felt was less regret than a kind of vexation—I couldn’t find
a better word for it.
Yet, it may be said he is a stranger to himself if one takes the position that morality and
emotional empathy are innate qualities (something author William Golding contests). In this
light, he is a stranger to himself because he is isolated from his social obligations and moral
duties, as was demonstrated at the vigil for his mother.

It is easier to argue that he is a stranger to society in that he does not hold with, believe in, follow
with society's traditions, rules, mores, or expectations. For example, he does not mourn his losses
since he doesn't feel them other than intellectually. He does not love with yearning, which he
reveals by explaining that he would agree to marry any girl he liked and who might ask him:

Again, it is harder to argue that he is a stranger to his environment since it is his environment

that he feels so keenly and that influences him so profoundly: "the glare of the morning sun hit
me in the eyes like a clenched fist." Yet it might be argued that he is a stranger to his
environment in that he has no way within his coping devices to control or mitigate the raw effect
of his environment upon himself. In other words, it might be said that had he not been a stranger
to his environment, he would have known and understood more fully the impact the sun and heat
and glare and hot wind had upon him and taken measures to protect himself from his
environment.