Journal #8: Personal response to The Stranger + what literary value do you ascribe to the novel (what makes a book a great work of literature and does this book achieve that)
Before reading The Stranger the second time I cannot honestly say that I had any sort of positive feeling for the book, I did not find the plot or characters interesting on a personal level and I felt the book as a whole seemed flat. In the second reading, however, I felt a lot more connected to Meresault and understanding of his thoughts than I had previously. I still feel like the plot and characters are mostly flat, but I enjoyed attempting to unravel Meresault as a person and a thinker in the analysis of the novel. Personally, I would not choose to read a book like The Stranger on my own but I feel that being "forced" to read it was overall a good experience, it exposed me to a different viewpoint and style of thinking, which can never be bad for me as an individual.
To me, "literature" is any work that attempts to convey a message as opposed to a story. Literature is designed to make us think instead of gratifying us as a reader. "Great" literature is just this same idea with much grander and well designed execution where the writer sends a variety of messages through (almost) everything they do within the work. Using this definition, The Stranger would definitely qualify as a great work of literature. Specifically to students at a high school level, The Stranger is valuable because it brings along with it philosophical ideals which most students at our age have limited exposure to.
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