This week, Grade 11 students began the English Language and Literature unit over Albert Camus’ seminal 1942 novella, The Outsider (or The Stranger). Usually when students are studying literature, they ask questions about how texts shape meaning and help us find meaning in our lives. When studying The Outsider, students began by asking even deeper questions: What is the meaning of life? Can we know if life has meaning? What is meaning? These kinds of questions are explored and challenged throughout Camus’ larger body of work, and The Outsider, published at the height of World War II, one of humankind’s greatest existential nightmares, is no exception.
In this unit, students will explore how Camus presents his audience with a deceptively simple narrative through the lens of a disconnected, apathetic narrator to challenge beliefs and to question the legitimacy of post-colonial power dynamics and human institutions of justice. They will explore to what extent the philosophical thought, global politics, and literature of the early 20th century still ring true and affect us today.