In the following essay, Mistacco offers a psychoanalytical feminist reading of The Stranger, drawing attention to elements of femininity in the pre-oedipal relationship between Meursault and his mother.

In the following essay, Brock provides an overview of critical interpretation of The Stranger. According to Brock, scholarly debate centered upon psychoanalytical speculation obscures the novel's primary significance as a treatise against capital punishment.

It was not until 1961, almost nineteen years after its first publication, that any critic suggested in print that Camus's L'Etranger could be read as a 'racialist' novel. (p. 61) Camus himself insisted that he saw L'Etranger first and foremost as a book about a man who is a martyr to truth…. Throughout the novel, the reader is invited to sympathise with Meursault and see his cult of physical sensation—his delight at the crisp dryness of a hand-towel at midday...