The Stranger is Albert Camus’ enticement to readers to think about their own mortality and the meaning of their existence.  The hero, or anti-hero, of The Stranger is Meursault.  His life and attitudes possess no rational order.  His actions are strange to us, there seems to be no reason behind them.  We are given no reason why he chooses to marry Marie or gun down an Arab.  For this, he is a stranger amongst us.  And when confronted with the absurdity of the stranger's life, society reacts by imposing meaning on the stranger.

Camus does not want us to think of Meursault as ‘the stranger who lives ‘outside' of his society' but of a man who is ‘the stranger within his society'.  Had Meursault been some kind of outsider, a foreigner, then quite probably his acts would have been accepted as irrational evil.  But Meursault was not an outsider; he was a member of his society – a society that wants meaning behind action.

An interesting motif in The Stranger is that of watching or observation. Camus is writing a book about our endless search for meaning.  We are all looking for a purpose in our lives.  The characters of The Stranger all watch each other and the world around them.

(from: http://www.camus-society.com/the-stranger-summary.htm)

…and now, let’s consider the three Shakespeares George W. Bush just read.  They are probably named Doug, Randy and Steve...