Alan Cornette (Al Cornett) presents a visual interpretation of The Stranger, a work of fiction written in 1946 by Albert Camus. Apathy is one of its main themes.

          Man measures his stature and intelligence by his own standards, unwilling to admit his nonexistent roll of influence in the universe. He laughs at the chimp, grins at the gorilla, and flaunts his dominance over mere earthly insects. Considering his position on a universal intelligence scale, and the atrocious transgressions upon himself, why would an aware person not look the other way with apathetic disbelief. 

          Of all earth’s creatures, man appears to be the stranger in a gathering of eclectic life forms in a chaotic happenstance of creation. The earth tilts and wobbles and spins in a space dominated by an unhappy sun burdened with the responsibility of holding its planetary children in tow, and aggravated by laws of gravity and electromagnetism, while trying to ward off the scavengers of space – the unpredictable marauders in gangs of asteroids, comets, brown dwarfs and exploding stars.

          The earth stranger ended up on the wrong shore – his boat trapped in a galactic backwater. Dreams of dominance, evidently a remnant of the gods themselves, vanished with his short life. He has not the time for proper deduction before chaos sets him back to a previous state. His gods left on the last tour bus and forsake him with self-appointed kings and dictatorial powers. His spiritual beliefs degraded into a hodge-podge of idols and distortions as he found himself alone like some android abandoned on a windswept and alien strip mine. Now, greed and the quest for power prevents him from following the correct course to preserve the isolated world he inherited from his gods, as he strips, poisons, plunders, and over-populates the spaceship on which he lives.

          The earthly creatures with star blood pumping in their hearts will always be strangers on earth looking for a father and mother, and always have a longing as they gaze at the stars with a great hungering for home.

Painting - Copyright Alan Cornette 2009