Analysis Of Meursault In The Stranger By Albert Camus

The Stranger by Albert Camus was written in 1942. The main character Meursault is indifferent and absurd, and chooses to live day by day. In this novel, Meursault commits a murder by killing an Arab and did not have any further investigation on the crime. However, Kamel Daoud an Algerian writer decided to write a response to Camus’ book called The Meursault Investigation. This novel is about the victim’s brother that was killed in The Stranger by Meursault. Haroun tells his own version of the story from an Arab’s point of view by giving an homage to his brother Moussa. Dead Man’s Share is a detective novel, but also a political novel announcing the excesses of an authoritarian regime. The author also demonstrates his commitment and his affection

One of them turns out to be Raymond’s girlfriends’s brother. Meursault takes Raymond’s gun, goes to one of the Arabs with whom he has just had an altercation, and shoots him in cold blood. Meursault doesn’t seem to care about anyone’s emotions, he shoots this Arab for his friend. In this passage, Meursault appears as a body fully dominated by his physical sensations. He complains about the sun, and the heat, when he says “I could feel my forehead swelling under the sun. All that heat was pressing down on me making it hard for me to go on.”(Camus, 40) This demonstrates also when he had to attend his mother’s funeral, throughout the journey he complains, evokes the heat but does not speak for a moment of pain he feels for the death of his mother. However, throughout this scene of the murder of the Arab, the reader has access to extremely detailed physical sensations of the character than to his thoughts or feelings, that only intervened at the end of the passage. Meursault shoots this Arab for no reason, he does it for his friend Raymond because he has no sense of humanity. It appears to be a random act of injustice for no apparent motive. Death plays a dominant role, it is the link that merges the two parts of the book, as the first part ends with the death of the Arab and second ends with Meursault’s

A more adequate perception may explain the choice of the title. Meursault can be seen as a "strange" man who lives in the "strangeness". These adjectives sticking to his skin gives us a picture close to the title of this book. The strangeness of Meursault is characterized by his lifestyle and his perception of life in general. Meursault through his account only realized the day of his trial that he is a stranger to the people around him. For that reason, that day he had more ways to close loopholes surrounding his world. The only thing he can see is the judgment issued by the people present in the trial room. We witness the events happening in his life, that he is focused on himself. He can be also called selfish for not having any feelings for anyone. By the end of the novel, for example when he was in prison for this so called murder of the Arab, although it was most likely because of his indifference towards his mother’s death, it helped him open his eyes to the value of nature, of life. However he did not fear death, he meditated and was prepared to die because he is at peace with