“The Stranger” is an appropriate title for the novel’s main character because when you think of a stranger you think of avoiding them because of safety concerns. Meursault is a type of person that you’d avoid if you saw him randomly in the streets. He’s always looking up at the sun and is very socially awkward. When Meursault is asked if he’d been traveling for a long time after discovering he had been leaning against a soldier on the bus while asleep he simply says “‘yes’… so [he] wouldn’t have to say anything else” (Camus 4). A stranger is also someone who looks and acts strangely which is fitting to Meursault. Meursault never shows emotion and finds it annoying when people do. At his mother’s funeral he gets annoyed of a lady he didn’t …show more content…
Meursault is very much like someone autistic. Autism is a developmental disorder which affects a person’s communication skills, social restrictions and behavior. Like people with autism, Meursault doesn’t know when to show emotions nor think they are important. You can see this pattern in Meursault when he is informed about his mother’s passing. It does not seem to affect him at all and shows this by saying “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know” (Camus 3). Meursault also only speaks when he feels as if he has too and has no interest in having connections/emotion relationships with others. When asked by Marie, his girlfriend, if he loved her he simply replied by explaining that “it didn’t mean anything and that [he] didn’t think so” (Camus 35) which shows the lack of care and/or interest in his relationship. This can also be seen when he is having a conversation with Raymond Sintes, his neighbor. When asked to be pals Meursault “didn’t say anything, and [Raymond] asked [him] again…[He] said it was fine” (Camus 29). The characteristics Meursault holds are very similar to those of people with autism. It is very common to meet people with autism nowadays. Therefore is would be highly likely that a person encounters someone like Meursault at some point during the course of their
Meursault shows very little love or sorrow at the fact of his mother's death. A normal man would feel pain and regret for not being by her side while Meursault does not even care much about the date she passed away. Immediately on the first page in the novel, we confront the situation where Meursault's mother dies, and he does not care about it. "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: `Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday" (3). Meursault does not bother to call back and find information about his mother. Meursault shows no emotion or care for his mother because he sends her away for someone else to take care of her. During the last years of an elder person's life, they are invited to stay with the family in order to become closer with one another. Meursault could care less as he shows no sign of pain, and goes off to do something else. He resembles a figure where an issue as important as death does come as a priority. "We are the hollow men/ We are the stuffed men/ Leaning together/ Headpiece filled with straw" (Lines 1-4).
In “The Stranger” Meursault embodies all of the six existential themes. The first existential theme is freedom. Freedom means that whatever happened prior to now does not influence what your next choice in life will be, we are free to make any choice we want. Meursault displays Freedom by just doing as he wishes to do. In part one of the novel Meursault’s mother dies so he attends the funeral, nothing out of the ordinary. While at his mother's funeral, Meursault decides to smoke cigarettes, drink a cup of coffee, and also he fails to cry. This just shows how Meursault is displaying his free will, he does not let the influence of his mother dying effect what he wants to do.
Meursault resists being typecast into an archetypal moral category in many of his deeds and actions. Many of his actions in Part One of the novel help contribute to the fuzzy picture of the character. For example, at his mother's funeral, Meursault does not cry or weep in the typical mourning fashion, but rather sleeps during the vigil and entices one of the other mourners present to smoke a cigarette with him. This would be typically considered "evil" behavior, in the context of the story. He could easily been seen as disrespectful and seditious toward his mother and the established procedures of mourning, which seem to be fairly definite at that era in France. However, this "evil" mold can easily be shaken if one considers that Meursault may be more shaken than anyone else present at the funeral. Considering the other events in the novel, it seems as though he does not have a large capacity for emotion. Based on this, it is not unreasonable to assume that the events leading up to and including his mother's death may have overtaxed his limited scope of emotion, and he was therefore nearly incapable of mourning in the "normal" or expected way for his mother, but rather had to resort to his own, more c...
Meursault is a man who chooses to observe people, rather than interact with them. He often people watches from his balcony in the evening, than actually going down to communicate with them. While he was in exile, he was forced to converse and discuss his feeling to strangers like his lawyer, and the chaplain of the prison. Due to being a severe introvert, the idea of discussing his problem to another person was foreign for him. The experience of opening himself up to others for help was alienating, and contradicted his personality of being a stranger to everyone. Camus writes, “He didn’t understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else.” (Camus, 66) Meursault wanted to help his lawyer understand his point of view, but his nature is so closed off that he’s unable to put his feeling into words for others
The Stranger begins with an Algerian man named Meursault. Meursault is informed by ways of telegraph, that his mother has died. After hearing this information he travels to Marengo, to visit his mother's past home. When he arrives, after sleeping the whole trip, he is greeted by the director of the old folk's home. The director asks him if he would like to see his mother, but Meursault declines. That evening, he takes part in his mother’s vigil in the retirement home and the following day a funeral takes place. During each of the religious ceremonies, Meursault displays little to no remorse. Throughout the vigil: he smokes a cig, drinks some coffee the director gave him, and falls asleep a number of times. At the funeral service in the nearby village he displays himself as a very inconvenienced, burdened disposition. He talks of his annoyance with the scorching sun and focuses more on the funerals attendants, than showing remorse for his dead mother. The very next day, Meursault goes to a public beach. There he stumbles upon Marie Cardona, a previous co-worker and acquaintance. Later...
But it is easy to tell that these are much more serious than simple abnormal human behavior. Meursault behavior can be described as if he is a sociopath. He acts without any sense of moral responsibility, where one immoral activity is acceptable to him, and another immoral activity is not. He sees life not as a string of right or wrong decisions as most healthy, normal people would see life as, however, he only sees it as “do or do not”, meaning that he sees everything in his life simply as a decision that could be made, not as one that should or should not be made based on that particular person’s moral compass. This is something that is extremely common in sociopaths. Meursault also acts without realizing the repercussions of any of his actions. It can be seen through his conversations with the people around him that whenever he is asked a question, Meursault shows a complete disregard for the feelings of anyone else, and is brutally honest with people because of his social ineptness. Rather than telling people what they would want to hear, as an act to give the best impression of himself on others, Meursault says whatever is on his mind which commonly results in strange reactions from the “normal” people he is in conversation with. This lack of concern for the emotional well-being of others and his effect on that shows another very important example of Meursault 's affliction of being a textbook
Meursault’s emotionless behaviors clearly reveal his nonconformity to society. For example, Meursault could never express any sorrow over his mother’s death. When he first hears about the news, he simply comments, “Maman died today…That doesn’t mean anything” (Camus 3). His remark reveals the shocking extent of his nonconformity because he bluntly expresses his indifference to the situation. According to society’s standards, the death of a mother should tear anyone’s hear...
In The Stranger, Camus portrays women as unnecessary beings created purely to serve materialistically and satisfy males through the lack of a deep, meaningful, relationship between Meursault and females. Throughout the text, the main character, Meursault, creates closer, more meaningful relationships with other minor characters in the story. However, in his interactions with females in this book, Meursault’s thoughts and actions center on himself and his physical desires, observations, and feelings, rather than devoting his attention to the actual female. Living in Algiers in the 1960s, Meursault originates from a post-modernist time of the decline in emotion. Meursault simply defies the social expectations and societal ‘rules’, as post-modernists viewed the world. Rather than living as one gear in the ‘machine’ of society, Meursault defies this unwritten law in the lackluster relationships between he and other females, as well as his seemingly blissful eye to society itself. In The Stranger, males, not females, truly bring out the side of Meursault that has the capacity for compassion and a general, mutual feeling relationship. For example, Marie and Meursault’s relationship only demonstrate Meursault’s lack of an emotional appetite for her. Also, with the death of Maman, Meursault remains virtually unchanged in his thoughts and desires.
Meursault shows little attention toward his family and friends. He has little knowledge of his immediate family which is something
In The Stranger, Albert Camus allows the main character to tell the story in order to give the reader an experience of his own. Obviously, with a novel also comes language, which Camus incorporates cleverly as a way to indirectly illustrate Meursault’s thoughts about certain situations. Although the novel represents a postmodern setting, the author shifts the overall meaning. In The Stranger, Camus applies a unique literary style as a power that deflects blame from Meursault, the antiheroic character. In order to disclaim the fault of Meursault, Camus incorporates several instances in which he leaves a greater sense of authority to nonliving objects, while further drawing attention away from the main character. Based on the implication of personification, the addition of simple sentence structure versus more complex sentences, and the integration of passive voice, Camus demonstrates the importance of this passage of the novel to the reader, while also comparing it to the rest of the book.
In the book The Stranger, by Albert Camus, Meursault is a commonly misunderstood character due to his inhumanities. He does not emote in the same way that most people do, and seems to have an extremely careless attitude towards the things going on around him. In the beginning of the story, we learn that Meursault’s mother has just passed away, and yet Meursault does not show any signs of grief. Another time that Meursault’s abnormalities become lucid is when he is speaking to his girlfriend, Marie, and has a very passive approach to the idea of marriage, which to most people is a major, life-altering decision. Many people say that through the course of the story, in the second half, Meursault develops and learns how to truly “live”. However,
Every character that revolves around Meursault seems to be in direct contrast to him. Meursault is an amoral person who does not seem to care passionately about anything. He acts in accordance with physical desires. In other words, Meursault is a sensualist person. At this particular time in his life, his path crosses with his neighbor, Raymond, who feels as though his girlfriend is cheating on him. He decides to take revenge with minor aid form Meursault. Meursault helps him only because he thinks he has nothing to lose if he does. As things lead into one another, the first major violent act of the book is committed.
Meursault is an anomaly in society; he cannot relate directly to others because he does not live as they do. Meursault is simplistic, even detached; he speaks of his mother's death without regret for her loss, merely stating: "Maman died today." He goes on to mention that perhaps it was yesterday - he is not sure which. He cannot abide by the same moral confines as the rest of the world because he does not grasp them; he is largely indifferent to events occurring around him. Meursault's entire being is sensuous, yet unemotional. He derives a certain level of pleasure from eating and drinking, smoking cigarettes, sitting on his balcony to watch passersby. He likes to wash his hands, especially at work in the morning, when the roller towel is dry. He likes sex. When Marie leaves, he lies in bed and tries to get the salty smell of her hair from the pillow. Yet all these things are tactile; Meursault derives physical satisfaction from them, but there is no emotion attached.
The Stranger is told through Meursault’s point of view as tells the stories of his past. Because it is told through his perspective, his biased perspective and outlook on life are the only insights the reader gets and, therefore, he is portrayed as selfish. In my opinion, by portraying Meursault as a emotionless ‘robot’, the author is trying to convey the reader to believe that Meursault is selfish; but, in reality, he does not even seem to care about himself – which would contradict the definition of selfishness. Meursault’s detachment from ‘normal’ human emotions and bluntness is carried throughout the novel as the permanent tone and a representation of Meursault’s philosophy on life. Meursault’s philosophy is that nothing really matters, he feels indifferent about everything that happens in his life and reacts very nonchalantly to things that a typical human will feel obligated to feel and act a certain way.
Meursault is distant from set plans, ambitions, desires, love, and emotions in general. He has a difficult time with emotions such as regret and compassion. The reader sees the nature of his personality in the first few lines of the novel: "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know." When he hears of the death of his mother through a telegram, he is unattached, and can be considered uncaring.