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The role of language in human development
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The Stranger is a captivatingly odd novel that delves into the mind and actions of a French sociopath, Monsieur Meursault. The author, Albert Camus, successfully captures the essence of Meursault in using language and plot organization that cater to his character. The language and plot organization is what makes The Stranger so unique—the language is almost painfully direct and the organization is simple yet expressive of Meursault. However If I were a novelist, I would not organize my story and use the same direct language as Camus did, because the style in which The Stranger is written and organized is specific to the character’s circumstances.
Camus’ writing style is quite simple. He uses direct, plain, matter-of-fact language, which
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Because of the sequence of the events, the plain, matter-of-fact, deliberate language is justifiable. There are three major events in the novel that stand out to the reader and to Meursault: Maman’s funeral, killing the Arab on the beach, and standing in the courtroom awaiting his sentence. These three events seem so independent that merely implying plot details wouldn’t be enough to help the reader understand the connections between them. Oftentimes in the novel, Camus didn’t provide the reader with explicitly major details between the significant events. In fact, because of Meursault’s character, he can’t. This is because even amidst serious situations, Meursault manages to deviate from the matter at hand and focus on trivial details. Like at Maman’s funeral, “I’d never noticed what huge stomachs old women can have”(Camus 10). He aimlessly wanders about his own thoughts, and oftentimes his thoughts are quite random If I were a novelist writing a story, I wouldn’t use such deliberate language unless the protagonist was in similar circumstances to Meursault’s. Because he’s an emotionally detached sociopath experiencing seemingly disconnected major events, deliberate language is extremely necessary for the reader to understand the connections between significant …show more content…
It’s sequential and balanced, yet somehow feels flawed. As aforementioned, the major events are clear: Maman dying, shooting the Arab, and his court hearing and sentencing. However, it is the events in between that make the story’s organization feel odd or almost misplaced. In between the major events, Meursault befriends Salmano, a horribly sadistic man, and Raymond, a pimp. He also turns down a better job offer and begins a sexual relationship with a woman named Marie. The point of these minor events doesn’t seem like it was meant to build up to the major plot points, but to make Meursault seem human. Meursault is a sociopath who harbors little to no concern for anyone other than himself. For example, when Raymond’s girlfriend cried for Meursault to call the police and he said, “I told her I didn’t like cops”(Camus 36). Yet because of the organization of the novel and the specific placement of details of Meursault’s personal life, the reader is almost forced to sympathize with him on some level. If Camus had written The Stranger excluding details regarding Meursault’s personal life and focusing primarily on how the major events affected him, the novel simply wouldn’t be as good. Without the organization, Meursault’s character wouldn’t resonate with the general readers and The Stranger would just be a story about an unremorseful, sociopathic murderer. Although I personally wouldn’t use this organization when writing
5. The use of short sentences in paragraph 7 creates an intense effect that are simple but strong enough to show Alexie’s determination.The consistent and straightforward arrangement of these short sentences can easily make the audiences feel Alexie’s efforts of studying hard as an intelligent Indian. Also, these short sentences created an confident and steadfast tone, emphasizing Alexie’s determination in reading and surviving.
In Part One of The Stranger, Albert Camus avoids religious confrontations with Meursault in order to subconsciously place blame on Christ for his criminal actions. Camus restricts Meursault’s relationships to further distance him from his mother. Meursault then alienates himself from the typical spiritual ceremonies and actions to demonstrate his distrust of religion. Simultaneously, Camus uses diction of clear and bright elements to characterize people in the novel, excluding Meursault. Camus associates dark colors with Meursault to depict a sadistic persona. To conclude, Camus places Meursault in recurring situations which result in him being distracted by “the light”. Camus uses these literary techniques in The Stranger to demonstrate man’s condemnation of God.
Albert Camus’ The Stranger offers one man’s incite into the justice of society. Monsieur Meursault, the main protagonist in the novel, believes that morals and the concept of right and wrong possess no importance. This idea influences him to act distinctively in situations that require emotion and just decision, including feeling sadness over his mother’s death, the abuse of a woman, and his killing of an innocent man. In these situations Meursault apathetically devoids himself of all emotion and abstains from dealing with the reality in front of him. When confronted by the court over his murder, he reiterates his habitual motto on life that nothing matters anyways, so why care? His uncaring response inflames the people working within the
The emotionless anti-hero, Monsieur Meursault, embarks on a distinct philosophical journey through The Stranger. Confident in his ideas about the world, Meursault is an unemotional protagonist who survives without expectations or even aspirations. Because of his constant indifference and lack of opinions about the world, it can be denoted that he undergoes a psychological detachment from the world and society. It is through these characteristics that exist in Meursault that Camus expresses the absurd. Starting from the very first sentence of the book, “Maman died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” (Camus 1) The indifferent tone from these short sentences convey a rather apathetic attitude from Meursault’s part. Not only does he not feel any sorrow, he also “felt like having a smoke.” (Camus 4) Communicating perfectly Meursault’s disinterest, “[he] hesitate, [he] didn’t know if [he] could do it with Maman right there. [He] thought it over; it really didn’t matter.” (Camus 4) The death of his mother prompts an absurdist philosophy in which he experiences a psychological awakening and begins to place no real emphasis on emotions, but rather on the physical aspect of life.
Albert Camus has his own toolbox of literary devices when it comes to accentuating the theme of The Stranger, one of them being his unique sense and use of secondary characters. Whether major or minor, every character in the book serves a purpose, and corroborates the theme in some form of fashion. Camus describes his secondary characters as foiling Meursault in one aspect or another, and thus, shining light on Meursault’s characteristics. Whether through close connections like familial relationships (Maman) and friendships (Salamano, Raymond, and Marie), or through bonds as distant as people he briefly converses with (Chaplain), or even so much as complete strangers (Perez and unidentified lady at the restaurant), characters that Meursault encounters foil and therefore, emphasize many aspects of his nature. Furthermore, because Meursault aptly embodies Camus’s ideology of Absurdism, emphasizing Meursault through secondary characteristics simply highlights Camus’ doctrine and theme of the book.
In the experimental novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, he explores the concept of existentialism and the idea that humans are born into nothing and descend into nothingness after death. The novel takes place in the French colony of Algiers where the French-Algerians working-class colonists live in an urban setting where simple life pleasures are of the upmost importance in the lives of working class people like the protagonist of the novel Meursault. What is fascinating about this novel is that it opens up with a scene of perpetual misfortune for him through the death of his mother although he seems to express otherwise. The reader perceives this nonchalance as a lack of care. Maman’s death and its impact on Meursault appear in both the very beginning and very end of the two-part novel, suggesting a cyclical pattern in the structure. This cyclical pattern suggests not a change in the moral beliefs of Meursault but rather his registering society’s systems and beliefs and craft meaning in his own life despite the fact that he meets his demise in the end. Camus uses Maman’s funeral to characterise both Meursault and the society and customs created by the society Meursault lives in in order to contrast the two while at the same time reveal how while society changes, Meursault does not. Rather, Maman’s funeral becomes of unprecedented importance in Meursault’s life and allows him to find that nothing means anything in his meaningless world at the time of his death. He finds peace in that.
“But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins.” Meursault is not unlike Sisyphus. In the novel, The Stranger, by Albert Camus, we watch this character change from a carefree man who loves being alive and free to a man who is imprisoned for a meaningless murder he commits but who eventually finds happiness in his fate.
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.
Within The Stranger, Albert Camus includes a passage concerning the story of the Czechoslovakian man. Camus employs this passage not only to foreshadow Meursault’s final fate, but also to emphasize Meursault’s antihero status by creating foils between Meursault and the Czechoslovakian man. The Czechoslovakian man has a brief appearance in the story which plays a large part in Meursault’s emergence as a dynamic character. Meursault’s emotionless demeanor throughout the story distinguishes him as a flat character, at face value, at least. Once he enters prison, he must find ways to pass time, and one of those ways becomes recalling how to remember. The story of the Czechoslovakian man turns into one of his means of remembering, as he reads and rereads this story, memorizing details and forming actual opinions. These shifts within Meursault represent his first real commitment to any single entity, even if that entity exists only to pass time.
The Stranger resists traditional categories of order by not dividing Meursault's body and soul, or body and mind. It denies the order of cause and effect by providing no motive for the murder of the Arab, and resists a reductive reading of itself as a case history of a "monster." The novel contrasts its refusal to interpret with the coherent narrative that the prosecutors create. The Stranger and Nausea explore similar strategies as they interrogate ways to view the world without a system of interpretative illusions. Nausea refuses to assign order to its events by choosing not to justify them with psychology or cause.
In The Stranger, Albert Camus describes the life of the protagonist, Meursault, through life changing events. The passage chosen illustrates Meursault’s view during his time in prison for killing the Arab. In prison, one can see the shifts in Meursault’s character and the acceptance of this new lifestyle. Camus manipulates diction to indicate the changes in Meursault caused by time thinking of memories in prison and realization of his pointless life. Because Camus published this book at the beginning of World War II, people at this time period also questions life and death similar to how Meursault does.
The Stranger written by Albert Camus is an absurdist novel revolving around the protagonist, Meursault. A major motif in the novel is violence. There are various places where violence takes place and they lead to the major violent act, which relates directly to the theme of the book. The major violent act of killing an Arab committed by Meursault leads to the complete metamorphosis of his character and he realizes the absurdity of life.
The climax of the novel The Stranger is reached when the jury declares that the main character, Meursault, is to be executed by gulliotine in the town square. The trial and its verdict are one of the important parts of the novel, as Albert Camus uses them as a metaphor to summarize the three main tenets of absurdism. Camus uses the trial and conviction of Meursault to express the absurdist ideals that truth does not exist, and human life is precious.
After only a few days of trial, the jury in The Stranger declares that the main character, Meursault, is to be executed by guillotine in the town square. The trial and its verdict are one of the important parts of the novel, as Albert Camus uses them as a metaphor to summarize the two main tenets of absurdism. Camus uses the trial and persecution of Meursault to express his belief that the justice system is flawed because of his absurdist ideals that truth does not exist, and human life is precious. In order to reform the justice system, Albert Camus believes that capital punishment needs to be abolished.
Albert Camus wrote The Stranger during the Existentialist movement, which explains why the main character in the novel, Meursault, is characterized as detached and emotionless, two of the aspects of existentialism. In Meursault, Camus creates a character he intends his readers to relate to, because he creates characters placed in realistic situations. He wants the reader to form a changing, ambiguous opinion of Meursault. From what Meursault narrates to the reader in the novel, the reader can understand why he attempts to find order and understanding in a confused and mystifying world.