It is interesting how Malte tried to get his mother to have an understanding of his elder sister’s death, unknowingly. He used to wore dresses and become Sophie for his mother. They talked and talked about various things, about Malte, about boys, and other things. It is important to note here that Rilke’s elder sister died before he was born, and his mother used to dress him like a girl in his childhood, to make up for her loss (Gorner 11). It is possible that Malte’s behaviour emerges from there. However, Rilke dwells more on this experience in the Notebooks. Ingeborg, Malte’s sister was not afraid of her death, she accepted it as it was. She told everyone not to make it any more difficult for her because she had already accepted that she …show more content…
His father’s death did not affect him much at the outset. When people said that his father had suffered a lot, he simply dismissed it. For him, he always seemed dead. Does it seem a cold response? Try to remember Meursault in Albert Camus’s The Stranger (Wikipedia Contributors, The Stranger). His response to his mother’s death aroused a cry from people, and he was convicted on that account. Because he did not weep at his mother’s death, and smoked a cigarette instead, he was made into a monster that did not suit to the society. He did not speak much because he simply did not have anything to say. The human society did not approve of such behaviour. It wanted everyone to follow certain rules in order to be considered fit for living in the society. His response, however, represents the response of most of us who would not wish to show it to others because we want to be considered human enough. Therefore, we try to live by the social norms. Is it not the real response that all of us have but does not show it in the fear of social morality? Camus’s The Outsider brings us to this crude reality of our …show more content…
It was as if nothing had happened. He always felt the same way for his father. His father’s death made no difference. He did not feel that his father had suffered a lot until he discovered a paper from his correspondence on which he found the account of the death of King Christian the Fourth who was so terror-stricken, moments before his death, that he repeated the word “Döden” several times. The word Döden means ‘death’ in Dutch. After reading that account, Malte had no doubt that his father had actually suffered a lot. The fear of death present there at his bedside would have been horrifying, and the fear only ended after death, when the last wish was fulfilled – not being buried
In The Stranger, Meursault is not able to tolerate intensive light which causes him to think narrowly and furthermore behave according to such thoughts. He does not seem to feel any emotions at his mother’s funeral as he shows more interest in the details of her death than his emotional connection to her as his mother. He is more bothered by the intensity of the light than the fact that his mother died. He portrays this kind of attitude at his mother’s funeral and then later on ...
This passage is set before Meursault’s execution with the chaplain entering the scene, and telling Meursault that his “heart is blind”, leading to Meursault to yell and delve into his rant, and moment of consciousness. The passage has a calm in the beginning as if Meursault catches his breath from yelling previously, and he starts to reassure himself that he is not wrong for expressing his views as it went against the public’s religious beliefs, and states that this moment was so important to him that it was if his life was merely leading up to it. Why this particular scene is important to Meursault is that this is an instance where he successfully detaches himself from the world, and begins to deconstruct the world’s ideals as his rant shifts on to focusing on how nothing in life mattered. Meursault describes his gripes with the chaplain’s words as he explains his reasoning as to why the concept of a god is flawed as Meursault saw that everyone was inherently the same, with equal privileges just how often people could express them separated them. The passage continues with Meursault arguing that everyone would be faced with judgment or punishment one day, and explains why his own situation was not significant as it was no different. After that explanation the passage ends with Meursault posing the concept of everything in the world being equal both in wrongdoing and life in general, evident in his example of saying “Sala¬mano's dog was worth just as much as his wife.” Although the passage shows Meursault challenging the ethics and morals that the world around him follows, it does have instances like the end in which we see that the rant is still expression of Meursault's complex emotions, as it is unclear whether it is fear or a...
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).
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...
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.
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
I, Albert Camus, am a famous French author who had written The Stranger in 1942. I was born in Algeria, and my experiences there had deeply influenced my thoughts, my work, and my philosophies. The Stranger strongly represents my philosophy involving the absurd and existentialism. When I was twenty-five, I moved to France and joined the resistance movement during World War II. After the liberation from Nazi Germany, I became a political journalist and a columnist for Combat, a French newspaper. In 1947, I retired from my journalist career and continued to write fiction and playwrights for the theatre (Simpson). Although I primarily consider myself a writer instead of a philosopher and I deny being an existentialist, the philosophy I most agree with is indeed existentialism. As one will find in my novel, The Stranger, the main character Meursault views the world and situations through an outside perspective, extreme detachment, and a lack of empathy. His characters tend to view the world as an outsider because I personally grew up in many groups
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.
Humans have the freedom to think, feel, say and act however they want. However, this freedom is constrained by societal norms. In other words, the power to condone (or not) our thoughts, feelings, words and actions lies within the hands of society. Although humans are constrained by the rules society have set, there are a select few who choose to defy it. In both The Outsider and The Guest, Albert Camus portrays the paradoxical struggle against the inescapability of human judgement, and ultimately the condemnation of the individuals who chooses to differ from the norm. Suggesting that society views outsiders as a threat to its order, which is why society separate themselves from people who do not conform to its rules.
It is expected, from every human being, a level of sensitiveness towards others which Meursault seems to lack. Grief is part of all human life, everyone goes through it because we form connections to the
Albert Camus states that “In our society any man who doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral is liable to be condemned to death” (Camus, 18). In the book The Outsider, Meursault defies local convention by not showing the sadness that is expected of him at his mother’s funeral. Ultimately, his life is dependant on this very decision of whether or not to show emotion. In the society that Meursault lives in, one is expected to conform to their standards and social norms. Anyone who deviates from these norms is considered an outcast and destined to die at the hands of society. Meursault was expected to show outwards signs of grief whether it was real or not. Even if the grief is artificial, most people will play to the audience and show signs of grief to minimize the risk of losing their life. Meursault’s was conflicted between following society’s rules and being true to himself. The nurse at his mother's funeral warned him that “if yougo slowly, you risk getting sun-stroke. But if you go too fast, you perspire and then in the church you catch a chill. She was right. There was no way out” (Camus, 22). The nurse’s admonition is consistent with his internal struggle. To Meursault, walking too fast is similar to conforming to society and walking too slow means following his own path. There is no middle ground to the situation, no happy median and no suitable compromise. Meursault faces the challenge of whether or not to conform on three main levels; physical, emotional and spiritual. He has the constant battle between following his physical self; his id, and doing what is right. Meursault also has to decide whether or not to be true to his emotions and decide if lying during his trial is a suitable course of action. Finally h...
before he died, how he died"(34). Ionas' son has died, and he feels as though it
An example that he does not have the same feelings as other people do is when his mother passed away. Meursault did not even know how old his mom was. In the first few lines of the novel he said
...everyone is surrounded by death. Camus explains that life isn’t about what is not envisioned, but it’s about what is evident. Meursault’s feeling of apathy is directly related to his conviction that life lacks necessary order and meaning, “As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope…I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world,” as he awaits his impending death, he finally recognizes that life is the most complex entity in the universe and one only has one life to live, so live it wisely (122). In the end, Meursault changed spiritually because he didn’t concentrate as much on the physical world because while he was in prison, he thought about life’s gifts and (although still atheist) realizes that faith in yourself and life is very important. There is also some irony here; he finally realizes the meaning of live just as he awaits his death.
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.