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

for Algeria. The three novels convey injustice during the colonization, and Dead Man’s Share depicting life after independence. Sometimes even humans respond to injustice by injustice and one may wonder why. That’s exactly what the main character does in the Meursault Investigation by killing an innocent French man to seek justice and get revenge for his brother. But do we have the right to harm anyone? How is injustice portrayed in these three Algerian novels?
There are so many things that are unfair in life and every human being has a different definition of injustice. If it exists that means that a majority of people believes in justice and tries to enforce it. All humans should have equal rights. Injustice reminds us cruelly that it is not necessary to live good and real to be well treated by life. There is a saying by Plato, “The worst evil, apart from injustice, is that the author of the injustice does not pay for the penalty of his fault.”(Plato, 1). This relates to Meursault being prosecuted not necessarily because of the crime he committed but because of his careless self. Also it relates to Haj Thobane when he killed all these families to take their goods but then his death is portrayed as a suicide when in fact it was murder. These following sources also speak about injustice. A Parable of the Overthrow of French Rule in Algeria (Scherr, Arthur) speaks about the depictions of Arabs and Muslims in the French colony of Algeria. It also speaks about the history and the injustice of French imperialism and the Stranger as a parable of political change. The following journal, "Can We All Get Along?” takes note of the ever outstanding concern for African Americans being targeted by law enforcement personnel. Detective fiction and working through: Investigating the (post) colonial past in Boualem Sansal’s Le Serment des barbares and Yasmine Khadra’s La part du mort; these articles discuss the collateral damages from psychological standards. In fact that is why in this article the term Freudian model is implied. Thus showing critical psychical analysis on how the post colonial era affected the people who lost their loved ones. The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir, a young boy from Kabul Afghanistan, whose closest friend is Hassan, his father's young Hazara servant who gets raped.
The Stranger is part of what Albert Camus calls "cycle of the absurd" and which transposes into the novel his philosophy of the absurd, that the existence has no meaning and that only fate and luck guide one’s steps. It is interesting to notice that Meursault seems to
suffer rather than act as if he is a tragic hero not a master of his destiny. In chapter 6, Meursault, his friend Raymond, and his other friend Masson are walking on the beach when
suddenly they notice two Arabs who are staring at Raymond.

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

death.
The word "stranger" as indicated in the title, commonly claims that someone does not belong to the group or someone we do not know.

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

himself.
In The Meursault Investigation, referring to the Stranger, Meursault’s victim has no name, no age nor a life. The narrator has devoted his life to give a name to the Arab who is his brother, to show the world that the Arab had a life, a family, and a history. But what life? What family? What story? This mission weighs on him as curse. He is labeled as “The Arab” and this is a sign of segregation. Haroun from his childhood growing up in isolation and grief with his mother, is the main character of the novel. However, Kamel Daoud starts his novel with “Mama’s still alive today”, even though Camus has taken away his brother Musa, he still has his mother. As the character of Camus, Haroun has a mother present and absent at the same time. “Mama wanted to believe—irreversibly—that the water was the culprit that the water had carried off her son’s body. My body, therefore, became this visible trace of her dead son, and I ended up obeying her unspoken injunction.” (Daoud, 41) He had to live in his brother’s body to please his mother, he was faced to injustice since the day he lost Musa. Haroun fights back by also committing a crime, not because of the Sun but because of the moon. More specifically Meursault justifies his actions by blaming it on the heat. However, Haroun kills this French man to seek justice not because of the sun but because he felt that he owed this to his brother. Although, Haroun kills a French person, who has a name, Joseph. “Camus occasionally implies that Meursault internalized the anti-Arab, racist ethos of the French, which depersonalized the Muslims, considering them as nonentities whose lives possessed little value.” (Sherr, Arthur, 52) Meursault is an anti-Arab and this embodies the character of a racist French person amongst Arabs. Before colonization, the French devalued the Arab society. The superior race always believes that they are bringing a more proper civilized manner and culture to the inferior race whom are the Arabs. “Similarly. In La Part du mort (2004). Llob’s investigations do not resolve many of the complexities of the case. Certain clues convince him that Haj Thobane’s death is not suicide as presumed. But he falls to bring the suspected killer to justice.” (Brisley, 102). From this quote the reader gets the impression that Llob had an instinct that the case was directed for the benefit of Soria.
In Dead Man’s Share, the main character is called Brahim Llob, he is a police officer who is against injustice and oppression. He runs an investigation about a person that just got graced by the government and that was put in jail for murder. Moreover, with the help of a