Meursault Dialectical Journal

1244 Words3 Pages

1. Setting
The trial was adjourned. As I was leaving the courthouse on my back to the van, I recognized for a brief moment the smell and color of the summer evening. In the darkness of my mobile prison I could make out one by one, as if from the depths of my exhaustion, all the familiar sounds of a town I loved and of a certain time of day when I used to feel happy, the cries of the newspaper vendors in the already languid air, the last few birds in the square, the shouts of the sandwich sellers, the screech of the streetcars turning sharply through upper town, and that hum in the sky before night engulfs the port: all this mapped out for me a route I knew so well before going to prison and which now I travelled blind. Yes, it was the hour …show more content…

In this moment he is hit with a wave of nostalgia that takes him back to the time before he was imprisoned, back to when he was happy and content. He explores the theme that life sometimes takes very unexpected and drastic turns, which absolutely is present throughout the book. When Meursault shot that man, it was completely unforeseen. The book seemed to go on, based off the happy life a man was living but underneath the routine of life a storm was brewing just as a result of Meursault just living his …show more content…

Raymond plays a very important character in the entirety of the book, although oblivious to Meursault, Raymond is to blame for almost everything. Had it not been for Raymond’s drama then Meursault would never have gone to trial. Raymond is the epicenter of all that caused Meursault to kill that Arab man. He made Meursault write the letter, he made him testify on raymond’s behalf, he brought him to the beach and he even gave Meursault a gun to hold on to. However dangerous Raymond might be to Meursault’s natural lifespan, Meursault does not care, he is stubbornly ignorant to all that might befall him despite the uncomfortable feelings of fatigue, hunger and lust. The character of Raymond Sintes pushes forward the plot with his at the time harmless favors that concluded in Meursault going to

Open Document