The Hero in Camus’s The Stranger (The Outsider)
Certain novels include a character who, based solely on his actions, would appear to be evil, but in an in-depth examination, can be seen in a different, more sympathetic light. The character Meursault, in Albert Camus’s The Stranger, is notable for this description. While his murderous crime and indifference to emotions make him seem to be cretinous, his dramatic transformation at the end of the story make us feel for him. When he finally grasps the theme of the book, embracing the “gentle indifference” of the universe, he also grabs our hearts, in becoming an “absurd” hero.
To begin, the outside observer of Meursault would find him a distressingly hardened criminal. Most notable, of course, is his cold-blooded murder of the Arab. When he declares that it was “because of the sun,” he is labeled “a monster,” by the prosecutor, and our minds. His other so-called crime is being found guilty of indifference. All throughout the book, Meursault refuses to open any part of his self to the emotional world. “Maman died today. Or maybe yesterday,” symbolizes his lack of regard for the people in his life. Later, when he sheds no tears at the funeral and answers nonchalantly to Marie’s talk of marraige, we come to realize that he is without the vital passion that fuels human existence.
So, it would appear that the cards are stacked against Meursault in his initial description to the audience. Yet, Camus manages to add subtle details to the story, which give us a reverse impression. For one thing, Meursault is surrounded by a cast of strangely eccentric characters. When contrasted to him, their violence and odd habits make us pity his situation. There is Raymond, who beats his girl...
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...rasp the meaning of his existence.
Unfortunately, in the final and most indifferent act of his unemotional life, he kills the Arab. When his chaotic nature comes into conflict with the structure of society, he is locked away. Thus, banned from the physical pleasures which had previously sustained his existence, he begins to develop the inner rage and emotional state which define us as humans.
At last, these feelings are freed from the cell of self-imprisonment, but alas, it is too late. He has followed the absurd path all the way down to existentialist enlightenment, but ironically, his reward is death. This just does not seem fair, and we feel for him despite his past acts. Now he is a changed man and we feel he deserves another chance at life. Yet, constrained by society’s justice, his now-meaningful life is dealt the cruelest blow - death - and we weep.
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...
Originally released in French, The Stranger by Albert Camus (published in 1942) follows the story of Meursault whom is a French man living in Algeria prior to the 2nd World War and gives his own unique perspective of the events between when he receives a telegram stating that his mother had recently pass away to when he is executed for the murder of a man only referred to as “The Arab” whom he had shot. Meursault had an interesting outlook on life and it is unclear why he feels the way he does but his tone is constantly detached, plain, and at times subtly ironic. That is the key reason this book is referred to as a panicle example of existentialism and also corresponds with the quote;
Meursault is a fairly average individual who is distinctive more in his apathy and passive pessimism than in anything else. He rarely talks because he generally has nothing to say, and he does what is requested of him because he feels that resisting commands is more of a bother than it is worth. Meursault never did anything notable or distinctive in his life: a fact which makes the events of the book all the more intriguing.
In the novel, we are given a more complete view of Meursault. The story is told from his point-of-view, which allows us to understand the situation as Meursault perceives it. Looking at the situation in this light, we can see Meursault as not evil, but simply indifferent and detached from life. He doesn’t attempt to get wrapped up in emotion or relationships, he just takes things as they come, doing whatever is easiest for him. He becomes friends with Raymond and agrees to marry Marie simply because he doesn’t have a very good reason not to. Seeing the story from Meursault’s viewpoint, we understand that even killing the Arab wasn’t an act of malice or evil intent. As Meursault puts it, “My nature is such that my physical needs often get in the way of my feelings.” With this in context, things begin to make more sense. Meursault’s seemingly cryptic statement that he murdered the Arab “because of the sun” can be taken as truth. Meursault does things that society judges as wrong not because he is evil or wants to appear immoral, but because the sun and heat, symbols for Meursault’s emotional state, cause him to become uncomfortable and act “inappropriately.
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Meursault in the book tries to overcome his emotional indifference within himself. One example shows Meursault emotional indifference against Marie. In this quote, “A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so.” The quote explains how Meursault doesn’t really think about the consequences of other people’s emotions. When he said in the quote it didn’t mean anything to him, it shows he believes human life and emotions are meaningless. He also says I didn’t think so, showing he struggles to comprehend and make his own interpretations on human emotions from Marie and other people. Another example shown is Meursault against his mother’s funeral. In this quote ‘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.’ This quote also shows Meursault idea of human life is meaningless. This shows that Meursault believes it doesn’t really matter if his mother died, he’s probably implying that his mother was dying soon...
All in all, the influence of Raymond is negative towards Meursault and leads to Meursault’s death sentence. The peer pressure put on Meursault to testify against Raymond’s mistress sets Meursault up and was the first of many instances where Meursault was manipulated into doing something. The aggression of Meursault to use violence against the Arab is a forced demand that Meursault is to fight for Raymond in times of hardships, as if Raymond owns Meursault. Finally, the declaration of Meursault as “a pal” influences the jury heavily because Raymond runs a whorehouse and the people one hangs out with have strong affects. Together, these three things lead to Meursault’s downfall, the death sentence, and Raymond is the one to blame.
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When a person is back home, they always have something to rely on. The boys from England crash in a plane on an uninhabited island while all the adults are killed in the crash. The boys might not know it, but they are searching for something to “call home” and to get them through this stop along each on of their journeys. The conch is an important key aspect to the story. While back home in England, the conch is rare and worth a great deal of money, but in on the island, it is worth hope. The conch gives the boys something to worship or idealize basically, but it holds a dangerous and dark power over ...
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 came about to prevent discrimination against disabled people. The act was designed to overturn some negative Supreme Court decisions that had been made since Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act was passed. Section 504 was the first major legislation to define disabled people as a class. This Act gave wide protections to disabled people as a whole rather than individual disability. However, over the next 15 years the Supreme Court washed many of the protections away. The disabled community worked together to bring public awareness to the issue of discrimination and access to public areas that disabled people faced. After many years and many demonstrations, the disabled community was able to get the public aware of the issue and made it one of the pivotal issues of the presidential campaign in 1988. One of the major contributing factors to its passage was the Capital Crawl that occurred in 1989 when a...
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
...He is forced to see that the new hedonism he embraces with open arms is not without price to himself and those around him. It leads him deeper and deeper into sin and depravity until he cannot be redeemed for his faults. In a fit of madness he decides he no longer wants to have his own faults, the results of his impulsive, narcissistic, and selfish behavior visible to him. He takes a knife to the canvass and, in doing so, ends his own life. A life devoted to following his impulses without tempering them with reason, a life of thinking only of his own selfish desires and disregarding the hurt caused to the people around him. The legacy begotten by new hedonism.
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