The Stranger

740 Words2 Pages

The stranger by Albert Camus is a novel that illuminates absurdism in the 19th century. Through the main character Meursault, the author enforced the idea that there is no purpose or importance in all the living things around him or even relatives. Due to his unreasonable action at the beach, he became "exile" from society, and was punish to death sentence. Even before he committed his murder he was not a people person at all, he would not talk about his emotions or even show them. Taking this into consideration, Meursault basically "exile" himself away from society, due to his isolation from normal person's affections; however, his experienced in jail made him realized many things.

Meursault was never in reality forced into exile from …show more content…

Albert states " I got her letter telling me they wouldn't let her come to see me anymore, because she wasn't my wife, it was from that day that I realized that this cell was my last home, a dead end, so to speak." By this quote, we can denote that at the end of the day she was the only person that actually showed him "love" throughout the whole novel and the one that try to understand the way he was. He realized that he did indeed felt emotions towards a person and was no longer a cold, unemotional person that did not care about the things that would happen around him. After this later, he soon had to face the idea that prison was becoming his home, through this time, Meursault refers back to many of his mother’s anecdotes, which tell us that he is now starting to get adjusted or familiar with his mother’s ideas now that she is …show more content…

Meursault stated, "And the more I thought about it, the more I dug out my memory things I had overlooked or forgotten. I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored. In a way, it was an advantage" (Camus, 79). As it is clearly seen in this quote from the novel, Meursault has very little to observe so he decides to go back in time and remember the slightest details of the things that he would do. He will recount the things that he did not give any type of importance, which are now very important because he without them he will not have that "advantage” to kill time. For instance, there is a time when he recounts back to beautiful sunny days on the beach and his apartment and realizes that these memories can keep him satisfied for years in prison because if his sexual interactions with

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