The Stranger Rhetorical Analysis

In the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, the narrator’s monotonous tone makes the reader experience a lack of emotion and feeling. The novel starts off describing Mersault’s current job and how he must go on leave in order to attend his mother’s funeral. He and his mother have been disconnected for some time as they had come to a mutual agreement with her staying in an elderly home. Mersault, the main protagonist, did not have the money or time to tend to his mother. The elderly home was the best option for the both of them. When he returns home from the funeral, Mersault gets caught up in external affairs he should not be in. He ends up writing a break up letter to Raymond’s girlfriend, which drives the rest of the story. Raymond beats his

girlfriend for cheating on him, leaving him in the hands of the law. His ex-girlfriend’s brother follows Raymond around and they end up in an altercation.

Mersault ends up shooting the Arabian brother and is tried in court. Mersault’s insensitivity and ignorance regarding his mother’s death, Raymond’s abuse, and the murder leaves the reader in a bleak mood after experiencing such a dry, emotionless tone. Mersault’s attitude towards his mother’s death exemplifies and introduces the reader to his lack of remorse. The opening sentence of the novel shows how indifferent he is as he has no guilt for not being there for his mother nor grief for her passing when receiving the telegram notifying him of her sudden death, “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know” (Camus 3). He is very direct and his diction offers short, little details, evoking the attitude of disregard in Mersault. When approaching his boss for two days off, he does not show any sign of emotion, but tries to justify the reason for his leaving as his mother’s fault. The funeral director takes him to his mother’s coffin, to find that it has already been sealed. To the caretaker’s and director’s surprise, Mersault does not want it to be opened. He does not mind that they have skipped past formalities of allowing close family members to view their deceased relatives by sealing

the coffin. Instead, Mersault falls asleep and wakes up later in the afternoon to drink coffee and smoke, showing how indifferent he is towards his mother’s death, “I felt like having a smoke. But I hesitated, because I didn't know if I could do it with Maman right there. I thought about it; it didn't matter” (Camus 8). He remains in this current attitude as the story progresses. The days after the funeral, Mersault exhibits no sign of grief nor sadness. Instead, he pursues a former female co-worker, Marie. As if he completely forgot about his mother’s passing or ignores the significance of her death, he returns to his daily life with no change in his attitude. The emotionless tone stays constant as Mersault does not find any traumatic consequence to his mother passing when he attempts to explain his situation to Marie, “I felt like telling her it wasn’t my fault, but I stopped myself because I remembered that I’d said that to my boss. It didn’t mean anything” (Camus 20). As Mersault gets back into his daily living, he writes a break up letter to Raymond’s mistress. Raymond explains how he beats her and has cheated on her before. Surprisingly, Mersault exhibits no astonishment or remorse as a normal person would when being told of this. Raymond asks him to write the letter and Mersault complies only to please him even though he knows they are not friends. His tone throughout this encounter in Raymond’s apartment does not change; he remains monotonous and displays no positive nor negative attitude towards this situation by the fact that he just listens to Raymond speak without forming an opinion.

By writing this letter, Mersault gets himself into an ironic situation where he ends up killing the man that Raymond was supposed to kill. Moreover, Mersault does not feel guilty for his actions dating back to his mother’s funeral to now as he is put on trial for the murder he should not have been involved in. At the point in the novel, all the events that have happened are being brought up against Mersault in his murder trial. Attendees of his mother’s funeral are present as witnesses to describe Mersault’s actions at her funeral. Mersault was in total acceptance of the situation and did not think much of it as the witnesses on the stand describe him to be careless and unloving. One begins to feel sympathetic and understanding of Mersault’s situation after all this evidence is being wrongly used against him. The tone of the novel shifts to a more serious and concerning mood. By contrast, Mersault’s emotionless tone stays constant as he is being falsely accused, without bursting into an outrage. Marie is brought to the stand and the prosecutor begins to explain uncorrelated events based on fallacious beliefs in an order that makes it seem as though Mersault murdered his own mother and the

Arabian brother on purpose. Mersault accepts the accusations as he cannot formulate the correct words to describe the motives for his act and is sentenced to death by guillotine, “The utter pointlessness of whatever I was doing there seized me by the throat, and all I wanted was to get it over with and get to my cell and sleep” (Camus 105). The novel ends with Mersault wishing for a large crowd of spectators crying with hate as they watch him die. Mersault’s tone starts with little regard and barely any emotion but ends with happiness as he has come to terms with his last days of living. Soon after Mersault is put on the death sentence, he seems to not care for anything since everyone dies at one point. As his date of predetermined death comes closer, Mersault begins to hope that guillotine malfunctions, giving him the opportunity to live. With this, Albert Camus wrote this novel to emphasis how humans should be the ultimate decision maker and to have control over their life. People should not live life with predetermined ideals like that of the guillotine. Like Mersault, Camus advises the reader to live life as it goes by and be the sole reason for why one acts.