It follows the life of Meursault, a French Algerian whose apathetic responses to life get him in trouble socially and eventually get him killed. December 2020–January 2021 topic challenge: literary theory, January–February 2021 topic challenge: Theodor Fontane. Was there ever any actual Spaceballs merchandise? (This reading puts the prosecutor's claim that Meursault had "morally killed" his mother in a different light than the previous interpretation.). Meursault explains his response to his employer who offers to transfer him to Paris. Meursault even acknowledges that he doesn't have to kill "the Arab". From this point of view, the killing of the Arab is a roundabout way of committing suicide, using the justice system as an instrument. Whatever happens, it doesn't matter. He was alone. They decide to return to the bungalow but along the way, Meursault becomes befuddled, overcome by the sun’s red glare, and decides to take a walk on the beach alone. After Meursault kills a man, “the Arab,” for no apparent reason, he is put on trial. The language used in this passage is so elaborate and rich in simile – “The steel… was like a long, flashing sword,” for example – almost detaches the act from Meursault and causes the reader to question whether he did it with intent or not: “That’s when everything began to reel. looking beyond character analysis); another approach looks beyond over character motivation to find motives that are not apparent at the surface. This passage is also interesting. Marie asks Meursault to find and bring a policeman, but he refuses for purely selfish reasons. These moments of heat, glare, and sleepiness foreshadow what will happen later in the novel on the beach with the Arab: The sun causes Meursault to momentarily lose track of himself, which, in the latter case, results in catastrophe. ), Shortly before that he had already thought to himself: "I probably loved mother, but that didn't mean anything. He also defied many societal standards related to his mother's funeral. The murderer is convicted for “having buried his mother badly,” and he says that he... (full context) No matter how you look at it, there is not a reasonable explanation for Meursault's actions. The “absurd” refers to the feeling man experiences when he tries to find or fabricate order in an irrational universe. He is far from being totally deprived of sensitivity for he is animated by a passion, profound because it is tacit, the passion for the absolute and for truth. His lawyer later tells him that this could be used against him during the murder trial and suggest that he might say that his insensitivity at the funeral was not real but the result of an attempt to control his emotions. Selecting all objects with specific value from GeoJSON in new variable. He was lying on his back, with his hands behind his head ... As far as I was concerned, it was all settled and I'd gone there without even thinking about it. The important detail in the novel is the death of an Arab. For Meursault, the solitude of prison is incessant. Does having no exit record from the UK on my passport risk my visa application for re entering? That said, I think there are a lot of positives about this answer. You see, this novel is largely about existentialism. After returning, he goes on a date with Marie Cardona, a former co-worker, and has a sexual relationship with her. When Meursault kills an Arab, nothing happens to him. It is society itself that excludes to protect its coherence. Why can't I move files from my Ubuntu desktop to other folders? The parallel between the sun and his mother's funeral is also somewhat significant. I spent a bit of time writing this answer, but now I'm hungry and will probably grab some food :). What more often occurs is that the outsider finds himself on the outside. What is Meursault's problem with the heat? The evidence presented during the hearing gives impres… Moving on... (emphasis mine). I left his room, closing the door behind me, and paused for a minute in the dark, on the landing. I waited. Because Meursault does not grieve, society sees him as an outsider, a threat, even a monster. This moment marks the beginning of Meursault’s undoing as he later uses that gun to murder one of the Arabs. Prior to these paragraphs, these Arabs had already engaged in a bit of a fight with Meursault and his friends, with one of them having slashed his friend with a knife. Can 1 kilogram of radioactive material with half life of 5 years just decay in the next minute? The Stranger—or L'Étranger, if you want to be all authentically French about it (pro-tip: lose the beret and the baguette) —is an absurdist novel about a bonafide weirdo named Meursault. After his mother's death, he does not seem to be mourning: he is not interested in having his mother's coffin opened so he can take a last look at her, he smokes during the wake, even falls asleep, and he doesn't weep during the funeral. The novel The Stranger by the French writer Albert Camus is the story of a Frenchman (only identified by his surname Meursault) from Algeria during the 30’s or 40’s who kills and Arab (he claims, unintentionally) and is condemned to die by the guillotine. So I went back to work. In Albert Camus' book The Stranger, Meursault kills a character known as "the Arab" for no real reason at all. Why is the tense wrong in the beginning of The Stranger? In the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, Meursault realizes that death is a subject that cannot be erased. Nightmare Stage Meursault has been in prison for a year and is found guilty of murder. The Stranger, by Albert Camus, begins with Meursault receiving a telegram informing him of his mother's death. Meursault kills as a response to the sun. At the end of a normal mourning process, the mourner eventually prefers himself over the lost "object"; at the end of a pathological process, the mourner is unable to give up the lost "object", ascribe the lost to himself and decides to share its fate (see Freud's Mourning and Melancholia). Weeks later, he kills an Arab man in French Algiers, who was involved in a conflict with one of Meursault's neighbors. The existential interpretation here is wrong. He knew exactly what he was getting into, but embraced it anyway. For Freudian critics, Meursault's wish for his mother's death is as if he had effectively killed here, so it would only be just for him to share her fate. What he did not realize is that normal people feel these emotions regularly, and usually in less deplorable scenarios. Did you mean "shows no remorse" rather than "shows remorse"? as literature The Stranger is naturalism. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. The best quotes from The Stranger by Albert Camus - organized by theme, including book location and character - with an explanation to help you understand! Meursault shows his oblivious estimation of the magistrate and his lawyer as they handle him after his arrest. The trigger gave, I felt the underside of the polished butt and it was there, in that sharp but deafening noise, that it all started. Submit your literature reviews to our Tumblr! He looked upset and told me that I never gave him a straight answer, that I had no ambition, and that that was disastrous in business. As soon as he saw me, he sat up lightly and put his hand in his pocket. Show activity on this post. Why does Meursault kill “the Arab” in The Stranger? more about it. fly wheels)? The concepts of past and future are essentially irrelevant to meaning. The presence of the Arab disturbed him. At his mother's funeral, he was largely alone and almost kept to himself. How does this nihilism come out in the text itself? In that case, they can reform their feeling of loss and the process of mourning ends with a kind of acceptance. It doesn't matter. Man is an animal that can only respond to the environment. The director of the home where Meursault’s mother lived responds to Meursault’s feelings of guilt regarding his mother’s situation. I realized that I'd destroyed the balance of the day and the perfect silence of this beach where I'd been happy. Thanks for contributing an answer to Literature Stack Exchange! So then, Meursault kills as a response to the sun. Yet the Arab's connection to Raymond is, to Meursault's mind, entirely incidental and he shoots the Arab without even thinking of … rev 2021.1.8.38287, The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Literature Stack Exchange works best with JavaScript enabled, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site, Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, Learn more about hiring developers or posting ads with us. You can shoot or not shoot. And I fired four more times at a lifeless body and the bullets sank without leaving a mark. Sights, smells, and motion combine to cause a change in consciousness that he can neither identify nor understand. There was a bit of a defensive mood at this point in the story. There, he fights with the mistress’ brother and is cut by a knife. The prosecution's closing speech appears to mention the killing of the Arab only briefly, adding that Meursault "knows the value of words", which is another allusion to Meursault's commitment to truth (though probably not from the prosecutor's point of view). This moment marks the beginning of Meursault’s undoing as he later uses that gun to murder … For this reason, analysing Meursault like a character from a realist novel is a vain pursuit. The abyss that separates Meursault … First atomic-powered transportation in science fiction and the details? If the other one starts making trouble or gets out his knife, I’ll shoot.” When Meursault, Masson, and Raymond return to the beach to confront the Arabs a second time, Meursault asks for Raymond’s gun. Why and how did the orphan kill his adoptive mother? The Stranger’s central event occurs when Meursault shoots the Arab. Meursault is also a robot. Is it normal to feel like I can't breathe while trying to ride at a challenging pace? The conversation prompts Meursault to admit to the reader that he seldom visited his mother in the last year as he found it an inconvenient waste of his day off. And nor is this how marginalisation often works: Man is a gregarious and social creature - he does not exclude himself from the social. The reader will appreciate the dramatic irony in Meursault’s statement that he does not like policemen, as he will soon be forced to deal with not only policemen but prison and the legal system as a result of his own violent acts. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Though, of course, Meursault must have one: he may be impoverished, he may not have found the right station in life or he may simply be grieving over some unmentioned passion that Camus omits to mention. Presently, however, the Arabs have vanished, and the three men find an empty beach. What is the significance of the names Mersault and Meursault? How does The Meursault Investigation reference The Fall? This illustrates his refusal to lie. Quoted in Bernard Pingaud: L'Étranger d'Albert Camus. Then [my boss] asked me if I wasn't interested in a change of life. In which interview did Camus say that Meursault is the only Christ we deserved? Meursault then becomes put into trial, but during the whole trial it revolves around his insensibility towards his mother's death. Best Questions & Answers from 4th Quarter of 2020. @Hamlet I'll do that. You have to remember that Meursault had simply gone with his friends for a day on the beach. Though Meursault may feel "the whole thing was over," the fight actually happened only a little while earlier and must surely be fresh in the Arab man's mind. His lack of emotion at the funeral comes back to haunt him at his trial when witnesses testify to his uncaring attitude. Ironically, Meursault's murder could be considered a tremendous sacrifice made for a friend's wellbeing (it is Raymond, after all, who has a problem with the Arab, not Meursault). The final words of Part I read this: I wanted to hear the murmur of its water again, to escape from the sum and the effort and the women's tears, and to relax in the shade again. He doesn't necessarily follow social norms, he's not married... etc. The Stranger is not existentialist, but nihilist. Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers. In the case of Albert Camus's main protagonist from the French novel The Stranger, Meursault, is literally put on trial. I think this answer would probably be improved if you talked more about existentialism. When Meursault, Masson, and Raymond return to the beach to confront the Arabs a second time, Meursault asks for Raymond’s gun. He says, "One can never be sure" on morals, even on physical beating. The magistrate breaks this self-delusion when he escorts him to the door, calls him Mr. Antichrist, and hands him back to his jailers. Meursault was undoubtedly under the sun, and it was affecting him. In Europe, can I refuse to use Gsuite / Office365 at work? His reasoning shows a longstanding lack of empathy for and interest in his mother. He also refuses to adhere to the accepted moral order of society. But when I got nearer, I saw that Raymond's Arab had come back. Where did all the old discussions on Google Groups actually come from? He embraces meaninglessness as a kindness. What's the earliest treatment of a post-apocalypse, with historical social structures, and remnant AI tech? There is no God, no meaning, no free will, and (most impressively in this work) no absolute moral judgment. Meursault immediately rejects the idea because it was "untrue". Meursault wants to keep the peace within him, and he doesn't want anyone around him. He will soon hear the Prosecutor say that, unlike normal men, he has no soul. This would explain Meursault's unusual behaviour each time people ask him something about his mother. Meursault is tried and sentenced to death. In most instances, it is based on a scant few seconds without taking an opportunity to get to know the person. Meursault kills the Arab in cold blood, gets tossed into jail, and awaits his trial for a year or so. From this point of view, as I already mentioned in my discussion of the Czechoslovak traveller's story, Meursault is put on trial for refusing to lie and not playing by society's conventional rules. "She says, `If … To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers. Meursault 's neighbor who adopts Meursault as a friend by enlisting him to help sort out a conflict with his mistress. He pauses and then fires four more times into the Arab’s motionless body. The prosecutor uses his moral viewpoint to judge Meursault's amoral behavior as monstrous, using this judgment—not Meursault's murder of the Arab—to justify his request for the death penalty. (In reality, the cause of his mother's death is not known but she was definitely not killed by Meursault, while his father died when he was still a small child.) And this time, without sitting up, the Arab drew his knife and held it out towards me in the sun... All I could feel were the cymbals the sun was clashing against my forehead and, indistinctly, the dazzling spear still leaping up off the knife in front of me. We are given very little information why Meursault is on the outside of society - Camus does not care to give us a back-story. “The defining events in The Stranger are set in motion by Meursault’s murder of the Arab” (Plant, 10). As is his way, Meursault agrees to write a letter to him. During this talk, Salamano mentions that Meursault’s mother had been fond of the dog, which leads to a brief conversation about the narrator’s mother. The murder came as a shock - here we are looking at the life of an absurd man. Why? The sky seemed to be splitting from end to end and raining down sheets of flame. Initially, there isn't much. It comes through the naturalism. It is with his gun that Meursault kills the brother. Meursault has killed the Arab. The story is divided into two parts, presenting Meursault's first-person narrative view before and after the murder, respectively. Witnesses are questioned about Meursault's character and about his behaviour during and after the funeral but not about what they know about the killing. Maybe consider moving the last paragraph of this answer to the front of it? In The Stranger, Albert Camus uses light and heat imagery along with intense diction to depict the duality between the characters in the novel trying to find a cause for Meursault’s crime, and the way he denies a cause because of his existential mentality. As far as The Outsider goes, the most obvious point is that Meursault kills an "Arab". site design / logo © 2021 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under cc by-sa. Yet none of this is apparent in the text. Man is an animal that can only respond to the environment. It struck me that all I had to do was to turn, walk away, and think no more about it. But introspection is exactly what we don't get; instead we get a narrative that gives us roughly the same insight into Meursault as a third-person perspective, almost as if an outsider were observing Meursault; only it is Meursault himself telling that story. In that case, according to Freud, the grief is so heavy that it is repressed and cannot be processed by the conscious mind. If you edit this answer enough, maybe you'll get the bounty :-). a type of perspective that, in French literature before The Stranger, had been used to allow introspection. Promote our site and earn a Booster badge or a Publicist badge! The Stranger ends with Meursault's refusal to renounce his actions, his refsual to show remorse for killing the Arab or for not crying at his mother's funeral. Freudian interpretations take this further to explain other aspects of the novel. Meursault recounts a conversation with Salamano, who visits him to tell him that he has lost his dog. Moreover, if I recall rightly Camus insisted that he was not an existentialist - at least in Sartre's mould. From a Freudian point of view, a person in mourning can feel their loss in an external way. In displaying his indifference, Meursault implicitly challenges society’s accepted moral standards, which dictate that one should grieve over death. Meursault answers, "Yes, like everybody", after which he notices that the clerk behind him suddenly interrupts his regular typing as if had mistyped something and needed to delete it. If someone is murdered or not, the world doesn't care. The nurse tells Meursault how the weather affects the human body. Meursault describes his physical reactions to details he notices in the world around him. However, a novel about a character that is prosecuted solely for this reason would be implausible. (For example, during his first conversation with the investigating magistrate in Part Two, Chapter I, the magistrate asks him whether he had loved his mother. The Stranger. Tous les être sains avaient plus ou moins souhaité la mort de ceux qu'ils aimaient.") She looked sad. (And that maybe you could talk a bit more about the important parts). In Albert Camus' book The Stranger, Meursault kills a character known as "the Arab" for no real reason at all. It conveys the theme of existentialism, as well as the title of the book overall - Mersualt is an outsider in the way that he defies the laws of society. Cleverly, Camus coaxes us into just such an attempt—he lures us into trying to determine the reason for Meursault’s killing of the Arab, when in fact Meursault has no reason. It struck me that all I had to do was to turn, walk away, and think no How can a non-US resident best follow US politics in a balanced well reported manner? Basically all I'm saying is that you put the important parts of this answer behind the unimportant parts. I realized at that point that you could either shoot or not shoot. Another way of approaching Meursault's "motivation" to kill the Arab is provided by psychoanalysis. In The Stranger, Albert Camus portrays Meursault, the book's narrator and main character, as aloof, detached, and unemotional. 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