Albert Camus and his protagonist Meursault from the novel "The Stranger"

in #story7 years ago (edited)

Meursault describes his everyday life with infinite detail: when he was sleeping, how many hours he had been, where and with whom he had fed, what he had cut out and stuck in his notebook, what they looked like and what the passers-by did in the street ... He mentions, of course, people and facts that will matter to the further development of the narrative - his neighbor Salamano with the dog, as well as the pimp Remon with one of his victims. But in the way that Meursault describes what is going on, the details and important events are aligned under a common denominator, everything is represented with the same ambiguity, nothing can touch or excite the hero, even the scene with the scandal between Remon and the prostitute. All events are alien to him, they are part of the outside world, and there is no way to reach his soul. It only excites what he senses - sensory stimuli such as the need for sleep, food, sex, warm, cold. That's why his most frequently repeated expressions in the whole novel are: "I do not care," "It does not matter (for me)," "It's all one," "No sense."

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He uses these expressions even when it comes to an important choice in his life - whether to marry Marie and whether to make friends with Remon. It seems as if the hero has no opinion and can be made to do absolutely everything without resisting. But in reality it is not. In fact, he is indifferent to whom he will marry and whom to make friends with, because he has no feelings about the people concerned (Marie and Remon) - no trace of affection, affection, or concern. His Arab murder can not be interpreted as an act dictated by friendly feelings towards Remon or a desire to save him from his enemy. In fact, Meursault has no motive for murder - neither his life nor anyone's life has been endangered; he did not feel hatred or anger against Arab. He shoots the person with absolute indifference, and feels nothing even in the courtroom while listening to the charge. He himself admits: "I have never really been sorry for something," he has no idea what is good or bad: "I told him (the priest) that I do not know what that sin is."

Perhaps the only positive feature in the character of Camus's character is his reluctance to lie and pretend. Right at the beginning of his case, his attorney says he has the hope to save him and to justify him, as long as he is only careful about what he is talking about. But Meursault decides to be sincere, hypocrisy is not his inherent - and this eventually leads to his complete expose and death. Meursault refuses to ask for forgiveness from God, does not worship the Holy Cross, under the pretense of being an atheist. Everyone chooses whether to be a believer or not, and no one can force it forcibly; but everyone is obliged to observe the moral laws - first of all, love and gratitude to the mother, and human laws - those who protect the human person from aggression and failure to comply with the law. As the Prosecutor points out Mr Meursault violates both laws and other laws. Some more facts can be added to complete the hero's image. More precisely, his attitude to murders and executions, and to death at all. The incident described in the newspaper article about the traveler, murdered by her mother and her sister, and the subsequent two suicides on herself, is gratifying. Meursault calmly calls the event "natural," and he thinks "he passenger has somehow deserved it. It sounds shocking and his desire to "watch all the executions of death sentences, which would bring him "frank joy". We can conclude that the indifference and coldness of the hero to the world at times turns into frank cruelty. If it were not the murder of an arabian, this atrocities would ever happen again, whether in another form or under other circumstances.

The attitude of the hero to life is remarkable: his opinion is that life is not worth the trouble of living (....) Whether or not after twenty years - I would still die. The reason Meursault to reason that is , that he realizes that life is actually the outer world that does not care and to which he has no feelings, so such a life is absurd and it does not make sense to live. Still, life also includes the hero's inner world with his ideas and feelings that he will have trouble dividing from the threshold of death. That is why Meursault feels with himself an excitement of life in his last days before the execution - he enjoys the view of the sky from his cell, the "change of colors", he smells of "earth, salt, night"; "The marvelous calm of the sleeping summer was coming into me like a tide." Yes, the hero to the end remains alien to the world and society, but just before death dares to call the world "so same to me as a brother at last", namely because of those elements of the environment, which in his life gave him sensual delight and made him happy. "The stranger" is not by accident one of the most memorable novels about absurdity and loneliness. "Absurd" means something unimaginable, wrong, unacceptable. Every act of the hero: at the funeral of his mother and in the days after him, the crime committed, the indifference and the cruelty to human suffering, his inability to love - all of this can be qualified as absurd. The hero does not see anything wrong with his behavior, he does not regret and does not regret anything, he does not know what sin is. He is only aware of the fact that the others do not accept him as being alien: "... I felt how all these people hate me," - there is nothing else to be the attitude of the community towards the person who has made his choice to reject the commonly accepted morality and human laws.

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