The Stranger

Meursault is a risk to society in view of the fact that he is emotionally indifferent from others. Meursault is detached from the world around him."I said that it didn't make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to,” says Meursault. “I said it didn't make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to ... I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't love her.” In these two quotes, this proves that Meursault doesn’t care about Marie and he doesn’t care about his mother’s death.

Being unable to effectively display his emotions ties to his mother, Meursault comes off as insensitive to his mother’s death, which leads the jury to declare him guilty of murder and sentenced to death. A man who does not even know his mother’s age mustn’t be allowed to walk around freely in

He has no initial reaction to the news of her death, and at her funeral service he did not bother to even see her before she was buried. His lack of emotion is evident in the very first lines of the book, “Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.” This shows that Meursault is hardly caring for his mother. Society’s standards would result in him to be in absolute mourning and wanting to go as fast as possible to her body. This is not the only example of Meursault’s lack of emotion and care for factors in his life. He does not care for love and marriage after having intercourse with someone; the society standard at this time was to get married if two partners had intercourse. He does not care for promotion and career advancement when his boss offers him a better job opportunity; the standard at that time and right now is to pursue the best career possible. In these scenarios Meursault is living free from the chains, and does whatever he thinks is right to do. Eventually, society rejects him and his ways, and he gets in trouble with the law. He is judged by society and his ways are ridiculed, making Meursault appear to be a monster.

Albert Camus’ The Stranger explores the philosophic ideology of existentialism in the character Meursault. Meursault is a man in the 1920s in French Algeria going through life seeing and acting through the lens of an existentialist. Without explicitly stating that he lives existentially, his life hits on many key characteristics of an existentialist. Perhaps the most defining of these key characteristics is that he does what he wants, because he can. He also does this because in existentialism there is emphasis on individual choice and freedom based on the assertion that there is no universal right and wrong. Meursault doesn’t always take into consideration what would be polite, or kind, but rather only

In “The Strangers” the theme is an individual life has no rational meaning or order. Albert Camus uses the word and actions of Meursault to show how an individual does not care about life. He creates the character as a passive and things come upon him. The quote in “The Strangers”, “To another question [the director of the home] replied that he had been surprised by my calm the day of the funeral. He was asked what he meant by "calm." The director then looked down at the tips of his shoes and said that I hadn’t wanted to see Maman, that I hadn’t cried once, and that I had left right after the funeral without paying my last respects at her grave”, This quote shows that Meursault doesn’t even have any emotion for his mother’s death and when he’s at the funeral, he act like a normal being, just moving on as it just happened. Meursault is really insensitive to things happening around him, he believes life will move on and everyone will die later on in life. Meursault watches a girl get beat and doesn’t do anything about it because he does not care and he beats the girls to. When he goes to jail for killing an Arab, he is sentenced to death but it doesn’t matter to him as he imagine

The funeral director is the first to discuss this with him, critically stating, “You don’t have to justify yourself, my dear boy. I’ve read your mother’s file,” (Camus 4). By leaving Maman under the care of the senior home, Meursault should feel guilty for his actions since he was his mother’s “sole support” (Camus 4). However, he feels no guilt, similar to how he lacks any sentiment of sorrow during the processions. Individuals of society are conditioned to have a specific pattern of emotional responses elicited by inevitable yet critical life events. Regardless of whether genuinely affected or not, all are expected to conform to these behaviors. Thus, it is what Meursault does not do that makes his character such a prominent cause of concern in the context of the literary work. The absence of an emotional relationship with Maman develops justification as to why Meursault did not cry at her funeral, nor feel culpability for placing her in the nursing home. Camus develops the social outcast aspect of his character through these instances of defiance to social rituals. It is significant to consider how although Meursault 's preoccupations are unusual, he still runs through the motions of cultural norms. He attends the funeral, has a girlfriend, and enjoyed the companionship of his friend Raymond. The real threat of his

Meursault is the main character from the Novel The Stranger by Albert Camus. Meursault is psychologically detached from everything around him. He does not have strongly attached emotions connected to anyone or thing. As for people in his life he does not feel any sentimental emotions towards. In his mind his actions are neither good or bad when it comes to his morality. He does as he pleases because he has the ability to do so without realizing the consequences.

Unlike the majority of people, he does not scrutinize or find meaning within his environment. Humanity constantly uses contextual clues-- whether it is to decide if their date is attracted to them, to assume they will need to bring an umbrella outside, or to safely drive their vehicle through a city. These situations in which we use our surroundings to define a situation are known as semiotic situations (Silverman 6). Meursault does not utilize the signs that are present in virtually every situation. While keeping vigil over his mother’s body, he decides it is appropriate to smoke next to his dead mother.

In The Stranger by Albert Camus. Meursault does not feel any great sadness over his mother's death, yet everyone in the novel seems to try to justify his actions. Why doesn’t Meursault feel any type of sadness or remorse for this mother's death? He seems to not have any kind of feelings or nothing for his mother's when she was alive if he did, he would not have been more remorseful for her death. Meursault acts as though he was not close to his mother's and like he didn’t want to attend her funeral. His friends also seem to back him up by defending him in saying reasons why he shows no feelings or sadness for his mother's death, they say “that’s his way of showing how he feels everyone shows how they feel in different ways”.

The novel starts out with Meursault getting a telegram saying that his mother had died. He takes time off work to go to her funeral and completely fail to show the emotion that the reader expects to see of a son towards his recently passed mother. First and foremost, when he arrives, the coffin is

In The Stranger, Albert Camus writes about a detached yet normal man, Meursault, who encounters unusual situations that evidently leads to his demise. From cover to cover, it was established by the author that Meursault had an unusual way of thinking and that he was continuously revealing his peculiar perspective on life and death. Throughout the novel, Meursault is reminded of death and continues to be judged by everyone in the society that he lives in, for instance, when he was put on trial for shooting an Arab man. Camus writes about the main character by describing his absurdist mindset. It is through the focus of funeral scene, however, that Camus is able to formulate the values of the character and the society in which they live in. This scene was able to reveal Meursault’s perspective on life as well as death.

Life is often interpreted by many as having meaning or purpose. For people who are like Meursault, the anti-hero protagonist of Albert Camus' The Stranger, written in 1942, the world is completely without either. Camus' story explores the world through the eyes of Meursault, who is quite literally a stranger to society in his indifference to meaning, values, and morals. In this novel, this protagonist lives on through life with this indifference, and is prosecuted and sentenced to die for it. Through Meursault and his ventures in The Stranger, Camus expresses to the reader the idea that the world is fundamentally absurd, but that people will react to absurdity by attaching meaning to it in vain, despite the fact that the world, like

Primarily, Meursault’s aloofness towards the world started to crack after experiencing Maman’s funeral. In the beginning of the novel before the funeral of his mother, Meursault’s desire to “ [see] Maman right away” (Camus, 4) so that he can leave as soon as possible expressed the height of Meursault’s absurdism. Even during the funeral Meursault seemed to care more about “[Perez’s] ruined face”(Camus, 18) than his mother’s casket. However this changed during the sunday after the funeral when Meursault seemed to finally take notice of his mother’s absence from his life stating how his apartment was “just the right size when maman was here”(Camus, 21). This quote is significant because previously Meursault stated “ I didn’t go [to the old

In addition, Meursault cannot find a solid place in society. He lives alone due to the death of his mother. Society cannot accept the manner in which Meursault addresses his mother’s death. Since he thinks that “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, [he doesn’t] know” (Camus 3), society believes that he does not care that his mother dies. Everyone judges him because he does not relate to the rest of the people. Meursault receives immense criticism at his trial concerning his murdering another man. At his trial, Meursault can “feel how much all these people [the jury] hated” (Camus 90) him. The jury does not commend him or even regard him with understanding about his mother’s death. Some people react to death without actually reacting to it; Meursault subconsciously chooses to do so but receives condemnation. Both characters experience isolation from society.

Albert Camus, born in colonized Algeria, a father to absurdism, and author of The Stranger confronts the philosophical themes of purpose, integrity, and passivity. The Stranger’s main character, Meursault, is a laconic man whose passive actions and brutal honesty lend to connections in his court trial. Those of which condemn him to execution. Meursault falls victim to his complete honesty, complete passivity, and disregard for the purpose of action. He is straightforward, and his actions usually follow his thoughts. Actions and decisions that most average people regard as serious, Meursault regards as arbitrary. Meursault’s exemplification of absurdism proves to not only lend to his characterization, but as a comfort in his death as well.