Figurative Language In The Stranger, By Albert Camus

The Stranger by Albert Camus is one of his best works. This novel tells the story of a man, Meursault, who is a moralist. Nothing seems to matter to him and his or anybody else’s actions makes no difference. Camus’s use of language allows readers to discover the mood and meaning being conveyed through diction and word choice. His use of figurative language can be seen throughout. Such an example of figurative language is imagery. From reading The Stranger, one can clearly picture whats happening as Camus beautifully describes every action of Meursault. In the first chapter, Meursault hears that his mother has died and says “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.”. Him saying this shows his emotional indifference and establishes
his character traits. It doesn’t show that he didn’t really care about his mother, but that he really doesn’t give great thought to much of anything. The death of his mother shows just how emotionless Meursault is for the fact of not grieving over his mothers death. But while at the funeral, Camus goes in great depth to explain the heat of the day and all of Meursault’s surroundings. Continuing with Camus’s use of imagery, at Maman‘s funeral Meursault states “She was right. There was no way out.” as he talks to the nurse who had said “If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church.”. Meursault says this only to his understanding that a person is born into a life that will only result in the death of that person. Death, like the harsh effects of the sun, is unavoidable. This idea is central to Camus’s philosophy in The Stranger, which posits death as the one central, inescapable fact of life. In prison, where Meursault has much time to reflect on his past, does he discover all the over-looked, finer aspects of his former free life. The author conveys this sense of discovery through the detailed flashbacks in the second part of the novel during his arrest. For example, just moments before Meursault’s execution, he vividly recalls his mother’s funeral. Whereas he was empty of feeling at the funeral, now he too faces eminent death and thus savors the moments as to when he was the mourner. Through Camus’s use of diction and language, he has expressed the mood and meaning to this story of a man who has been wrongly accused. And by doing so the author has grasped his readers and has given them a different perspective on life and how things are fine one moment and can go terribly wrong the next moment.