Meursault In The Stranger, By Albert Camus

It was as though a pall fell over the crowd in black. A small woman hunched over in a dark corner, quivered as tears streamed down her now puffy cheeks. She wore a doleful expression; today was the day that mother earth would swallow up her beloved son, and claim him as her own again. The weight of her son’s death, Meursault, hung painfully over her shoulders. It seemed as though the pain she was experiencing was interminable. What this mother is experiencing is considered a very typical reaction, which many experience when a dear relative is lost. In the novel, The Stranger, written by Albert Camus, Meursault is the one who must face the agony of losing his mother. Many people might assume that Meursault would experience an emotional reaction
While in jail, Meursault undergoes a form of self development, and grows to his personal potential. Unlike most people, Meursault does not believe in an afterlife. He almost looks down upon those who feel that they need to turn to a God when they are faced with the unpleasant shadows that death will cast upon them. During his final argument with the chaplain, Meursault snaps and pours out his true feelings about religion. “None of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman’s head. He wasn’t even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man...But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me.” (2.5.25) Meursault finds comfort in the fact that his life is coming to an end, and has no ambivalence or fears about his afterlife. “As if that blind rage has washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, I that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much life myself” (2.5.26) He figures that the world is just like him, and finds freedom in this