The Sympathetic Presentation of Meursault in The Stranger
The Sympathetic Presentation of Meursault in The Stranger
The Stranger is a novel to be felt rather than understood. Camus strings a complex web of emotions well beneath the reader’s consciousness: through the display of a seemingly simple series of events, the author is able to soak the reader with heavy feelings of uneasiness and estrangement. Because of this, the unsuspecting reader comes to have some sympathy for an otherwise unrelatable character, the “cold-blooded killer” Meursault. Through his artfully uncomfortable illustrations of Meursault's environment, such as the drowsy desert heat, Camus overpowers the reader's sensibilities, unlocking a deeper understanding for Meursault as well as the existentialist mindset which he represents.
Existentialism is a difficult philosophy to analyze simply because it is based on the premise that life is without meaning, thus reaps no advantage from judgement or analyzation. The question of “why” becomes irrelevant: Meursault does not understand why he refuses to see his mother, and at times seems more preoccupied by trivial matters such as the weather than with her death. For example, he digresses from the situation of the funeral to observe the heat over the road, stating that it “gave one a queer, dreamlike impression.” Meursault goes on to describe the “smells of hot leather and horse dung from the hearse, veined with whiffs of incense and smoke.” He mentions the “buzzing of insects” and states that, “all of it--the sun, the smells [. . .], and my fatigue after a night without sleep--was making it hard for [him] to see or think straight” (17; ch. 1). By using tiring imagery such as the dizzying effect of heat, Camus lulls the audience into a similar indifference and emphasizes the confusion and disorientation one feels in the face of an absurd world. Much like the heat from the sun can be tiring and oppressive, the effects the conditioning of society has a similar effect on the individual--the sun made him do it.
The Stranger is a novel to be felt rather than understood. Camus strings a complex web of emotions well beneath the reader’s consciousness: through the display of a seemingly simple series of events, the author is able to soak the reader with heavy feelings of uneasiness and estrangement. Because of this, the unsuspecting reader comes to have some sympathy for an otherwise unrelatable character, the “cold-blooded killer” Meursault. Through his artfully uncomfortable illustrations of Meursault's environment, such as the drowsy desert heat, Camus overpowers the reader's sensibilities, unlocking a deeper understanding for Meursault as well as the existentialist mindset which he represents.
Existentialism is a difficult philosophy to analyze simply because it is based on the premise that life is without meaning, thus reaps no advantage from judgement or analyzation. The question of “why” becomes irrelevant: Meursault does not understand why he refuses to see his mother, and at times seems more preoccupied by trivial matters such as the weather than with her death. For example, he digresses from the situation of the funeral to observe the heat over the road, stating that it “gave one a queer, dreamlike impression.” Meursault goes on to describe the “smells of hot leather and horse dung from the hearse, veined with whiffs of incense and smoke.” He mentions the “buzzing of insects” and states that, “all of it--the sun, the smells [. . .], and my fatigue after a night without sleep--was making it hard for [him] to see or think straight” (17; ch. 1). By using tiring imagery such as the dizzying effect of heat, Camus lulls the audience into a similar indifference and emphasizes the confusion and disorientation one feels in the face of an absurd world. Much like the heat from the sun can be tiring and oppressive, the effects the conditioning of society has a similar effect on the individual--the sun made him do it.