The Stranger: Just the Facts
Meursault accepts how things are. Things are just facts. Meursault doesn’t really display any emotions. He is portrayed as a person who just is, just exists. He seems to be kind of detached from the people and events around him. Meursault seems to accept things at face value. As the narrator and protagonist of the book, you would expect more insight into what Meursault is thinking and feeling. There is none of this, however. Throughout the book there is example after example of situations that we would be upset over or show great emotion. Meursault just is.
Meursault just accepts that his mother has died. He does not show emotions. He does not cry at her funeral. He doesn’t even seem to care enough to get the details surrounding her death. She is dead and this is enough information for him. It seems like his mother has been “gone” since she moved to the old folks home three years ago. He doesn’t change how he uses the rooms in their apartment. He still doesn’t use her rooms. He doesn’t seem to think about her in those three years. He can’t be bothered with visiting her. “And also, because it took up my Sunday—not to mention the trouble of getting to the bus, buying tickets, and spending two hours traveling.” (Stranger, pg 5) The small inconvenience is too much. He has no desire to spend time with her. It is almost like out of sight, out of mind.
In prison Meursault seems to easily accept that he is a prisoner. He never seems worried about what might happen to him, being accused of murder. He adapts and gets used to jail. It is like a radical acceptance of his surroundings and situation.
“When I was first imprisoned, the hardest thing was that my thoughts were still those of a free man…all of a sudden I would feel just how closed in I was by the walls of my cell. But that only lasted a few months. Afterwards my only thoughts were those of a prisoner.” (76-77)
Meursault never explains himself or tries to defend himself. The shooting could have been pled as self-defense. The trial was in a French court with the death of an Arab man. The claim of self defense and a display of some remorse probably would have been enough to have him found innocent. His lawyer was confident that he would be found innocent. At the trial, however, he is portrayed as a cold person, a bottomless void of a person. He shows no remorse that he killed a man. He only remarks that the sun was annoying him.
After the trial there is an appeal which Meursault loses. After the appeal there again is a radical acceptance of death.
“But everyone knows life isn’t worth living. Deep down I knew perfectly well that it doesn’t much matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy, since in either cae other men and women will naturally go on living – and for thousands of years. In fact, nothing could be clearer. Whether it was now or twenty years from nnow, I would still be the one dying…Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how doesn’t matter.” (114)
The chaplain attempts to visit Meursault several times, but he always refuses. Meursault does not believe in God, even when facing death. “Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he… What did other people’s deaths or a mother’s love matter to me;” (Stranger, pg 121) Meursault felt the world was indifferent and so was he. What did it matter now? He could find no important meaning in his life. He was just there, another person on earth. He was again just accepting things as they were. “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself…” (122)
I am not sure I would agree that "He could find no important meaning in his life." Although Meursault does not subscribe to conventional explanations for the meaning of life, that does not mean he lacks one altogether. On page 117 Meursault says he simply doesn't have time in his life anymore to waste on things that disinterest him, when referring to God. I understand that many people find meaning in religion, but for Meursault it adds nothing to his life and therefore he does not waste his little time on it. His concern with the time he has left in life, tells me that he cares about being alive on some level and finds meaning in it. Notably, he feels enough meaning to have an emotional outburst at the chaplain.
ReplyDeleteI think that the line you cite, “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself…” (122), actually implies he finds meaning in his life. The fact that his life is going to end permanently any day now is what motivates him to reflect on his life and differences, which he accepts in the final line of the book when he hopes to be showered with peoples' hate at his execution.
Meursault has exhibited a detached view of life’s events throughout the novel, responding with indifference even to his mother’s death and imprisonment. I agree that his lack of emotional reaction shows the fact that existence holds no inherent meaning. By the end, Meursault faces his death with the same stoicness he has shown all along.
ReplyDeleteIt is an interesting detail that Meursault attributes his repeated mantra that "you can get used to anything eventually" to his mother, and there are indications that they might have a lot in common. He is absolutely certain that she "has never given a thought to religion in her life," for example, and he doesn't seem to expect that SHE would have been thinking much about HIM all this time in the retirement home. They once lived together, and they were both "used to" that arrangement, and then they lived apart, and they "got used to" that. Meursault isn't completely wrong when he notes that "nothing much had changed" after Maman's death--in terms of his day-to-day, she has already BEEN gone. He is alone, but somehow doesn't seem *lonely*. He might have feelings one way or the other about these changes in his circumstances, but his view seems to be that those feelings are irrelevant to the reality, to the circumstances that he can't change. He stops thinking about her when she moves out, and he's also seemingly at peace with the idea that no one is going to be thinking of him once he's gone.
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