Major: Mersault : Is the main character in the book , “The Stranger”, he is an emotionally detached person who kills a man called ,”the Arab”, he is later put on trial for his murder, but soon after the trial has begun it turns more towards Mersault’s detached attitudes and his belief system. Maria: Mersault’s former co-worker, begins an affair with Mersault days after his mother’s death and funeral. Mersault only appreciates her physically, and Maria is attracted to him because of his peculiarity, and eccentricity. Raymond: Local pimp, and Mersault’s next door neighbor, when Raymond suspects that his mistress is cheating on him with another man he enlists Mersault’s detached nature to track him dow. The man Mersault killed known as “The …show more content…
He sat vigil with him, and assured Mersault that there was nothing he could do. This made Mersault question what little morality he had left. Masson: Invites Mairie, Mersault, and Raymond to his beach house. This is where Mersault kills “The Arab” with Raymonds gun, and no apparent motive. “The Arab” : Raymond’s mistresses brother, the man that Mersault kills at Masson’s beach house. “The Arab” was killed for no apparent reason, and with no motive to be seen. Major place names: Old Folks Home: The place where Mersault starts to question his morality as a human being, and becomes the eccentric man he is throughout the rest of the …show more content…
After the funeral, though, the case will be closed, and everything will have a more official feel to it. “ This is a form of closure for Mersault. "We put the cover on, but I’m supposed to unscrew the casket so you can see her." He was moving toward the casket when I stopped him. He said, "You don’t want to?" I answered, "no." He was quiet, and I was embarrassed because I felt I shouldn’t have said that. Mersault starts to notice that his emotional detachment is affecting him. “Then he offered to bring me a cup of coffee with milk. I like milk in my coffee, so I said yes, and he came back a few minutes later with a tray. I drank the coffee. Then I felt like having a smoke. But I hesitated, because I didn’t know if I could do it with Maman right there. I thought about it; it didn’t matter. I offered the caretaker a cigarette and we smoked.” For a brief moment Mersault notices that something he was doing might be wrong, but soon dismisses it as being unimportant because of his detachment. Point of View: Narrator: First Person Limited, Through Mersault The Narrator ,being Mersault, has a very interesting point of view, he tells it exactly like it is from his point of view. It shows Camus’s purpose from a very blunt
In The Stranger, Albert Camus describes the life of the protagonist, Meursault, through life changing events. The passage chosen illustrates Meursault’s view during his time in prison for killing the Arab. In prison, one can see the shifts in Meursault’s character and the acceptance of this new lifestyle. Camus manipulates diction to indicate the changes in Meursault caused by time thinking of memories in prison and realization of his pointless life. Because Camus published this book at the beginning of World War II, people at this time period also questions life and death similar to how Meursault does.
The major theme in the Stranger is “absurdism”. In the Stranger, the main settings are: Meursault’s home, the beach where the Arab was murdered, the courthouse, and eventually jail. The Stranger is taken place in Algeria in the 1940’s. The prosecutor characterizes Meursault as a murderer, as a monster. In page one hundred and two, the prosecutor states: “ For if in the course of what has been a long career I have strongly as today have I felt this painful duty made sacred imperative and by the horror I feel when I look into a man’s face and all I see is a monster.”
Romeo and Juliet's relationship was already doomed from the beginning but Mercutio helped the tragic events happen much faster. Mercutio showed us what was going on in the lives of the Capulet and Montague through humor and laughs. Mercutio's mood and behavior throughout the three acts that he is in reflects upon the relationship between Romeo and Juliet, and the two families as a whole. The more relaxed he was the better things were in the city of Verona but as soon as he started becoming more serious, so did Romeo and Juliet's relationship. Mercutio’s behavior and moods mirror the state of Romeo and Juliet’s relationship throughout the play.
He then saw a lone arab from the previous group and confronted him. He fired at the arab, killing him with the first round, then shortly after fired 4 more. Meursault is arrested for the crime and questioned. Meursault told the investigators that the sun and the headache made him enraged and commit the crime out of impulse.
Mersault on the other hand, gets alienated from the society in which he lives in
“It pained Mariam--it pained her considerably--to picture Rasheed panic-stricken and helpless, pacing the banks of the lake and pleading with it to spit his son back onto dry land. And she felt for the first time a kinship with her husband” (85).
At the start of this realization, Camus displays how the French whites, have a racially segregated perspective towards the Arabs and blacks. Camus first starts of this differentiation by having Meursault dehumanize “ the Arabs” as they were “backing away” from the colonists (56). By not giving the arab men names, Camus demonstrates the idea of “othering” them to reduce the impact of their being from the impressions of their brain. In describing the nameless men, Camus goes further to only express how the Arab men were “ lying down in greasy overalls;” demonstrating the classist view in society between races, and how the only description of the Arab men is to
If there is one thing in my eyes that Mersault never did throughout the course of this story, it would be that he never retrieved anything and that he always stayed the same throughout the story. Mersault seems to maintains the same attitude towards everything that happens in the story, the “I don’t care or believe in much” type attitude. One example that proves that Mersault possesses this attitude was after he was arrested for shooting the Arab 5 times. The magistrate asks him if he believes in God. “But he cut me off and urged me on one last time, drawing himself up to his full height and asked me if I believed in God. I said no. He sat down indignantly. He said it was impossible; all men believed in God, even those who have turned their backs on him. That was his belief, and if he were to ever doubt it, his life would be meaningless.” The Stranger page 69. This quote is a perfect example that even after he has murdered a man, Mersault still maintains that same attitude towards everything and he remains unchanged. You would think that especially after the fact that he murdered someone, he would have changed his attitude a little bit or that maybe he would have had some kind of revelation and he would realize that he has done something terribly wrong. However none of this occurs with Mersault and he continues to be himself and does not change anything about himself and that he retrieves nothing from his actions and that it plays no role in his exile.
How do you understand a stranger? How do you judge their actions? In Albert Camus’s existentialist text, The Stranger, the protagonist is a stranger to all but himself and because of his character, society finds Meursault guilty of being an incomprehensible and dangerous alien. The court that judges Meursault ignorantly sentences him to death. However, the first person perspective narrative allows the reader a glimpse into his mind, giving them a chance to understand his character and the actions that inevitably leads him to the guillotine. Although difficult to interpret, Meursault’s character, as it develops throughout his ‘normal’ life, can be expressed through more familiar medias. The main aspects of Meursault’s character — his
Meursault’s indifference to his mother’s death and in the killing of the Arab label him as immoral. During his mother’s funeral, Meursault did not mourn her but remains unaffected since “nothing had really changed” (Camus, 24). Death is rather insignificant to Meursault as is to me; Death is a subject to which I allow myself to hold no emotional value because it makes it harder to overcome (obtain low-empathy for). His
To display strangeness, Camus utilizes the perspectives of his various characters. Camus specifically uses Meursault as a focal point, whether Meursault is perceived strange or he points out someone he believes to be strange. Meursault goes to Céleste's and sees a woman he later describes as a robot woman. He observes every move she makes and concludes she is a strange person (Camus 43). Camus makes Meursault view the woman as peculiar because he is not used to what she
Furthermore, he covers the Arab’s intentions when talking about the same blade that persists in bringing Meursault pain. He describes the stabbing as a “scorching blade [that] slashes at [his] eyelashes and stabs at [his] stinging eyes” (59). The moment that the blade brings itself to Meursault’s face and slashes at his eyelashes, of course, is the point at which Meursault acknowledges that everything is beginning to reel. Finally, under the influence of the sea’s fiery breath and the sun’s scorching attitude, Meursault admits that “the trigger gave” when reminiscing on the death of the Arab (59). Not until after he blames the trigger for the mishap does he use first person to describe the negative actions, as he shoots the Arab four more times. At this point, perhaps, he realizes his own fault within the situation as he continues to set himself in place for the remainder of part one.
“Mother died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours. That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday” (Camus 1). This opening sentence of the novel embodies Mersault’s absurdist outlook in life. His emotional and detachment to people, and his alienation from the rest of society show the absurdity in the novel. This specific quote I chosed makes the reader acknowledge that our protagonist is unaware and apathetic. He does not know which day his mother died and to him it did not even matter. This is pretty unexpected from a person; giving the fact that a different human being would react totally different. In the other hand Mersault seemed to not really care as much or even show some emotion toward the news he received.
because an end result of his distance is a sort of acceptance of others, thus
Meursault also maintains the kind of ironic disinterest we would expect from someone would identify with the absurd. He prefers observing events going on around him, rather than getting directly involved; one chapter describes Meursault spending an entire day sitting on his balcony watching passers-by in the street, this is a prime example. Even when he becomes directly involved in events, he refuses to get too trapped up in them. When his “ lover”, Marie, asks him to marry her, he tells her no and that he doesn't love her but it makes no difference to him if they get married or not. She is taken back by this statement and begins to question her own self. When he kills the Arab, there is a sense that he is not really there entirely, that he is not really doing what he is doing. It seems almost as if he is witnessing himself shooting the Arab rather than actually doing it.