The Character of Monsieur Meursault in The Stranger Essay

He has no initial reaction to the news of her death, and at her funeral service he did not bother to even see her before she was buried. His lack of emotion is evident in the very first lines of the book, “Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.” This shows that Meursault is hardly caring for his mother. Society’s standards would result in him to be in absolute mourning and wanting to go as fast as possible to her body. This is not the only example of Meursault’s lack of emotion and care for factors in his life. He does not care for love and marriage after having intercourse with someone; the society standard at this time was to get married if two partners had intercourse. He does not care for promotion and career advancement when his boss offers him a better job opportunity; the standard at that time and right now is to pursue the best career possible. In these scenarios Meursault is living free from the chains, and does whatever he thinks is right to do. Eventually, society rejects him and his ways, and he gets in trouble with the law. He is judged by society and his ways are ridiculed, making Meursault appear to be a monster.

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.

had to raise his two brothers because their father wasn’t able to care for them after he became an alcoholic because of the passing of his wife.

After only a few days of trial, the jury in The Stranger declares that the main character, Meursault, is to be executed by guillotine in the town square. The trial and its verdict are one of the important parts of the novel, as Albert Camus uses them as a metaphor to summarize the two main tenets of absurdism. Camus uses the trial and persecution of Meursault to express his belief that the justice system is flawed because of his absurdist ideals that truth does not exist, and human life is precious. In order to reform the justice system, Albert Camus believes that capital punishment needs to be abolished.

his fathers custody, and in the beginning of the story, he did not want to help his father

the lives of his family exceedingly, “...he scrupulously avoided contacting either his parents or Carine, the

 In one of his later interviews, Camus made the somewhat irritated comment that Meursault is the “only Christ we deserve.” While this seem to be a pithy, witty comment, we need to figure out how Meursault is like Christ. Christ taught his disciples and had them go and teach others, yet Meursault has no disciples and chooses to say little. Meursault murders while Christ brings a man back from the dead. Most drastically, Christ ”died for our sins” in order to make all those who follow free from original sin. Meursault just dies.

He was used to live in his brother’s shadow, but when the boat accident happened to them, he was the only one to survive. As he was always indentifying himself the less important one, he considered it was wrong that he was the one who would still have a life. As a result of nervous breakdown, he tried to kill himself with cutting his wrists in the bathroom, fortunately his father found out and save him. Then he went to the psychiatric for four months. When he comes back, there are still issues he needs to deal with.

This shows just how little he cared for such matters, writing off the topic of marriage so trivially. Meursault continues on to say to the reader that “she was the one who was doing the asking and all I was saying was yes.” (Camus 41-42). He justifies his lack of excitement or romance by stating that only Marie asked about, implying that he did not care for having a tight, emotional relationship with his lover, Marie. Marie plays the source of the love between them, while Meursault simply listens and enjoys in the pleasure of having her, but still feeling indifferent to her actual emotions. This downplay on their relationship and her feelings demonstrate that Meursault does not value anything of Marie below surface level and that he lacks the need for a warmer connection between them.

him with a mother’s love not only once leaving him as a young child, but twice when he came to

Meursault is truthful to himself and others throughout The Stranger. Unlike most, he doesn’t feel it necessary to lie in order to make others feel better. He is truthful, regardless of whether or not the truth may hurt. For example, in chapter four Marie asked Meursault if he loved her. Instead of lying to her or giving a vague answer Meursault told her that he probably didn’t love her, but it wasn’t important anyway.

In Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Meursault is seen as a very unique character, but not in a good way. Throughout the novel, he continually fails to show normal human emotions to things like his mother’s death, Marie’s love, and the man he killed. Most people in his town, along with the reader at first, are not able to reason out his actions but as the final events of the novel unfold, the reader begins to see Meursault in a different light.

Although Meursault is the title character and narrator of Albert Camus’ short novel The Stranger, he is also a somewhat flat character. His apparent indifferent demeanor may be a convenience to Camus, who mainly wanted to display his ideas of absurdism. And as a flat character, Meursault is not fully delineated: he lacks deep thought and significant change. His purpose is that of a first-person narrator whose actions embody the absurd, even before he has any awareness of the fact. Since Meursault is embodied absurdism, it is not necessary that he be hyperaware of his thoughts and intentions. His truth has already been built into his character by the

In The Stranger, Albert Camus writes about a detached yet normal man, Meursault, who encounters unusual situations that evidently leads to his demise. From cover to cover, it was established by the author that Meursault had an unusual way of thinking and that he was continuously revealing his peculiar perspective on life and death. Throughout the novel, Meursault is reminded of death and continues to be judged by everyone in the society that he lives in, for instance, when he was put on trial for shooting an Arab man. Camus writes about the main character by describing his absurdist mindset. It is through the focus of funeral scene, however, that Camus is able to formulate the values of the character and the society in which they live in. This scene was able to reveal Meursault’s perspective on life as well as death.

   The Stranger by Albert Camus was published in 1942. The setting of the novel is Algiers where Camus spent his youth in poverty. In many ways the main character, Meursault, is a typical Algerian youth. Like them, and like Camus himself, Meursault was in love with the sun and the sea. His life is devoted to appreciating physical sensations. He seems so devoid of emotion. Something in Meursault's character has appealed primarily to readers since the book's publication. Is he an absurd anti-hero? Is he a moral monster? Is he a rebel against a conventional morality? Critics and readers alike have disputed a variety of approaches to Meursault. I believe he is the embryo