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Death In Albert Camus The Stranger

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In literature, death often serves much more than a physical purpose. It can be a means of illustrating the death of a character’s mental state, his/her love, or psychological well-being. In part one of Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Meursault, the narrator, learns that his mother has died and accordingly plans the funeral. However, the chapter is not entitled death solely for this reason. Using tone and the motif of the sun, Camus demonstrates throughout part one that death occurs in Meursault 's mental and emotional state, ultimately revealing the loss of his own humanity. It quickly becomes clear that Meursault’s tone following the death of his mother reflects his desensitized and seemingly distant state. After realizing that his mother had …show more content…

As Meursault reflects on the environment in which his mother lived, he notices “But today, with the sun bearing down, making the whole landscape shimmer with heat, it was inhuman and oppressive” (15). Prior to this description, the reader learns that Maman and Monsieur Perez typically walked down to the village together, as a sort of happy moment for them. Yet, as Meursault clarifies, “today”, the sun is especially evident with a scorching heat. Essentially, his attitude matches the inhuman nature of the sun with his desensitized and alienated state and is oppressive in the sense that he shows no regard for any other person or his/her emotions. He chooses not to look at his mother’s corpse and swiftly deals with the funeral process as quickly as he can. And, his apathetic state even extends to the moment he kills the Arab man. “The sun was the same as it had been the day I’d buried Maman, and like then, my forehead especially was hurting me...It was this burning, which I couldn’t stand anymore, that made me move forward” (58-59). Meursault explicitly states that the sun of his current situation is the same as it had been at his mother’s burial, and this reveals the lack of humanity in the situation because of the description of “inhuman and oppressive”. His choice to shoot the Arab man multiple times, even after a first fatal shot, reflect his emotional and psychological detachment from humanity and his inability to recognize his own

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2. Summary: Meursault, a shipping clerk living in Algiers, receives news of his mother's death. After hearing about the death of his mother, he travels to the nursing home that that he put her in after no longer being able to financially provide for the both of them. Unlike the traditional response to death by grieving for the deceased, Meursault continues on with his daily tasks as if his mother had never died. During a trip with Raymond and Marie, Meursault shoots the Arab, the brother of the mistress that cheated on Raymond, and is imprisoned.

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During the beginning of the novel, Meursault goes to his neighbor Raymond’s house. The visit results into a physical fight due to insults made towards Meursault. Relating to aspects on violence, this scene was made to show simple

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The heat is also very important in this novel. Both times that death was in front of Meursault, the heat was unbearable for him; his mother’s funeral and the murder of the Arab. The heat is very uncomfortable for him, because he mentions it many times. Sometimes it is so bad, he becomes dizzy and is unable to think properly. When he is in court, every time he is questioned about the murder, he alway relates back to how hot the scene was.

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Meursault is not an emotional person. Meursault often seems not to react to major events that happen to him. For example when his mom dies, he says, “Really, nothing had changed”(24). There is an obvious emotional disconnect. Either he was not close to his mother or her death had little to no effect on him.

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At the beach, the sun “slap[ed] [him] in the face.” and started “[…] to burn [his] cheeks, […]” to remind him “the day […] [he has] burred Maman”. At this point, Meursault experienced dizziness and disturbance he has already experienced during his mother burial. As if to annoyed him more, “The light shot off the steel [of the Arab] and it was like a long flashing blade cutting at his forehead”.

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In the novel, a majority of Meursault 's actions are based upon his attitude that his presence ultimately does not “matter”. “‘But,’ I reminded myself, ‘it’s common knowledge that life isn’t worth living, anyhow.’ And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten—since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before,” (Camus 70-71). The aforestated quote captures the quintessence of Meursault’s character and illustrates the reason for his disinterest with the injustices around him. With purely factual considerations, it is true that each human life is proportionally negligible.

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As Meursault perceives life contains no meaning, he is a hollow man who can not see the reality of life. He is much ignorant and lives in the present. “whole landscape shimmer with heat, it was inhumane and oppressive”(Camus 15).The sun represents the intimidating power of the natural worlds over human action. The sun is not repeated once, but many times during the funeral, which distracts Meursault’s attention and prevails the emotions, Meursault is unable to deal with himself. The sun is also the driving force, which makes Meursault murder the Arab man at the beach.

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Evodie Saadoun Trevor Kallimani Hist 210 13th October 2015 Women in the American Revolution There is a proverb that says, “The woman is born free and remains equal to men in rights”. Since the eighteenth century, women still try to be equal to men and try to be independent. During the American Revolution, women were dependent on their husband. This meant they had to cook, clean and take care of their children. They were not allowed to do what they wanted.

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Death is a common tragedy used in stories; from B.C. to now, movies, books and even songs are based on death. This may convey the impression of emotions being dark or dreary, but it seems to be a fan favorite, not only among adults, but children. In Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, the story is based around death, and the same could be said for The Lion King, but it is the audience that separates how deep or complex the story line can be. In the story written by Shakespeare, King Hamlet is not in the story line at all because he was murdered before the story began.

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(59) After long passages describing the painful violence of the sun, Camus’s transition into the murder is shockingly abrupt, provoking a sense of bewilderment at the unexpected randomness of the murder, conveying effectively the irrationality of Meursault’s murder of the man. However, during the trial, when Meursault reveals that he murdered the Arab only because of the sun, refusing to allow others impose their logical but false interpretations upon his life, “people laughed” (103) and even his own “lawyer threw up his hand” (103) as they are unable comprehend and accept such an irrational motivation. To protect themselves from this harsh reality of the universe, they can only fabricate and impose their own logical explanation for Meursault’s behavior. The prosecutor, for instance, is convinced Meursault murdered the man in cold blood, certain in the narrative he has constructed out of events completely unrelated to the murder, from Meursault’s “ignorance when asked Maman’s age” (99) to his association with a man of “doubtful morality” (99). In both cases, Meursault’s indifference for societal standards of morality has painted him as a man immoral and cold-hearted enough to premeditate the murder.

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We see how his thoughts and how they contrast from others. Throughout the novel, we see how society’s standard on someone could affect them. Meursault is judged by his society for being who he is, at first, he sees no problem with himself till society questions him. Meursault is an anomaly in society; he cannot relate directly to others because he does not live as they do. In the novel,

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Meursault also strays from the morals society has imposed; he does not see a difference between bad and good; he merely observes without judging. However, when Meursault kills an Arab, he is brutally judged for the aspects that make him unique. In the second part of the novel, as the trial

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One way that he exemplifies these traits is in his view that death is meaningless. Death is an inevitability that all life has to go through, so when someone dies, even someone as close as his mother, it is merely another death. Another way is how he sees life, shown in how he focuses on physical things in life such as touch over emotions. Because death is meaningless, he sees life in a certain regard, in the sense that he focuses less on an emotional standpoint and more on a physical one. The last way Camus explains death using absurdism is using other characters to give Meursault situations or conversations in which he shows his views in those strange ways.

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