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Empathy And Resilience In The Stranger, By Albert Camus

1066 Words5 Pages

In the novel, The Stranger, author Albert Camus portrays the idea that connections that provide empathy and support will increase one’s sense of resilience. Through the character Meursault, Albert Camus conveys the fact that resilience and empathy are connected. Meursault lacks empathy and resilience, Albert Camus uses relationships to represent empathy and diction as well as language to represent Meursault's resilience.

Meursault has been notified of his mothers death, "Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure.", this quotation shows that Muersault's feels no guilt in his mothers death. During his travels Meursault did not mourn for his mother's death rather he questioned his significance to her, and would complain about …show more content…

Meursault is given a Lawyer who empathizes with him, the lawyer feels sorry for Meursault, believing he wasn't in the right state of mind and that he should be exonerated. Meursault does not accept the Lawyer's empathy as he feels no connection with him, and believes the Law should be up holded in a fair fashion as he killed the man with intent. Meursault is sentenced to death. The initial blames the court and society for the lack of empathy, and how the society in which Meursault lives values emotional expression, and his lack of emotion makes him an outcast. He emphasizes with others that have faced the death sentence and builds his resilience to face it. Before he heads to the guillotine a chaplain meets with him to discuss receiving a baptism in hope that Meursault may be forgiven by God and be sent to the afterlife. Meursault again refuses as he accepts his fate and doesn’t empathize with the chaplain's kind nature. Meursault is unable to show resilience in the face of difficulty of even death, he does not fight his case nor accept the probability of an afterlife. With the lack of connection and empathy he also lacks resilience. The society's inability to empathize with Meursault makes it difficult for him to be resilient, he is constantly judged by members of the nursing home and the court, which makes it difficult for him to manage on the edge of death. The lack of empathy Meursault receives increases his sense of isolation and loneliness, making it even harder for him to be

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