Extended Metaphor In The Stranger

The Stranger written by Albert Camus, gives the reader an insight in the life of Meursault and his family and friends, but also has a hidden moral behind it. In “The Stranger”, Camus uses metaphor to describe the relationship between Meursault and his mother. The assumptions people make has a chance of being right or wrong, but Camus uses Salamano and his dog as an extended metaphor to show that even though everyone believed that Meursault did not care about his mother, he in fact he did care about his mother, and it was the same situation with Salamano and his dog. Meursault had an estranged relationship with his mother. They did not have that tender mother-son relationship, because when they lived together they hardly had any communication between them, living completely separate lives while still living in the same house. When he sent her to the old people’s home, he rarely visited her or spent any time with her.” Perez said it was really my mother he had known and that he had seen me once, on the day of the funeral”(Camus, pg91). Thomas Perez was a very close friend of Maman in the old people’s home, so for him to say that he never saw

The reader would assume that the relationship between Salamano and his dog was abusive because of what they have read, but Camus shifts that thought by Salamano saddened by the fact that he might never see his dog again, and it was the same case for Meursault and his mother. Camus wanted to make a statement of how we always assume and believe our assumptions, only based on what we see, using Salamano and his dog as an example. Meursault’s actions would indicate that he did not care about his mother, but how interacts with people and what they think of that does not determine that he does not care about his