Meursault In The Stranger

What causes a person to take the actions that they do in their life? People can do many unexpected things in different situations. Often times a person tends to act before they think and regret their decision in the future. The response someone has in this type of situation might not be characteristic of their personality or identity. The main character in The Stranger did not seem like a likely person so conduct a murder, but in fact he did. The main character, Meursault, is lead to murder the Arab because he is not self-aware of his actions. Through his daily life, Meursault is detached from his surroundings and is removed from his daily relationships, causing him to be removed from the society he lives in. He is in a relationship with

After shooting the Arab, Meursault says, “But I fired four shots more into the inert body, on which they left no visible trace. And each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing” (Camus 76). Immediately after he shoots at the Arab, he realises what he has done, and then does not know what to do. He knows that he did not actually mean to kill him, but he knows that he will now be stuck with the consequences. While on trial later in the book, Meursault is not able to tell his lawyer a definite reason why he continued to shoot the Arab. The Stranger is critiqued with the author saying, “Man must assert his desire for freedom, but he meets the resistance of an external order that is indifferent to his needs, and these conflicting forces and cannot possibly be reconciled” (Glicksberg 52). This shows that although Meursault wants to have freedom, there are things in his life that get in the way, such as the Arab that caused a miniscule disturbance in his ability to act however he wanted to, causing him to murder him. Meursault has no way to understand the outside forces against him, and when he kills the Arab, he is not able to reconcile with what he has done, but instead wants to justify that everything he does has a reason, while he does not actually know what caused him to kill

If he is content, he does not change anything. He says, “I answered that one never changed his way of life; one life was as good as another, and my present one suited me just fine” (Camus 52). Meursault does not have a reason to worry about his future or what he will be doing in the future. He feels content with what he is doing and does not have a reason to change it. As shown in a critique of the novel, the author says, “Thus, from the opening words, Camus projects his remarkable philosophy through an unremarkable protagonist: since death is both arbitrary and inevitable, and since there is nothing beyond death, life only has importance in the here and now, in the day to day activities that make up our existence.” (Moser) This quote displays that only the current state of the character Meursault is his concern. Meursault does not believe in a god, as emphasized many times in the novel, and therefore has only today to live for. His lack of something to live for and look forward to causes him to become detached from the ambitions of the people around him, and lose control of major event in his life while he focuses on the small details he controls to keep his freedom. Meursault is not self-aware of his actions, causing him to murder the Arab. This character has meager ambitions in his life and lives in a removed position from the world around him. He does not