Recommended: The role of the outsider in literature
Meursault is eventually convicted and sentenced to death because of his inability to conform to the societal expectations of French Algeria in the 1940’s. 3. Characters: Meursault- the protagonist and narrator of the novel, Meursault is a young shipping clerk who has detached himself from the world around him. He is indifferent
Meursault shows his lack of emotional attachment to people: "I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings"( page 41). Meursault shows the regrets of his nature but also, at the same time, explains that it’s not going to change. Rather than focusing on finding someone to spend his life with, Meursault would rather find someone who can always keep him pampered. Meursault again shows his regret for his actions when he says, "I wanted to try to explain to him that it was because of the sun, the sea, the light, in fact, everything, that I had simply loved him with no personal motive" (Page 68). Meursault shows his lack of care for those whom he loved, but at the same time shows that Meursault might not be able to fully control what he does, but rather does everything out of impulse, therefore making him regret his actions in some situations.
Meursault constantly has varying thoughts dancing around his mind, one of which is the environment. The environment is behind all of Meursault’s struggles and problems in his mental world and interferes with his physical world as well, causing him to think that the world is irrational. Holden’s attitude toward the world is particularly similar to Meursault’s because nihilism and absurdism are quite similar. Both believe that the world is irrational and out to get them. The only difference between the two is that Meursault discovers that even though he believes that the world manipulated him and demanded to kill the
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.
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.
In ‘No exit’, Jean-Paul Sartre constructs a version of hell where three characters, Garcin, Estelle, and Inez are trapped together in a room for all of eternity with nothing except each other’s company. The characters and the complex relationships they build in ‘No Exit’ are representative of Sartre’s existentialist philosophy. Each of the three characters in ‘No Exit’ represent their success and failure through an existentialist viewpoint. Inez, the self proclaimed sadist, was a postal worker in her life and was murdered after she seduced and turned her cousin’s wife against him.
Ideas on justice and law within Jean Anouilh’s Antigone as representations of the roles within Vichy France during the years nineteen forty to nineteen forty-four In response to critic Hubert Gignoux, Jean Anouilh stated that; ‘‘The rest of my life, as long as God wills it, will remain my personal business, and I will withhold the details of it.’’ This ambiguity that shrouds Anouilh’s personal life encapsulates his political beliefs. The vagueness of Anouilh’s Antigone enables people to make their own assumptions on its social messages and stances, and which roles are being depicted by which character. This essay will examine how characters’ standards of law and justice represent the roles within Vichy France during the start of the nineteen
(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.
The attempt Hassan makes towards repairing the relationship between himself allows for the moral reconciliation of his former self and his new identity. As he embarks his culinary journey and gains a surge of success, Hassan becomes overwhelmed with the prestige and fame that he grew to obtain. He states, “I hit a creative impasse [...] I worked hard but made no headway, as the freshness and zeal with which I’d started my work at Le Chien Méchant was institutionalized through constant repetition [...] it was when I turned forty, that a dangerous restlessness set in” (178).
Because Meursault shut himself away from any outside emotions and didn’t care what choice he took, it became the downfall of him. All of those choices, of him taking the easy way out, could have ended up taking a different route, but because Meursault is a stranger to himself and to his life, his inability own up to what he has done was his flaw. That one choice made an incredible difference in Meursault’s life and he did nothing to stop it, as if he weren’t really there, like he wasn’t in control of his actions or of his thoughts. In a way, Meursault’s character is very similar to that of Hamlet. Both of their fatal flaws is there overthinking about life and in Meursault’s case his emotionless approach on life.
Victor Hugo’s classic 1862 novel, Les Miserable resonated with overtly and covertly in the Holocaust. This thesis helps college-level students to comprehend the cruel behavior place for the people in the Holocaust period. Les Miserables emerged from a network of the cultural and social significance to understand the political viewpoint. The novel has important aspects which involving the setting, violence, identity, hiding, hunger, memory, and social justice. “Jean Valjean’s flashback sequences, using a grainy, high-contrast and washed out image to denote Valjean’s harsh
As an enemy of freedom, colonialism determines the decisions and fate of people and forces them to repress their own freedom. To investigate in what way people repress their freedom within a colonial context, we can turn to Albert Camus’s story “The Guest”. Repressing one’s own free choice under the influence of colonialism, can lead to forfeiting his/her freedom since not being able to express one’s true conviction renders his/her morality and self-determination, which is illustrated by Albert Camus’s story “The Guest”. The tension between Arab culture and the French authority as a result of colonialism is palpable in Camus’s story.
In their efforts to explain why women are not equally represented in science, experts are often quick to point fingers at different reasons: biological differences, cultural expectations, and simple differences in preference, to name a few. Of course, there is no single reason explaining why women are not as represented in scientific fields as men are. There are so many different factors that can affect a woman’s decision to enter STEM fields that it is impossible to pinpoint one defining moment in her life that forces her hand. In this paper, I will confront these three potential explanations for the lack of women in science in an attempt to answer the question, “Why aren’t more women in science?” Before any discussion on the matter, it
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
In his novel The Stranger, Albert Camus creates an emotionally incapable, narcissistic, and, at times, sociopathic character named Meursault to explore and expose his philosophies of Existentialism and Absurdism. Throughout the story Meursault follows a philosophical arc that, while somewhat extreme - from unemotional and passive to detached and reckless to self-reflective - both criticizes the dependent nature of human existence and shows the journey through the absurd that is our world. In the onset of The Stranger, following his mother’s death, Meursault acts with close to utter indifference and detachment. While the rest of “maman’s”(9) loved ones express their overwhelming grief, Meursault remains unphased and, at times, annoyed at their
