Minor Characters In The Stranger

Minor characters are characters that author used to portray the protagonist's characteristic or personalities in the story to the readers. Although, minor characters are unlikely to be focused on by the readers, but they do served an important role in the story. The Stranger by Albert Camus, basically talks about a man’s death due to the society’s misunderstanding. Therefore, this essay will discuss how the author used Meursault’s relationship with minor characters to show that Mersault is a common man with a tragic end. First of all, old Salamano is one of the minor characters in the novel, where the relationship between he (Salamano) and his dog found special yet complex, he act as a symbol to reflect the relationship between Mersault

During Maman’s funeral, Meursault presents no sadness but an indifferent attitude, which was eventually been questioned and criticized by the public due to his absurd actions. He does love his mother “the same as anyone” (67), but love her in his own way. His hidden love toward his mother presents through his subconscious actions. First of all, while Meursault noticed about Maman’s death he immediately ask for leave, and took a two-hour bus to Marengo, he said that he “wanted to see Maman right away.”(4), which he can’t wait to see mother, his urgent mood had shown his care on Maman. Next, both Mersault and Maman had a unique communicating way ,which they ‘talked’ to each other using their privity, such as eye contact, smile, and even their silence, “Maman used to spent her time following me with her eyes, not saying anything”(5) this shows how close they are, and how much they love each other. In addition, Maman had once told Mersault about his father, “I remembered a story Maman used to tell me about my father.”(110) In this line, the calling of ‘Maman’ and ‘father’ are used to contrast, the word ‘father’ as a general term that wide ages population had used, comparing to the word ‘Maman’ as French translated as ‘mommy’ which had usually called by youngs, the calling of ‘maman’ seems to have a closer relationship than ‘father’, since calling

In the Stranger, Marie and Mersault are been presented as sexual relationship to the readers, that Mersault only went to Marie when he wants to filled up his sexual desire. However, this is not just the way it shown to the readers. Mersault is a very sensitive person, that he has a very thorough look at every detail, “not one detail of their faces or their clothes escaped….” (10) Yet through this sensitive observation, he never analyze his feeling toward Marie comprehensively, Marie had once asked him if he love her back, while the reply of Mersault was “that it didn’t mean anything but that I probably didn’t love her.”(41) As we know about Meursault’s character, he often answered questions in an affirmative and short ways such as “No”, “Yes” and etc. , however, the word “probably” which served as an uncertain word, had reflect how he is unsure about his feeling toward Marie. In addition, some of Meursault’s feeling were shown through his sub consciousness toward Marie, when Mersault felt uncomfortable under the sun, while Marie presents joyfulness in front of him, this had made Mersault felt a bit better compared to the feeling when Mersault was under the sun without Marie staying beside, “already bright with sun, hit me like a slap in the face. Marie was jumping with joy and kept on saying what a beautiful day it was. I felt a little better…” (47) Through