The Stranger, By Albert Camus

An emotionless person is someone who shows little or no feeling to just about anything in life. Someone who is emotionless usually has trouble describing, showing or identifying any real emotions to any situation. Characterized as psychologically and emotionally detached from his life, Meursault is a brutally honest yet indifferent individual who lives his life not caring about what ‘normal’ people care about in the novel, The Stranger, was written by Albert Camus, a French philosopher, writer and journalist, whose work addressed the idea of Absurdism and theory of Existentialism. Existentialism is a ‘theory that emphasizes the existence of a person as a free individual determining their own development through acts of the will’. Camus’ creation

The opening of Part 1, Chapter 1 on page 3 reads, “Mamman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.” With the syntax and Meursault as the narrator, the reader gets a glimpse of what kind of character he is. The short and choppy sentences play a role in how we were able to interpret his character from this quote. His tone is very apathetic and detached and it helps us see that death has no effect on him, he accepts it as if it is regular and passes it off like it does not matter. His reaction to the death is not a usual one, he is cold, distant and gives off the impression that he does not care about his own mother’s death. It seemed as if it was a disturbance to his usual life, as he had to drop everything to go for the funeral. The relationship between his mother and himself is evidently blurry because he explains no memories and even at the funeral of his mother, he is not focused on her or even the idea of her being gone but instead how people perceive him. He appears to have no true emotional connection with anyone including his own mother. The choice of language highlights the thoughts of Meursault. Emphasis is put on the development of his attitude towards himself and everyone else. Through this sort of simple sentence structure,

The emotionlessness of Meursault’s character was created by Camus to try explain to us that life has no meaning or order. As humans we find it hard to accept that and have to find structure and meaning in our lives. This leads to finding reasons and meaning in places where it does not exist. Our desire as a society, is so grand it even leads to the questioning of other people’s character, like Meursault. We are willing to do whatever it takes to find reason to everything. We are all looking for a purpose in our lives. The characters of The Stranger, all watch the world around them. Meursault watches his own trial. The world around him is point of interest. On the other hand, there is eyes of the jury at his trial. And finally the idea of the crowd at the end when he was about to be executed, representing the eyes of society who are there to end him as they found no explanations to his character. As stated previously Camus created Meursault on the basis of his belief in the theory of existentialism. The idea of said theory is used throughout the novel and opens eyes to the true nature of human