The Stranger By Albert Camus Research Paper

Monsieur Meursault: Compassionate Companion or Cruel Killer?

With the hot sun scalding his scalp and the sweat dripping off his brow, Meursault squeezed harder on the trigger until a deafening silence filled the air and a dead body was slumped over in front of him. The main character of the existentialist novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, Meursault, commits a heinous crime and murders an Arab simply because he got a little too hot on the beach and all the shade was taken up by this unsuspecting victim. Meursault is more dangerous than any normal criminal is since he has no clear motive and deserves capital punishment.

The law and its many definitions, regardless of the circumstances, are almost always absolute and should be applied as such.

For example, Meursault shows absolutely no remorse for his crime nor the fact that he killed another human in general. During the prosecutor’s speech to the jury, he points his finger at Meursault and begins verbally attacking him while Meursault thinks to himself, “Of course, I couldn’t help admitting that he was right. I didn’t feel much remorse for what I’d done.” (Camus 100) Throughout the rest of the story, he’s more upset about the fact that he isn’t able to speak during his own trial rather than thinking about the man that he murdered in cold blood. Meursault also seems mentally unstable and extremely detached from society based on his thoughts and actions leading to the climax of this story. In the beginning of The Stranger, Meursault says, “Maman 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.” (Camus 3) With the death of his own mother, Meursault still couldn’t find compassion or sadness in his heart to feel any emotion. He is detached and emotionless which further proves the point that Meursault is more dangerous than the normal criminal since he could kill at any time and not have a motive nor feel any emotions for his

Even after Meursault had visibly killed the Arab, he fired an additional four shots into the deceased body which provides enough evidence that this was not just in self-defense. In the last excerpt from The Stranger Meursault narrates, “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 39) If this crime truly was an act of self-defense, then Meursault wouldn’t have had to fire the additional shots. He had plenty of force with his initial shot to stop the Arab from harming him and on top of all of that, Meursault was the aggressor in this