In The Stranger by Albert Camus, we are exposed to the strange and seemingly blank character of Meursault. At times, he is a passive observer who could not care less about the world as it passes around him, and at others he shows a side of himself that seems to lean toward the negative things in life rather than being neutral as he appears to be.

The entire story is narrated by Meursault himself, and thus we get a very in depth look at how he thinks and operates. He observes the world around him from a lens of someone who lives their life independently from their environment. Things happen, grave things such as his mother dying, his neighbor asking Meursault to do things for him despite the fact he is a known scumbag, and last of all and most importantly the violent altercations with the Arab men, and when these things happen Meursault acts as if he had absolutely no control whatsoever over these events. He’s like an observer, someone who is reading the story with us, but there are a few parts throughout the story where this observer visage begins to fade away.

Meursault is not a violent man, but there are multiple times throughout the story when he seems to show some negative tendencies. He is constantly making remarks about how the world annoys him, how people, weather, and other things get on his nerves and affect his life. Of course, he doesn’t do anything to act on these annoyances, but a lot of space in his mind seems to be taken up by negativity. For the majority of the story, he is either completely neutral or annoyed. The only times when he is even slightly positive are those that he is with Marie. It’s possible that Camus is saying something about reproduction and how its some people’s (people like Meursault who simply live and aren’t emotionally affected by things outside their control) only apparent reason for living in their depressing and cynical reality. It’s not until the end of the story, when he shoots the Arab man that Meursault shows some form of action, some real interaction with the world around him that doesn’t have to do with reproduction or work, and it is one of violence. Not just any violence, but extreme violence. As if all that annoyance boiled up, Meursault shoots the man 4 times too many, for a reason unknown to the reader.

I believe that this suggests that there’s something we don’t yet know about Meursaut’s character, that he isn’t as much of a passive observer who lets the world go by around him as he seems to be. Perhaps Camus is trying to suggest something about the world, and about humans. Maybe we’re different from animals, at least in our modern world, we can’t live a life without interacting with the world or allowing the world to interact with us. Something interest is bound to happen, there is no such thing as an uninteresting person.